I have been reviewing papers, including a couple that go back to the 1970's on development issues confronting MSR/LFTR technologies before they can be useful tools for generating commercial technology.  My purpose is to test a common criticism of MSR technology, namely that it is vaporware.  

The first document I reviewed was WASH-1222, a document prepared during the 1970's to evaluate MSR technology.    The Purpose of WASH-1222 is generally understood to have been to have the dismissal of the Molten Salt Breeder Reacto as a competitor of the ill famed LMFBR.  Thus the writers of WASH-1222 were motivated to uncover flaws in the MSBR concept.  

The other two documents were prepared since the beginning of the 21st century, and express views that are more favorable to the MSR/LFTR.   I use the term MSR as a generic term that includes both thorium cycle and uranium cycle reactors, as well as different the use of chloride salts as well fluoride salts as fuel carrier/coolants.  The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor is a Thorium fuel cycle, fluoride salt, MSR.  

In a recent interview with Fast Complany.com's David Case, T. Boone Pickens made some interesting admissions:  

Pickens: "I'm not going to have the windmills on my ranch. They're ugly. . . ."

Question: "So whose land is it going on?"

Pickens: "My neighbors', . . ."

Question: "What happens if Congress doesn't extend the $20-per-megawatt-hour Production Tax Credit for wind -- set to expire December 31? On a project this size, that's an $80,000 deduction every hour at full capacity."

Pickens: "Then you've got a dead duck. It would be hard to go without a subsidy."

Question: "What about when the wind doesn't blow?"

Pickens:"That's the problem with wind generation. You've got to supplement it with a gas-fired or coal-fired source so whoever buys it gets continuous 24-7 generation."

Texas Oil Billionaire T. Boone Pickens has come up with a really bad energy plan.  I have to wonder if Pickens has had too many of his little gray cells die lately.  Pickens is big on wind, something his oil business competition has known for a long time.   Pickens is now investing in government subsidies.  Excuse me, did i say that.  I'm so sorry.  It must have been a slip pf my fingers on the keyboard.  Pickens is investing in wind farms through which he expects to receive billions of dollars in government subsidies.  See there, I made it all better.  

Pickens has an energy ideas that is as substantial as a tumbleweed in a West Texas Wind.   Pickens idea is to replace the use of natural gas in electrical generation with wind generated electricity.  The natural gas could then be diverted to powering cars.  Natural gas could thus replace foreign oil in our energy economy.  Well what is wrong with Pickens plan?

Christopher Booker is a right wing columnist for the right-wind Daily Telegraph.   Before you stop me, just recall that George Orwell once wrote that things "did not happen any the less because the Daily Telegraph has suddenly found out about them . . "  

In order to understand what Booker has been writing about, you have to understand a few things about what is described in the United Kingdom as the national government.  At any rate the British Labor Government is now lead by the desperately incompetent George Brown, whose only talent seems to have been his ability to stab former Labor Leader Tony Blair in the back repeatedly and get away with it.  Brown is now Prime Minister.  With the departure of Blair, Brown has no recourse except to demonstrate what an inconceivably bad leader he is.  Brown is so bad that he is expected to be trounced in the next election by Conservative leader David Cameron even though the Tories despise Cameron.   Cameron, whose leadership style has been unfavorably compared to that of Pol Pot, seems intent on turning the Conservative party into a Public Relations machine.   Fortunately for Cameron, who recent Conservative polls discovered would have run second to Bloody Mary Tudor, he will have George Brown as an election opponent.

Data on construction costs for Concentrated Solar Power facilities is hard to come by.  I usually defer the analysis of solar energy costs to the esteemed Dr. Buzzo, but this weekend I came across a solar array data set on The Gristmill, to which which  commenters had applied useful and illuminating analyzed on this usually very dark subject.   The data was on Navada Solar 1, a 64MW CSP facility completed last year.  The Nevada Solar 1 site covers 400 acres, and was completed last year at a cost of over 260 million dollars.   Nevada Solar 1 was upon completion the third largest solar generating facility in the world.  

I began my thinking about reactor manufacture some time ago.   Reactors are now mainly built where they will stand when completed.  The actual reactor is only a part of a larger construction project.  There are enormous drawbacks to on site manufacture.  First it is a crafts-labor intensive form of manufacture.   Craftsmen swarm over the site performing all sorts of tasks.  We have pipe fitters installing pipes, welders welding, electricians installing miles of wiring, carpenters building forms.  Rebar being installed, forms placed, and concrete poured.  Workers are constantly shifting within job sites; they have no assigned station at which tools can be kept handy.  Workers require frequent assignment and direction in performing their tasks.  Supervisors must constantly move back and forth from their superiors to their subordinates relaying messages and assignments, and monitoring work for progress.  

Building a reactor then is a big, complex construction project in which many things can and do go wrong.  Can we change that?  Do we need to?