From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Clark
Chris de Morsella <[email protected]> wrote:
> No one is ever going to "recover" the dispersed Thorium in your garden's
dirt
They could but no one will bother doing anything like that until ores of
much much higher concentrations are used up, and at current consumption
rates that won't happen for about a billion years.
I am amazed how much certainty you have about a back of the napkin idea that
does not exist. Not a single LFTR unit is operating, nor are there any
blueprints to build one. There is no Thorium mining, refining industrial
scale sector and all the other impediments that exist between John Clark's
certainty and actual reality.
So forgive me if I take your billion year certainty with a billion grains of
salt.
> Only the much smaller amount of Thorium or Uranium that is actually
recoverable and that means not only technically recoverable, but also
energetically
>>As I say nobody would bother but even with today's primitive technology do
you have any evidence that it would take more energy than what 37 tons of
coal could provide to extract 12 grams of Thorium from one cubic meter of
randomly selected dirt?
You are the one making the claim; it is up to you to show how it can be
done.
> Again only a very small fraction of the Thorium dispersed throughout the
earth's crust is recoverable and can be counted as a reserve. Which was my
point in bringing up the large quantities of gold dissolved in the world's
oceans.
And Thorium is 2000 times as common as Gold and is in fact almost as common
as lead. And if that little one troy ounce Gold coin in your pocket were
made of Thorium instead of Gold it could produce as much energy as 114 tons
of coal.
I get it you love Thorium, but love of Thorium does not make it a reality.
Breeder reactors - including LFTR - are not easy things to build and they
push materials to the limit.
I am not even especially opposed to LFTR - and have stated many times that
out of all the breeder types - and I have looked at the Gen IV reference
design proposals for various types - so it is kind of funny you arguing with
me about this.
My skepticism that LFTR can take off is because it has to go from absolute
zero - there is no Thorium sector to speak of; there is no Thorium mining
sector, or refining capacity. There are no LFTR reactors (or even blueprints
for that matter). There is nothing, except the wishes of the small cadre of
thorium enthusiasts.
How does all of this industrial scale activity occur in a regime of
shrinking energy supplies - wherein multiple constituent sectors will all be
clamoring that they need as much available energy as they can get.
Guess which sector will get its claims satisfied - hint it won't be the
Thorium sector - more like the military industrial complex and the funding
of increasingly nasty energy wars to control the world's last big oil and
gas reserves.
> My point remains valid and salient. Whenever anyone speaks of some
resource reserve figure in practice what they are (or should be) referring
to is the recoverable reserve figures. The quantity of some resource in the
earth's crust may be interesting, but it is irrelevant in a discussion of
reserves.
So let's review:
* Thorium is a element that is TWICE as common as TIN.
* Some natural ores are 50% Thorium.
* One POUND of Thorium can provide as much energy as 1,362 TONS of coal.
* The best argument Chris de Morsella can come up with against the use of
Thorium is that there just isn't enough of it.
Bull shit John. I have given you many different arguments and just gave you
others in this very email. Stop lying and framing my position - you are a
dishonest actor John CLark!
Where are the LFTR reactors? Where are the LFTR blueprints? Where is the
entire logistical chain that would be needed in order for an LFTR sector to
exist?
> If LFTR is so great then why has it not been pursued
Four reasons:
1) in the early days military applications were considered much more
important than civilian power plants, and small pressurized water Uranium
reactors worked pretty well in submarines so Admiral Rickover decreed that's
where virtually all reactor developmental money should go.
Yes. we all heard that.
2) By their very nature uranium reactors create copious amounts of Plutonium
but Thorium reactors do not. In the early days this was considered a huge
advantage Uranium reactors had over Thorium reactors, but today not so much.
I have stated this myself many times. Not new news.
3) The culture of fission reactor design is far more conservative and
resistant to change than any other area of science or technology.
4) LFTR's aren't just theoretical but could actually work, so
environmentalists feel duty bound to oppose it with every fiber of their
being.
Again - distorting the positions of those you feel the need to demonize. As
I have in fact repeatedly stated I am not especially opposed to LFTR
development.
You are a very dishonest interlocutor John; you consistently frame other
people's positions in manners that set them up as being irrational and
extreme - this kind of tactic is evidence of a dishonest nature.
> Peak liquid petroleum has already happened
BULLSHIT.
BULLSHIT to your BULLSHIT!!!
You don't know what you are speaking about John. The statistics do not lie.
Globally peak liquid petroleum has peaked and you can shout BULLSHIT a
million times into the wind, but all you produce is more of that John Clark
hot air.
> and conventional oil (as it is called in the industry) is already in
decline around the world.
This fact has been masked by the rapid rise in unconventional oil
>>Then to avoid obsolescence the term "conventional oil" will need to be
revised.
The rise in non-conventional oil is a bubble that is already coming apart at
the wheels. As I have shown all the oil majors are pulling out of this
sector as fast as they can - trying to offload their unconventional oil
operations to any sucker wiling to buy it off of them. They have all been
badly burned by all the sunk capital they have invested in this bubble. And
have all felt the negative consequences of this poor investment on their
profit margins.
> As evidence -- look at just how far the production rate has dropped off
for the Cantarell field off the Yucatan -- it is the third biggest oil field
ever discovered. Production from that super giant field has plunged by 80%
from it's peak in 2004.
The Cantarell oil field is not only the third biggest it is also the most
technologically primitive in the world, the reason is easy to understand. If
you're a Mexican farmer and oil is discovered on your land you don't own a
drop of it, the government owns it all and government bureaucrats have
little expertise in the science of oil drilling; and those experts who do
have such ability work for no government and prefer to apply their trade in
places like the USA where they can get a nice share of the profits. For this
reason the USA has not the largest but the most technologically advanced oil
fields in the world, and is why the USA has experienced such a huge increase
in oil and natural gas production in the last few years.
BULLSHIT John PEMEX is not some dirt poor Mexican farmer it is a very big
vertically integrated oil company, one of the largest in the world. The same
depletion story is occurring in Ghawar as well (though the Saudis are doing
their best to hide this fact).
John you are an information poor energy prognosticator; a magical thinking
conrucopeanist who wants to believe. Have a happy flat earth.
Chris de Morsella
John K Clark
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