Energy Secretary Steven Chu Answers Our Energy Question

Dr. Chu, why were ARPA-E grant evaluators instructed to not grant any ARPA-E money to nuclear related technology projects?

Positive Change should include changing America’s nuclear fuel cycle to Thorium -

We cannot continue to improve the condition of people throughout the word without use of nuclear power. None of the renewable energy solutions can be scaled quickly enough to meet current and future energy needs. Safer, proliferation resistant, nuclear power without the long term high level waste storage problems is needed to power a growing world economy and to allow all nations to provide for and feed their growing populations in peace. These goals are available by changing the nuclear fuel cycle to a Uranium-233/Thorium fuel cycle.

It is not necessary to leave a Mountain of nuclear waste as a legacy to our children’s children. Thorium nuclear liquid fuel dissolved in a Molten Salt Reactor can be completely consumed (>99% of the energy content of the Thorium fuel is extracted by the reactor) while current nuclear reactors burn only ~2% of the energy in conventional Uranium fuel in solid fuel rods. Most of the nuclear waste (~96%) produced by current nuclear reactors is just unburned Uranium fuel. If you burn fuel more efficiently, then you don’t have to mine as much of it to produce a given amount of energy. Also, if you burn all of the nuclear fuel, you don’t end up with as much nuclear waste that you have to find a long term sequestration repository for. Thorium in fluid form is capable of being completely consumed in a safe thermal neutron spectrum Molten Salt Reactor. Thorium molten salt reactors make less nuclear waste (less than one hundredth the amount) and the waste is more than one thousand times less long term radio-toxic (83% of the fission product waste of a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor decays to the safe level of the natural radioactive background in less than 10 years, the remaining 17% of fission products decay to the natural background in less than 400 years) [1]. This contrasts with the requirement to sequester nuclear waste (Transuranics and Minor Actinides) from conventional nuclear reactors for 20,000 years.

Why is spending some ARPA_E money on trying to improve nuclear energy in America, which currently supplies 20% of the nation’s electricity, a bad idea?

The help nuclear innovators in America need is not billions in gifts and bailouts. The help we need is to reform nuclear regulation at NRC that was put in place immediately following the 3-mile island “accident”. Three mile island produced no casualties among plant operators or the public and released only a very modest amount of short half life quickly decaying tritiated water into the environment, but the regulatory overkill and over reach that came from the guidance provided by Congress to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over this accident has resulted in no new nuclear reactors being built in the United States in the last 35 year. Not one reactor has been built since NRC opened its doors in 1975. NRC regulation is responsible for pricing up the cost of American nuclear technology 400% over the real costs of nuclear as they existed in 1973 under safe Atomic Energy Commission regulation. Every American nuclear reactor operating today was designed and was initiated as a project under safe AEC regulatory supervision.
America is coasting on nuclear technology innovated by the US Navy in the mid 1950s with only small evolutionary change over the last 55 years. We really can build better nuclear today and use American Thorium fuel to do it (instead of buying our fuel at great cost from ambivalent or unfriendly countries in the Middle East).
Why no ARPA-E money or grants for any nuclear related energy innovation? Innovation is the heart of any technical industry.
Why does DOE not, as the nuclear industry technology advocate assigned under the terms of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, not call for regulatory reform at NRC and rolling back regulatory obstacles to parity with the safe regulatory level of our industrial competition in France and China?
DOE technical advocacy and support for the nuclear industry that has resulted in no new nuclear reactors being initiated as projects and then successfully built and put into operation in 35 long years is substandard performance for an agency assigned as a technical advocate.
[1] Le Brun, C., “Impact of the MSBR concept technology on long lived radio toxicity and proliferation resistance” – http://bit.ly/bLqIxB