THE
AGE OF ELECTRICITY
The late 1800s. A
time in America of unlimited freedom. A time of the rugged
individualist. Tom Edison, deep in his Menlo Park laboratory, creating
the Electric Age. Nicola Tesla, the immigrant competitor, with his
electric motor and alternating current. It was the Golden Age of
America. A time of invention, entrepreneurialism, and genius set free.
At least, that’s the popular myth.
But
did you ever wonder what happened to
those early American electric companies? Where is Edison’s company
today? Where is Westinghouse’s company? In fact, where is any private
enterprise electric company?
In 1878, Thomas Edison (and
English electrician, Joseph Swan) invented the electrical-resistance-heated,
carbon filament, incandescent light bulb. Self-contained, clean and
long-burning, the light bulb was the first popular application for electricity.
Edison’s
goal was to replace gas lighting on city streets. With the help of his
young Scottish assistant, Samuel Insull, Edison demonstrated the convenience of
his electric light bulbs to the New York City bureaucrats, who granted him
exclusive rights to operate a lighting system on Wall Street.
Edison then built the world’s first electricity generating and
distributing system. His Pearle Street plant went into operation in
1881. The station used one direct current generator and provided 100
Kilowatts, just enough to power 1,200 bulbs. The Electric Age had dawned,
but because Edison’s plant was powered by burning coal, it was monumentally
inefficient.
By 1883, only two years
later, electric street lighting was becoming commonplace in American
cities. There were more than three hundred such electrical generators in
operation around the country — all simple DC dynamos, like Edison’s, mostly
locally owned, operated by steam engines or water wheels, providing electricity
to a few city blocks or to a single factory. Voltage regulation was poor
and bulbs often dimmed or burned out. But the electric age had obviously
dawned.
These generators became so
commonplace that street lighting was soon considered a “public service.”
Most companies, started as private ventures, were rapidly taken over by the
cities — and there were logical reasons for it. There were legal
obstacles to stringing wires along public spaces and across property
lines. With city bureaucrats easing the way, the wires were installed.
Practical DC electric motors were invented and found widespread use in
factories, mills, mines and industrial plants of all sorts. Electric
motors, supplied by city-run electricity systems, replaced locally owned and
operated water wheels, boilers and steam engines for mechanical or shaft power
purposes. The electric power industry was changing the face of the
nation.
Edison’s new goal was to
build his first large scale power plant in New York City. He needed
money, so he went to J. P. Morgan, and together they founded Edison General
Electric Company. They set out to build large, centralized power plants
and sell the electricity, not just to businesses, but to the public.
There were huge start-up costs — building the largest generators in the world,
stringing expensive wire. When Morgan realized his financial return would
be too slow to satisfy his investors, he convinced Edison to focus on selling
equipment, and leave it to the governments to put up capital.
By 1900, Edison-GE controlled
1,245 power stations around the country. But profits were
disappointing. Edison’s dream of selling electricity to the public
large-scale for a profit just wasn’t happening. Demand schedules kept
electricity expensive for most people — street lighting drew power only at night
— the same hours people wanted lighting for their homes, but GE had to operate
all day long. It needed to sell electricity 24 hours a day.
It
was streetcars that came to the rescue. They had been invented by Siemens
in 1890. By the turn of the century, with GE producing electricity to run
them, there were streetcars in 850 American cities. Entrepreneurial
progress, right? Unfortunately, this only made the cry that
electricity was a “necessary public service,” even louder. Consequently,
most of the plants that powered street lights street cars became city-owned and
buyers of electricity became tax-subsidized
customers of Edison General Electric.
Meanwhile, the invention of
the induction motor led to the invention of power washing machines (1907), vacuum
cleaners (1908) and household refrigerators (1912). A full-scale tech
revolution was in play. GE’s demand schedules became balanced. But
America left the electricity free market behind.
Edison-GE’s
near-total domination of the electricity market would not last long,
however. In 1884, Edison hired a brilliant young Croatian electrical
engineer named Nicola Tesla — who had conceived of a better way to
generate and distribute electricity: alternating-current. It could
generate high and low voltages with ease. It allowed the current to be
distributed on small wires,
enabling generators to expand their service area.
Tesla
not only knew how to power Edison’s light bulbs at a distance using thinner,
cheaper wire, he had also perfected
a simple, rugged, low-cost, efficient A-C (induction) motor that could drive
all manner of machinery with little maintenance.
But … Edison didn’t want to
hear about it.
Edison
had thousands of government contracts in the bag. He thought inefficient
government subsidized electricity was all he — or the nation — needed.
Why change? He already dominated
the market. Like bureaucrats do, he thought he could prevent the future
from happening. Tesla had to take his business elsewhere.
While Edison was building and
collecting DC power stations, Tesla went to George Westinghouse, instead.
And at first, progress was slow. In 1886, the first commercial
alternating current power system was built. By 1891, Tesla had built the
AC induction motor, the Tesla Coil, and the transformer — the fundamental
things necessary for the long-distance transmission of electricity.
Westinghouse’s
Niagara Power Plant was built in 1896, a milestone in the history of U.S.
electricity. The Power Plant had 37 megawatt power output, making it
several hundreds times more powerful than Edison’s Pearle Station. It
sent electricity over 25 miles of transmission line at high-voltage (11,000
volts) to Buffalo city — and it was also the
world’s first large-scale hydro-electric power plant.
But Westinghouse, too, had to
partner with city bureaucrats to get the system built.
Today, we tend to believe the early electric companies were created by
daring speculators, mavericks, rugged individualists. But that was only
partly true. The truth is, electric companies never were 100 percent
private, profit-seeking ventures — they were controlled by politicians from
the start.
One
thing is true,
however. The “Roaring Twenties” did indeed roar. It’s easy to
imagine why people believed in a future of endless prosperity. It was the
Age of Electricity. The Age of Aviation. The Age of Radio.
The Age of Progress. But the party ended with the banking collapse of
1929.
The
great depression led to the election of FDR, who promised the government would
solve the nations’ economic problems. In the 1932 Presidential election,
Roosevelt, a democrat, defeated republican incumbent Herbert Hoover in a
landslide. During his time as President, with a sympathetic 73rd United
States Congress, FDR issued unprecedented executive orders and created “The New
Deal” — a potpourri of government control programs. One of these was the
Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA). It took government
control of energy production even further than cities had. Electric power
production and transmission was taken completely out
of the hand of the “profit-seeking capitalists” and put under bureaucratic
control.
People today assume government is an
intrinsic part of electricity production and distribution. After all, who
else could do something so big?
The government is needed for stability, people believe.
But here’s something people don’t see.
As a result of government control, innovation in energy production has slowed
to a crawl.
As the American population grows,
energy demand grows. But infrastructure has fallen behind. Because
of climate change fears, the emphasis for new building is on “green” energy —
but solar panels, wind turbines, and so on, can’t possibly keep up with
demand. But there is one
green technology that can. And it’s fully able to be implemented, right
now.
Thorium Nuclear Reactors.
WHAT
IS A THORIUM REACTOR?
Not long after World War II,
nuclear fission reactors were designed and built to produce heat that could be
used for electricity generation. Uranium-based reactors were built, not
just to produce electricity, but also weapons-grade plutonium. This work
was initiated by The Atomic Energy commission (AEC), which had been formed
in1946 to replace the wartime Manhattan Project. Its stated mission was
to develop peaceful uses of the atom. But in many ways, they did just the
opposite.
It had been suggested that
other, more plentiful elements than uranium might be found to produce nuclear
energy. Thorium was the only other naturally-occurring fissionable
element known. Thus, since 1950, thorium fuel cycle reactors were built
and successfully used to produce thermal energy. Between 1965 and 1968,
such reactors operated for over 15,000 hours. This prompted AEC Chairman,
Glenn Seaborg, to announce that the thorium-fueled reactor was
successful. However, facing the Cold War arms race, the government
decided to concentrate on the uranium system for its nuclear bomb-making
capabilities, and in 1973 it officially discontinued all work on thorium.
But thorium technology did
not die. Physicist Alvin Weinberg, who was the Director of Research at
the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, (where the thorium cycle and reactor was
invented) continued work on thorium. He did so without government
support, and he continued his research until his death (on the job) in
2006. Weinberg was particularly keen on the Liquid Fluoride Thorium
Reactor (LFTR).
Weinberg’s
accomplishments with thorium reactors was extensive, but they were concealed
from the public. So much so, that in 2012, the trade publication, Chemical Engineering and News reported,
”most people —including scientists — have hardly heard of the heavy-metal
element, thorium, and know little about it…”. A comment by a conference
attendee noted that, “it’s possible to have a Ph.D. in nuclear reactor
technology and not know about thorium energy.”
When famous nuclear physicist
Victor J. Stenger first learned of it in 2012, he claimed, that thorium was a
better alternative than uranium. Others agreed, including former NASA
scientist, thorium expert and LFTR entrepreneur, Kirk Sorensen. He said
in a documentary interview (viewable on You Tube) that if the U.S. had not
discontinued its thorium research in 1974, it could have achieved energy
independence with a low carbon footprint by the year 2000.
Only because of government
control of energy research and production, did it not happen.
ABOUT
THORIUM
Thorium is a
naturally-occurring chemical element discovered in 1828 by the Swedish chemist
Jons Jakob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder.
He gave it the symbol “Th” with the atomic number 90. Thorium is found in
small amounts in most rocks, soils and sands and it is three times more
abundant than uranium. Workable ores are found in most of the countries
around the Earth.
Natural
thorium is a weakly-radioactive, silvery metal that tarnishes black when it is
exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide. The metal is moderately hard,
malleable and has a high melting point. Thorium metal has long been
available from commercial industrial suppliers, having uses in welding and gas
lighting. In contrast, virgin uranium metal has never been
available commercially (in the U.S., all of it is owned by the federal
government).
Thorium
is similar to Uranium. They are the only two elements found in nature
that can absorb neutrons and transmute into fissile elements. Thus, they are
both fertile elements that can be used to fuel nuclear
reactors. But unlike uranium, thorium-reactors cannot be started
without the addition an autonomous neutron source mixed with the fuel.
This fissile material must be either natural U235, extracted from or enriched
from natural uranium, or Pu239, bred in uranium-fueled reactors and extracted
from their wastes.
Once
started, thorium reactors themselves breed the uranium fissile isotope U233
which sustains the thorium nuclear energy cycle without further use of fissile
materials from uranium. Furthermore, Th232 and U233, which comprise the
fuel in the mature thorium reactor, are not known to have any use in the making
of bombs. Therefore, the thorium fuel cycle is not helpful to
a nuclear weapons program.
Natural thorium does not
contain any fissile material. Its neutron reactions do not produce
synthetic fissile material like Pu239, the preferred material for making
bombs. Thus, the thorium fuel cycle is just not conducive to nuclear
weapons proliferation. Most people would consider that to be an
advantage. But not governments.
There’s another advantage of
thorium over uranium for commercial energy production. It is much more
efficient then uranium as a reactor fuel. Its high degree of burn-up is a
huge factor in reducing the cost of fuel. Thus, thorium reactors generate
far less volume of radioactive waste, and the smaller amount of waste has far
less high-level radioactivity, with a far shorter half-life. This means
much cheaper hazardous waste disposal.
A
proven and highly promising thorium reactor technology is the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR;
pronounced lifter)
in which the fuel and coolant are one and the same, circulated either by
gravity, or by pump. This high-thermal-conductivity / high
thermal-expansivity liquid is a fluoride salt that melts at moderately
high temperatures and circulates at low pressures without the need for
expensive pressure vessels. The molten salt fuel is not corrosive to any
of the materials of construction, which are common ferrous types. That
means cheaper plant construction.
ABOUT
LFTRs
LFTRs differ from other
nuclear power reactors in almost every aspect. First, they use more common
natural thorium instead of exotic enriched uranium. Some of the thorium
is turned into uranium (U233) by thermal breeding, which replaces the starting
charge of U235 or Pu239 as those materials burn up. Refueling and waste
management is accomplished continuously without shutdown by pumping from/to
external vessels as required. The liquid salt fuel/coolant attains higher
operating temperatures with low system pressures, which reduces the cost of
construction and increases safety while attaining much higher thermal
efficiencies for power generation.
The LFTR uses inherently
small, more compact equipment for significant thermal output. LFTR
technology, therefore, has unusual flexibility in design — the scaling of plant
sizes up and down can be managed with ease. This characteristic also
facilitates the manufacturing of plant components in a factory for field
assembly, and achieves even further cost reductions. It also provides
flexibility in location and scheduling of operations. It creates the
possibility of miniature, modular plants for on-site generation of heat and
power combined, and ease of scaling up plant sizes. All this is now attracting
new entrepreneurial and venture capital interest in nuclear power.
LFTR technology is attracting
private company interest in Japan, China, India, the UK, Czech, Canada,
and Australia, and also in the U.S. Even though navigating U.S.
government bureaucracy is a nightmare, various pilot projects are in progress.
Since thorium has so many
advantages over uranium for commercial nuclear reactors, many have
questioned why the thorium fuel cycle is not being used? Thorium is a
fertile material that is relatively common and cheap to prepare as a reactor
fuel, and is safe and simple to use. Reactors can be built with a
negligible risk of thermal runaway and meltdown. Furthermore, thorium cycle
wastes are minimal, radioactively benign, and devoid of any material that can
be used for making bombs.
The
advantages of adding electricity to our national electric grid using thorium
reactors start from the moment thorium is mined and purified. All but a
trace of naturally occurring thorium is Th232, the isotope useful in nuclear
reactors. And all of
it is used up in the reactor. By comparison, only 3% to 5% of the uranium
needed (in enriched form) is used in a uranium reactor before refueling is
required.
Not only is thorium 20 to
30-times more efficient in fuel utilization for power production than uranium,
it is three times more abundant in nature. And its conversion from ore to
fuel is much easier than uranium. That adds up to significant
economies-of-scale, when commercialized. All but a trace of the world’s
thorium exists in already-useful form, which means it does not require
enrichment. Uranium enrichment, on the other hand, is perhaps the most
expensive chemical/mechanical refinement operation ever known to humankind.
Thorium-based reactors are
much safer than uranium reactors for still more reasons. Thorium fuel is
liquid and can be easily drained/pumped from the reaction zone, rapidly
stopping the fission reaction, when necessary. The liquid form of thorium
is also easy to handle and transport from place to place. By contrast,
uranium fuel is solid and fixed in the reactor, which requires sophisticated,
expensive and time-consuming handling arrangements. Its fission reaction
can be stopped only by removing the neutrons, which requires extremely
complicated control rod absorption, shielding, selection, location, sensing and
movement. Also, the thorium fission and heat transfer operation takes
place in a low pressure environment eliminating highly stressed pressure
vessels and piping which is prone to fatigue failure and leaks. Compared
to uranium reactors, thorium reactors produce far less waste, and the waste is
much less radioactive with a much shorter half-life.
Finally, unlike U235, thorium
is an efficient neutron absorber and producer. But it is not a fissile
isotope. That means no matter how many thorium nuclei are packed
together, they cannot go critical. They can’t thermally run away on their
own, starting a melt-down, chain-reaction, and explosion. Thorium nuclei
split apart and emit several neutrons easily. To stop the fission
process, simply turn off or divert the source of the neutrons and the cycle
shuts down. The liquid form of the combined fuel and coolant in the LFTR
simplifies the cycle process greatly from beginning to end.
THE ONLY LIMITATION OF THORIUM
The growth of civilization will require more and more energy.
That’s an irrefutable fact. Will entrepreneurs convince U.S. politicians
— who seized power over energy production during the FDR years — to allow this
technology? Or will our politicians watch other nation-states develop it,
first?
How long will our politicians watch, afraid to act? How long will
they hope the future won’t happen?
Thorium-cycle reactors may seem like an panacea. But,
unfortunately, there’s one thing they cannot do: stop government bureaucracy.
End
Notes:
1.
Article: The History of Electricity in the United States by
Ruslan Iskhakov, Stanford University: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2013/ph240/iskhakov2/
2. Alvin Lowi,
“Patient Capital: The Real Source of Human Welfare,” May 9, 1996. Essay
available from the
author
at alowi@earthlink.net.
3. Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to
Electrify the World,
Random House, 2003.
4. Marin
Katusa, chief investment strategist for Casey Research’s energy division, is an
accomplished investment analyst, the senior editor of Casey’s Energy
Opportunities, Casey’s Energy Confidential, and Casey’s Energy Report. In
addition, he is a member of the Vancouver Angel Forum where he and his
colleagues evaluate early seed investment opportunities. https://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/why-not-thorium/
Alvin Lowi, Jr., Phd, is a Los Angeles-based rocket scientist and
thermodynamicist. He has been an advocate of free market principles since the
early 1960s.
Chas Holloway is the author of two books on Free World Theory: The End, The Fall of the Political Class and Breakout: Technology Vs. the Nation State. He is also a national radio host broadcasting from WCPE, the Classical Station, in North Carolina.
Copyright © 2019 Alvin Lowi, Jr. and Chas Holloway
Chas Holloway is the author of two books on Free World Theory: The End, The Fall of the Political Class and Breakout: Technology Vs. the Nation State. He is also a national radio host broadcasting from WCPE, the Classical Station, in North Carolina.
Copyright © 2019 Alvin Lowi, Jr. and Chas Holloway
