John Kutsch and James Kennedy skip past the why-REE-are-important and get into China's REE monopoly, China's T-MSR development, and Thorium Energy Alliance's hope of privately funding reactor development.
This was the second presentation of the day (after the lunch break), it followed the why-REE-are-important presentation before lunch by U.S. Army Brigadier General John Adams (Retired), the senior geoscientist Dr. Ned Mamula (USGS, DoE, CIA), and Mark Noga who's spent 25 years sourcing Rare Earths for automotive, medical, aerospace and defense systems.
Pre-Lunch S. 2093 Presentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mO6hZFGnA8
...which is very meaty and dense 73 minutes long, cut down from 107 minutes.
TEAC10
I'll be heading to TEAC10 which precedes ORNL MSRW 2019.
If you can attend them I'd suggest booking now.
Am I looking forward to attending? Actually, aside from the fine people, no. I'm still editing footage from ORNL MSRW 2018. This is nuts.
I did (finally) finish all lectures from ThEC2018. There's a bit of untouched miscellaneous and interview footage to leverage, but mostly is stuff that will be most useful when combined with ORNL MSRW 2018.
Watching it is very interesting because it happened a frigging year ago, so it isn't like it is fresh in my mind.
Andrew Yang (Democratic Candidate) calls for funding Thorium Reactors
(Reminder, I'm Canadian. Calgary, Alberta. Yet I still care who's elected as your president!)
Finding a pro-nuclear Republican candidate isn't hard. Is really just a question of how much do they care, and can they articulate the value of nuclear?
In 2016 George Pataki (a Republican primary candidate) mentioned support for Thorium Reactors a few times...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTa7WktcEAQ
...and of course lost the primary to Donald Trump. But Pataki was (as far as I know) not viewed as having run a serious candidacy. And nor was he particularly articulate about Thorium in a way I'd have liked.
Yang Q&A Thorium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx26KlxMHVQ
And today's CNN Climate Crisis Town Hall http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1909/04/se.02.html
YANG: To me, nuclear energy needs to be on the table in a transition to a more renewable economy, because our society consumes a great deal of energy.
And nuclear, right now, it gets a bad rap, in part because the technologies we're using are antiquated. And so, if you look up, we are working on these new generation nuclear reactors that use thorium, instead of uranium. And thorium is not natively fissile or radioactive, so the odds of a catastrophe dropped precipitously.
It's much, much safer to dispose of. It produces much more energy. So we need to upgrade the thorium-fueled reactors. And, to me, though, trying to get rid of all the nuclear power plants that produce 20 percent of the nation's energy is not going to help us accomplish our goals.
...I caught a couple Tweets from pro-nuke folks frustrated that the elephant-in-the-room, nuclear power, wasn't discussed in a build-out-the-PWRs fashion. I get it, do AP1000 now, in parallel with MSR licensing.
And, his answer doesn't quite nail what makes a T-MSR safe. Maybe he's dumbing it down for general audience? Maybe he doesn't know. [Shrug.]
My take is this: President Trump hasn't messed up nuclear power. He appointed qualified people. Advanced Reactors have a path being set. A Bernie Sanders type person (as president) would obviously put that at risk... and the PWR build-out... and existing, operating, carbon-free PWRs.
While President Trump hasn't yet articulated a strong argument for nuclear... he said nice things but not in a way that explained anything to anyone... IF Yang is the Dem nominee, then nuclear is basically safe in 2020. Not because he's cautiously supportive, but because he understands the potential.
And that is the exact opposite of Hillary Clinton in 2016. On paper, she was pro-nuke. (Perhaps weakly, but not opposed to it.) But she had her running-mate Tim Kaine's website scrubbed of his more enthusiastic pro-nuke comments as soon as he was announced as potential VP.
Really, the best I can hope for is a Dem who is excited and enthusiastic about nuclear. If some folks wish a Dem would simply build-out PWR, well getting PEOPLE excited about nuclear is a way to make that happen. Most people STILL don't know nuclear is low-carbon. STILL! [Kicks a chair.]
Cory Booker on Nuclear Power
Also Cory Booker put in a strong word for nuclear and advanced nuclear.