the complete conversion of deuterium nuclear fuel releases an energy content of 250 x 10^15 joules per metric ton of deuterium. the quantity of deuterium in the world’s oceans is estimated at 4.6 x 10^13 metric tons. deuterium present in seawater will yield around 5 x 10^11 tw-year of energy. in the year 2011 the entire planet consumed around 16 tw-years of energy, which means that the energy content of the deuterium in seawater would be enough for 31 billion years of energy supply.

to give all 10 billion people expected to live on the planet in 2050 the level of energy prosperity we in the developed world are used to, a continuous average use of power of 6 kilowatts per person as is typical in europe, we would need to generate 60 terawatts as a planet—the equivalent of 900 million barrels of oil per day.

in view of the enormous amount of deuterium available, it is important that we learn to use the d-d fusion reaction in the long term, and thorium ignited pacer fusion is the most practical form of fusion today that is capable of economically supplying large gigawatt levels of power safely without requiring decades of additional development.

the time since the earth first formed = 4.54 billion years.
the time until the sun burns out = 5 billion years.

the deuterium in the sea is capable of completely powering planet earth at a level of 60 terawatts for 8.33 billion years (longer than the earth has existed or the sun will burn).

http://www.yottawatts.net

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. alternative energy solutions are energy experiments for the wealthy developed world that are just too expensive for the requirements of the developing world. 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.
http://bit.ly/bxfn93

use of 1 pound of thorium nuclear fuel replaces the burning of 3 million pounds of coal and prevents the production of 11 million pounds of co2. the 1 pound of fission product waste produced from burning 1 pound of thorium fuel decays to safety within 400 years (83% of the fission products from thorium decay to the level of the natural background in 10 years). usa used no thorium fuel to produce energy in 2009.

why not reduce america’s dependence on foreign supplied fuels through use of clean thorium nuclear energy in 2010?

“aim high” video presentation from dr. robert hargraves (dartmouth) on thorium power

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgkfs74hvvq

doe eia figures indicate that approximately 85% of us energy production and economic activity in the usa is currently driven by burning fossil fuels. pricing up the cost of carbon and making coal, oil, and natural gas more expensive will have significant large negative impact on the us economy.

tilting the energy playing field by pricing up the cost of carbon based fuels, until industrial infrastructure to build more scalable and manufacturable nuclear power is readied, will come with a significant cost and will result in a dramatic drop in us economic activity. if use of solar and wind energy was close to the cost of burning the fossil fuels that currently drive the us economy then you would only have to tilt the energy playing field a small amount in order to make the diffuse renewable energy systems economically viable. the sad facts are that you have to use a large fee or carbon tax to make current wind and solar cost competitive with coal. the amount of economic distortion required to make diffuse solar and wind energy systems cost competitive would be great and would have immediate impact on jobs, manufacturing, and american quality of life.

america should demand climate remediation solutions that reduce, and not increase, the cost of energy.

improved forms of nuclear energy can generate electricity at a cost lower than burning coal [1]. america needs to reduce the regulatory obstacles to introducing better and intrinsically safer nuclear technology to a level comparable to america’s industrial competition in france and asia. thorium is a neglected nuclear fuel that is more abundant than uranium and when used in special reactors (liquid fluoride thorium reactors) produces less than one hundredth the amount of nuclear waste [2].

today we live in a global economy. sustainable creation of american manufacturing jobs depends on reducing the costs of manufacturing (cost of labor, manufacturing facilities, energy, and materials) to the level of the industrial competition. just adding a huge new tax on energy that increases the cost of all american products made with or delivered to market with energy does not reduce the cost of manufacture, sustainably create jobs, or increase american competitiveness.

spent nuclear fuel retains about 1.5% u-235 and pu-239 fissile content which is sufficient to successfully fuel properly designed lftrs. snf transuranic waste can be gradually burned in the epithermal neutron spectrum of lftr reactors over the course of several decades to produce a combination of energy and fission products [2].

the united states generated 1,787,669,000 megawatt-hours of electricity from burning coal in 2009. we could fully replace all of this electricity produced from burning coal by building one hundred and seventy 1200 mw(e) lftr reactors for a cost of approximately $2 billion per reactor or $340 billion for the full replacement.

we should use america’s spent nuclear fuel resource to produce abundant less waste generating nuclear energy to become fully energy self sufficient and launch a nuclear renaissance based on improved thorium technology.

thorium molten salt reactors are good science. dr. edward teller, the founding director of the lawrence livermore national laboratory, wrote his final paper a month before his death on the subject of the advantages of thorium molten salt reactors.
http://www.geocities.com/rmoir2003/moir_teller.pdf

amster (actinides molten salt transmuter) reactor proposed by j. vergnes, d. lecarpentier of le laboratoire de physique subatomique et de cosmologie de grenoble (lpsc)
http://www.nea.fr/html/pt/docs/iem/madrid00/proceedings/paper17.pdf

ignatiev, v., feynberg, o., mjasnikov, a., zakirov, r. (2003),reactor physics and fuel cycle analysis of a molten salt advanced reactor transmuter, 2003 international congress on advances in nuclear power plants (icapp ’03).

http://www.inspi.ufl.edu/icapp03/program/abstracts/3030.pdf

“feasibility of a critical molten salt reactor for waste transmutation.”
b. becker, m. fratoni, and e. greenspan.

proliferation resistance”, technical meeting on fissile material management strategies for

sustainable nuclear energy, vienna 2005

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/pdf/document_iaea.pdf

“icapp ’06 : international congress on advances in nuclear power plants (2006)

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/13/51/41/pdf/icapp06_tmsr.pdf

spent nuclear fuel is too valuable to be nuclear waste.

80% cuts in u.s. emissions will have only a tiny benefit. the bulk of our effort is best directed at helping the emerging economies conserve energy and move rapidly toward efficient solar, wind and nuclear power. developing cheap carbon capture and sequestration is also a priority. above all, we need to recognize that make-the-west-bear-the-burden copenhagen proposals are meaningless and completely ineffective.

professor richard muller of uc berkeley has prepared an important analysis that should be brought to the awareness of decision makers. information regarding how crucial the new developing economies in asia are to averting climate catastrophe has been compiled into an article by professor muller which can be found at:

http://www.mullerandassociates.com/nakedcopenhagendetail.php