Probably, the "kick" needs to be two kicks -- one to Congress and one to DoE, in spots that would gain attention.

;]

About what the Chinese have already allocated, $1B, could get NRC hiring appropriate staff and DoE engaging appropriate R&D on the key aspects of materials for constructing & fuelling MSR/LFTR.

I personally feel that if large sums need to be raised to build Molten Salt Reactor prototype hardware, it is better and more practical to have the US Government and the DOE National Labs involved. It is expensive to build prototype reactors, and the technical and financial risks are great. New technology reactor pioneering are things that National Labs were created to do, and fine nuclear design teams backed by state of the art nuclear fabrication prototyping support still exists inside the National Laboratory system.

The only place Molten Salt Reactors have been successfully designed and built on planet earth is at a DOE National Lab. DOE National Labs have a 100% success rate at design and fabrication of Molten Salt Reactors on an historical basis (2 successes and no failures). US Private prototyping of new technology nuclear reactors of any technology without government help has never once been successful since the dawn of the atomic age.

While one can propose to do things in ways that never have produced success, it is perhaps more prudent to look at what has historically repeatedly worked and then consider going back to that successful approach.

I have a toe in the philanthropy business and I don't think that crowd sourcing is the right idea for generating funds to build a MSR. Essentially, power production is - and will likely remain - a for-profit business. I am all for altruism, there really isn't enough of it in this world. However as promising as thorium nuclear is, power generation remains a highly competitive business. The uranium and fossil fuel purveyors will fight like hell to protect their turf. We 'greenies' may have the Lord on our side, but if we depend on the kindness of strangers to create a thorium powered economy, it won't happen, pure and simple.

Use crowd sourcing to build a film that raises awareness. A real issue is the nearly complete lack of public recognition that thorium nuclear exists. That is reflected in Congress where there appears to be zero interest in funding the primary research to follow on where we were sixty years ago. However, just having a good film means nothing if nobody ever sees it. A group called the Species Alliance produced a superb film, 'Call of Life', about the eradication of plant and animal species as we humans destroy their environment. Without funding available to promote that excellent film, public awareness of the issue has not and will not happen. So be sure to include a substantial budget for advertising and promotion in your plans.

However if you want to see MSRs happen, there are a number of competitive factors that have to be considered. Who needs thorium power and how can it be brought to life in the cheapest, quickest manner? One of the best thoughts I have heard of is Kurt Sorensen's idea to hook up a small MSR with a steel plant in a remote locale. Steel production needs vast amounts of heat and electricity - which is what steel manufacturing operations require. If such a plant were built and operated off the grid and far from the discouraging clutches of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it might prove the point that thorium is safe, practical and cheap enough. The competitive advantage is that a small 'right sized' MSR might be built more economically than a fossil fuel powerplant and there would be virtually no cost to providing fuel - no coal trains or barges, oil pipelines or LNG tankers. Cheap power can help to make competitively priced steel.

Here's another thought. Sell Iran on building MSRs as part of their nuclear energy program. The world is all aflutter about weapons grade uranium enrichment there. If the Iranians don't bother with uranium and IF their energy generation program is truly for peaceful purposes, let them have the benefit of the work done at Oak Ridge five decades ago. They have the economic resources to launch a substantial research and building program right now. And Iran can tell the NRC to go screw. Promote THAT in your movie.

Good luck. For the sake of the planet I hope the documentary is hugely successful.

Alex & Robert,

I do agree national labs, or government incentivized R&D is what we want to have happen. Particularly given the large sums of money involved.

The big upside to Kickstarter is that it is (at most) a 2 month process to raise funds. And I'm under the impression that there's a chicken-and-egg problem which is bottlenecking MSR.

MSR ventures are not taken seriously by Gov, and so there's no development of a regulatory pathway. (This was made clear at ORNL... Sorensen was told he needs to show there's jobs at stake... and of course Flibe has a very small staff.)

There's no regulatory pathway, and so it is a riskier investment for VC (or wherever long-term capital comes from these days).

I'm not trying to get to a commercial reactor here... I do think that target (Dr. Evil "Billions!") can only be attained with either equity, or a better reward mechanism (better than a tour of the tech).

But I think we could get it far enough to get past the current bottleneck. And certainly having some physical structure created helps sell this to the public. "This is real" is an argument that only can be made visually with MSRE photos.

This isn't a choice between trying to influence Gov to backing this... this is a parallel track effort. Both in running the Kickstarter, and then using the funds to X-Prize MSR Ventures into creating something tangible.

No reason the gov can't (at any point in time) step in and try build MSR at national lab, or help fund R&D.

If this was successful on Kickstarter, it would be the largest sum yet raised on that service. I can tell you "Pebble" and "Veronica Mars" got INSANE amounts of press coverage by simply being the latest KS projects that moved the "biggest project yet" metric forward.

Kickstarter does NOT have the same incentives as VC... there's no equity. So "risk" is completely different. It is very risky to think KS $ could get us a commercial reactor. It is less risky to think KS $ could get us something built that could be shown off to backers as a special event. And also serve as a prop in documentary efforts.

Bill, it is interesting that you've got an idea how philanthropy and yet see it as a poor fit for MSR funding. Certainly I do not consider myself knowledgeable about philanthropy businesses.

> if we depend on the kindness of strangers to create a thorium powered economy, it won't happen, pure and simple

I'm not suggesting MSR ventures re-arrange their business model to appeal to possible charity. Rather I'm suggesting a KS campaign be run entirely independent of them, and they focus on whatever means of raising capital, and niche development they're already pursuing.

The only moment this impacts them is if/when a campaign has successfully raised a large sum of money.

Such funds ought to be very appealing... it would not be an investment... we'd not be diluting the equity of other investors (past or future).

It would also not be an ongoing source of funding for them, or something where there's another round in the future. If this works, it can really work only 1x, because the costs of R&D keep climbing as ventures move towards commercial reactors. It is strictly to "kickstart".

When you suggest selling Iran on MSR... well apparently their USA agreement limits enrichment to 5%, I think that excludes any MSR. But also... that's not something I can do. I can't get DoE on board. I can't convince VCs this is a good idea. Indirectly I do try with the "Th" doc, and this idea isn't going to derail that. I'm thinking about this because it is the only way I know of to impact MSR R&D... it is a more direct mechanism than a documentary.

So far I see 3 posts in the negative. Good to know.

From Robert Hargraves via email:

My idea for a "tour of the facilities" is a Lego model of an MSR. From a selling perspective, having a 3D model is very persuasive. Furukawa used to carry around a model of the Fuji reactor, for example. Architects use models to sell building plans.

Why Legos? Legos are friendly. We want to overcome the fear factor. They are kid-friendly. They are even friendly to boomers who use to be kids with Legos. The colors can be appealing. The resulting model can be modified. It's not heavy. It can be sized to be carried as airplant luggage. It's not too expensive.

Legos come in lots of part forms. The MindStorm robotics product line has lots of engineering-related parts.

http://www.legoengineering.com/

https://www.google.com/search?q=lego+sphere&oq=lego+sphere&aqs=chrome.0....

https://www.google.com/search?q=lego+sphere&oq=lego+sphere&aqs=chrome.0....

Worst case, you have to 3D print some special Lego bricks http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/04/05/how-a-geek-dad-and-...

You could use the Lego ThorCon for marketing to investors, to TV stations, to colleges and universities, to the press, to government agencies, etc.

Our '61 Austin-Healey Sprite now has a 3d-printed supercharger by an engineering shop that does this sort of thing for the military, etc. I'll talk to them about what printing MSR/LFTR parts would entail.

What are the chances that both of us have 1961 Austin Healey Spites!??!

Looks like 100%! I ordered what you have, but they switched to the square body in the meantime, so what I got on 6 Aug 1961 has a lockable trunk!

By the way, Victoria British in Kansas (yes, KS) is great for parts.

What they print is a resin (these pics). So they scanned the relevant engine surfaces and the engine bay with a laser system, played with that in their computer-design tool and then ran the 3D printer to make parts to be used for mould making. The final result I'm holding is aluminum alloy.

But, the innards of the blower are unchanged from a model they've been selling for old VWs, so only the outer casing had to be altered to provide a new carburetor position.

Gordon, I think we agree that KS can be used to get widespread recognition of what the technology is and what we need to do, if we don't want to accede to foreign leadership in advanced power and the jobs & educational levels related to it.

A funding mechanism like Kickstarter may not be able to raise the funding to build a LFTR prototype, but it might be possible to raise the funding to build a full scale smr-LFTR chemical support plant for both single-fluid single-region and 2-fluid 2-region LFTRs. The exact details of the LFTR chemical support plant are currently uncertain and are perhaps the part of the LFTR design that would take the most time to ultimately finalize. The ORNL MSRE did not include a chemical support plant and the details of the chemical plant were left for a following reactor project (which they unfortunately did not get funding to build).

As Thorium advocates, we have a tendency to emphasize the engineering of the LFTR core and blankets and just kind of shine-on the chemical support plant as a detail to be resolved later. The truth is that the many advantages that Thorium advocates claim for LFTR/MSRs cannot be realized without the chemical support plant, and the ultimate satisfaction of both regulators and the public with molten salt reactor designs will depend in large measure on the chemical support plant being economical and efficient in making separations while producing very tiny waste streams from its separations.

Using Kickstarter, we might get completed important work on safe and efficient chemical support plants that maximize chemical and radiological safety. Getting a head start on building and prototyping chemical support plants could allow us to refine the chemical support plants to include useful additions that go beyond separating fission products and U-233 and go further to include things like removal of Sm-151 (a significant neutron poison that reduces the performance of a LFTR/MSR) and removing U-236 (which would allow the Thorium advocates to state that LFTRs produce NO plutonium-239 or Minor Actinides with long half-lives whatsoever)

I don't know if a Kickstarter campaign to make a reactor scale chemical support plant is sexy enough to garner broad public support, but considering significant projects within the range of what can be raised on Kickstarter, I think a full scale prototype chemical support plant, possibly including laser separation technology which involves no chemical solvents, filter paper, ion exchange columns, or other materials that add to the reactor waste stream, would be very valuable.

Gordon,

Good to know I am dealing with one of the great minds in thorium. My only point is that there has to be a solid business case for thorium in order to attract any investor capital. Perhaps that might be the best subject of any popular effort to advocate thorium power production. I have shared the 5 minute LFTR with a lot of folks. It explains a whole lot, but it focuses on the function and benefits of the technology, not practical applications.

I question the practicality of using a kickstarter model to build a MSR, but if enough people kick in, if enough altruistic financing is provided, I would love to be wrong. That begs the question, what would a practical MSR cost? And how could any sort of MSR ever be built without ten years of NRC permitting and approvals? That's why I suggest building a thorium MSR somewhere that NRC can't bog it down. That's also why I suggest building one off the grid at a dedicated end user facility - outside the USA. I routinely deal with the FAA and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Both agencies are obstructionist nightmares when they have to deal with anything new or strange (or beneficial for that matter). The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is cast in the same mold.

I have no idea why Iran could NOT initiate thorium MSR research, design and construction. That certainly would address fears in the world about their uranium enrichment capability and the intended end use of the research product.

Good idea, Robert, but I don't see how "MSRE did not include a chemical support plant " can be supported, given the massive amount of reports in the ORNL archives on chemistry and salt management -- Grimes' papers in particular.

Yes, it was not a fully-robotic, integrated reactor + chemistry system, but it was indeed a chemically-managed system, as it had to be.

Getting the chemistry and materials nailed down is indeed essential and where the most $ and effort seems to be needed. This also means doing the work in a valid, radiological environment. In other words, the work needs a reactor, just as MSRE had. The MSRE facility still exists and perhaps could be used effectively, if the ability to proceed with fissiles & fission products were supported.

Seems to me, this means Congress, DoE and NRC all putting $ in the right places. That, in turn, needs legislators to support the idea. That, in turn, demands grass-roots pressure on legislators.

I've always wondered about lottery tickets. Lottery kiosks have this ability to network securely with a central server, print out all the tickets with bar codes and check those codes at a later time and pay-out.

I wonder if you could somehow design a game, kind of a cross between Sports Select and the Dragon's Den where people could go to their local convenience store and drop a few buck backing a really risky venture of some kind when picking up their smokes. There would have to be a reward mechanism to get people hooked. A popularity contest element might also be fun.

The point is that you would sell it like a lottery ticket. But it would be a share in a start-up. Maybe there would be a point where the start-up would be deemed a fail. At that point the shares would get lumped into the remaining start-ups and those tickets made null. And the lucky folks who back the right horse would get dividends or sell their shares on the TSX when the company made it to the IPO.

We would need to get some lottery game designers in a room with some serial entrepreneurs and financing people to come up with the rules.

The Thorium Lottery! Breed an Atom. Split an Atom. Collect 60meV of electricity sales!

Sounds like it could even be a slot machine in Reno/Vegas or any casino.

So, how many Th atoms would be sold for $`?

;]

Robert, the point being missed is that no investor, whether by private or public equity, will risk $ on a venture that has no prospect of going forward until the legalities are settled -- by Congress, DoE and NRC.

The law makes clear that nuclear materials work is exceptional and strictly constrained by law.

Getting $ from KS, Buffett, or anywhere else isn't the driving problem. The drive and $ must come via Congressional bills that authorize the work NRC needs to staff up to do, and the contracting DoE needs to fund.

One can fund all the salt loops one wants, but until the law allows direct introduction of radioactive materials, the effort is nearly useless.

And the law will only change because enough people want it to, and because our representatives both hear that loudly enough and begin to feel the potential for embarrassing economic losses on the world stage.

I think that more traditional ways of raising equity to fund large projects like building LFTR reactors could more easily be done using stocks. Traditional stocks and bonds are a proven way for private business to fund the R&D for new products. I think stocks also provide for a fairer distribution of rewards to investors than most of the Kickstarter projects I have seen offered to the public.

I know that Kirk Sorensen is not in favor of offering stock to raise funds for building a prototype LFTR small modular reactor as offering stock can entail loss of control of the company and runs the risk of a hostile takeover under some circumstances. I believe that there are some forms of stock that would be safer for Flibe Energy to use to raise research funds that would minimize the risks of hostile takeover to a small technology development company.

The securities markets offer the option of offering non-voting stock which is stock that provides the shareholder very little or no vote on corporate matters, such as election of the board of directors or mergers. This type of share is usually implemented for investors who want to invest in the company’s profitability and success at the expense of voting rights in the direction of the company. Preferred stock typically has nonvoting qualities.

Non-voting stock is a mechanism that has strengths in thwarting hostile takeover attempts. If the founders of a company maintain all of the voting stock and sell only non-voting stock to the public, takeover attempts are very unlikely.

At least one reactor technology company has had some success raising funds for funding research through offering non-voting stock. Fusion energy innovator, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics has offered for purchase to investors 18,000 shares of Class B nonvoting stock of the Corporation for $50 per share to raise $900,000 to finance ongoing fusion reactor prototyping efforts. Unlike a Kickstarter project where investors get some small reward like a chance to visit and tour the reactor facility when it is completed, non-voting stock allows investors to profit from the success of a great technology idea as it transitions from a technical concept to a commercial reality. Non-voting Class B stock is a better deal for investors than Kickstarter rewards and should bring in more money to be used for prototyping the first LFTR.

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics non-voting stock offering announcement - http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?option=com_lyftenblo...

Alex - Good point.

There are some significant areas, like the at reactor scale design of the LFTR chemical support plant that will, if not advanced, probably hold-up the ultimate introduction of LFTR reactors. Work on the chemical support plant could go forward without NRC approval or interference if radioactively stable versions of the fission product isotope inventory was substituted for radioactive fission products -

to a chemical separation process, there is hardly any difference between a radioactive or non-radioactive version of an element. This is one reason why I suggest the chemical support plant as a focus for a Kickstarter campaign.

Your point that a coordinated effort involving Congress, DoE and NRC is ultimately needed to prototype LFTR reactors in the US is accurate and should not be glossed over.

Robert, the difference between stable & unstable elements is at least somewhat important in terms of effects on equipment, mixing of FP decay isotopes, added heating due to decay, etc. The concentrations of the FPs and their daughters vary continually in a real reactor, so while it may be useful to master stable FP analogue processing, the most meaningful work will demand a fully realistic radio-chemical environment.

"One can fund all the salt loops one wants, but until the law allows direct introduction of radioactive materials, the effort is nearly useless."

Unless you know for a fact this won't happen in USA, it isn't exactly wasted effort. It is sub-optimal. But no one is expecting optimal here.

You can prioritize, and if someone's capable of tackling 1-of-multiple tasks that's great.

Many of us can only help in limited capacity. So identify any & all paths forward is useful so people can try pick off stuff that's doable for them.

From my perspective, anyone creating any physical process or hardware is great because it is something we can put on screen.

A follow up. Stephen Boyd's thought that Kickstarter prohibits nuclear projects isn't correct. It can't be a weapon (nuclear is never mentioned in rules). So we'd have to be funding certain MSR related stuff for that to be a concern... basically the issue would be 99% resolved between Kickstater and the project in a private conversation... I've done it 3 times, you give them your side and they can be flexible. I know a commercial reactor (billion?) won't be KS funded, but if it were I don't think that would be stopped by Kickstarter curators.

I'm not going to pursue this. Thanks for the conversation. But there's no enthusiasm for it from the MSR ventures, and it is seen by many as risky to public perception of MSR if it fails (not just my own rep).

My own abilities are strictly with Kickstarter framework. So me feeling stumped about it was almost 100% pertaining to this section of the Kickstarter FAQ...

http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creator+questions#faq_41831

http://www.kickstarter.com/help/prohibited

Alex - To a nuclear regulator, one of the most controversial elements of a LFTR or MSR is the chemical support plant. The chem support plant will get extreme scrutiny when it finally comes time to design certify LFTR as it contains a significant amount of the radiation produced by the reactor in separated fission products and it also contains highly reactive chemicals like fluorine gas that could explosively drive fission products out into the environment.

In many significant respects, the chem support plant is "where the action is" in making the molten salt fueled reactor a real commercial reality. The LFTR core including freeze plug - drain tanks mechanism makes for an exceptionally safe and economical reactor. It is really in the area of the chem support plant that serous safety questions potentially of concern to nuclear regulators arises,

It would be very helpful in the effort to get LFTR/MSR design certified by NRC to have an elegant, refined, and proven chem support plant that securely and safely handles the fission products produced by the reactor. Starting early on implementing the chemical support plant at reactor scale with a Kickstarter campaign and iterating the design a few times to refine it while insuring all safety areas are well addressed would be greatly beneficial. ORNL figured that the cost of a advanced and complex chem support plant for a single fluid MSBR (most complex chemistry of all LFTR types) would be about 5% of the cost of the reactor. A Kickstarter campaign to prototype the chem support plant using non-radioactive versions of fission products (that does not require NRC approval) over a range of concentrations as occur in an operating MSR might be a feasible and if completed would produce a result that would accelerate the time frame of LFTR commercialization.

Robert, I think we both agree that the chem processing is important, and that some of it could be prototyped.

However...

a) the fission products aren't removed continually, or even in batch mode. They can remain in the salt, unless problematic, like Xenon, or maybe Tellurium. So the chemistry needed minute by minute isn't dealing with even a majority of FP atoms -- FP heat in the salt goes directly to output power.

b) The FP production rate is in total slightly less than the fissile-consumption rate --

Gordon, in reading the rules, it looks like KS now requires the use of an Amazon Payments account registered to a 501(c)3 organization, if the project is US created.

I think a project to fund an educational model of MSR/LFTR that includes clear descriptions of all design aspects for a prototype, including the reactor, fuel-salt, chem processing, power block and operating scenarios would be a great collaborative project to fund. It would obviously not be more than an educational tool, but it would allow many of us to contribute and it could serve well for public, legislative & university education & promotion.

Sort of an: "if you build it, they will come" (and maybe finish a real one instead of pussy-footing around).

;]

I'm still getting comments (in my inbox) so am happy to hear conversation on different kinds of models. I don't know anything about 3D printing (only put together LEGO) so if any consensus evolves I can help other folk launch a KS campaign, as far as video assets (and experience with KS) goes. The goal would be good and something I'd like to see succeed but wouldn't impact video assets... probably can't leverage a model in the doc except briefly to explain a couple things.

Any chance it could all be done with lego and candle wax? Or some substance that melts at very low temperature? (So the lego doesn't melt.) I can imagine a drain plug being demo-ed using a very simple model. Don't think there's any official lego heating module.

(Of course 3D printing is fine, I just gravitate towards easier & cheaper.)

The fluorination (and vacuum distillation) step to separate uranium-233 and fission products does involve release of fluorine gas into a processing chamber in the chem support plant. Fluorine is highly reactive (more than explosive per se).

Fission product inventory should reach an equilibrium value within the reactor after a number of weeks of operation. The idea of developing the chem support plant chemistry at reactor scale is to secure and refine the process to minimize nuclear waste streams and insure no radiation escapes into the environment from the chem support plant. While the elements of the LFTR core are fairly well understood, many of the steps in the chem support plant have only been tried at lab scale (not reactor scale). The chem support plant is the part of LFTR-MSR technology that is least well detail engineered and understood and the area where a headstart from a kickstarter project would do the most good.

Right, Stephen, that's what I said -- not all need to come out every second, day, week or year.

" why wouldn't we want to strategically pull the FPs out? " -- we indeed pull out certain ones "strategically" and we leave others in "strategically", because their decay heat is more valuable in the salt loop than out of it. FP decay heat is about 7% of total reactor heat production -- 7% isn't bank interest to be thrown away without accurate thought.

It seems there's an effort here to be 'right' a-priori about something. The work yet to be done will indeed determine what's "right" to do in all cases.

Yes, Robert, no one said Fluorine wasn't used or evolved in whatever processing is to be done. I'm, glad you corrected "explosive". Hydrogen is also used in defluorination, which of course is explosive in air. We know all this.

Even ORNL's MSRE storage tanks have Fluorine in them, because FP decays lead to some valence changes.

No one has suggested a chem-block shouldn't be independently researched. What can be researched without NRC approval, is, of course, not the full chem-block. And, the chem-block's full design will indeed require the presence of normal, radioactive FPs, in all their glory.

"Steady state" includes more radioactive FPs than stable ones.

Again, there seems to be an odd need here to appear "right" about things that have already been discussed & publicly presented often.