Molten Salt Reactor at ACU Receives Historic NRC Construction Permit
Molten salt is very hard to control. Expect disasters
ABILENE, Texas – September 16th: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued a construction permit (CP) for the deployment of the Natura Resources’ MSR-1 system at Abilene Christian University (ACU).This marks the first construction permit for a liquid-fueled advanced reactor and only the second for any advanced reactor issued by the NRC.
“Natura recognized early on that the NRC is the gold standard of licensing of nuclear reactors.We made a conscious decision to work with the NRC to license our technology for deployment here in the States rather than taking our technology outside their jurisdiction or attempting to avoid the licensing process entirely.The NRC’s issuance of the Construction Permit for the Natura MSR-1 deployment at ACU shows that our technology can be licensed and de-risks the licensure of Natura’s 100MWe systems,” said Douglass Robison, Founder and President.
Natura Resources has taken an iterative, milestone-based approach to advanced reactor development and deployment, focused on efficiency and performance.This started in 2020 when Natura brought together ACU’s NEXT Lab with Texas A&M University, the University of Texas, and the Georgia Institute of Technology to form the Natura Resources Research Alliance.In only four years, Natura and its partners have developed a system that the NRC has successfully licensed.The successful deployment of the Natura MSR-1 system at ACU as the molten salt research reactor (MSRR) is going to provide valuable operational data to support Natura’s 100MWe systems and will also serve as a world-class research tool to train advanced reactor operators and educate students.
“We appreciate the thorough reviews by the NRC staff.The environmental review was completed in March and found that the MSRR would have no significant impact on the environment.The safety review that was just completed found that the Natura MSR-1 design and analysis meets the federal regulations and is safe to construct.This construction permit is the first step in the NRC’s two-step licensing process.It allows Natura and ACU to build and operate the MSRR without uranium.The next step is the operating license, which will authorize Natura and ACU to fuel the reactor and demonstrate the elegance of molten salt technology,” said Ben Beasley, Director of Licensing.
While this is a significant milestone, there is still work to be done.The advanced reactor deployment site that will house the reactor, the Science and Engineering Research Center at ACU, was completed in August 2023, and the issuance of the construction permit allows the team to begin fabrication of the reactor.Zachry Nuclear Engineering will complete the Detailed Engineering and Design of the Natura MSR-1 in the first part of 2025, which will be followed quickly by the submission of the Operating License application to the NRC.The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) provides fuel for the current operating fleet of university research reactors, and its commitment in 2019 to provide fuel and salt for the MSRR was the impetus for Natura Resources to develop and deploy the Natura MSR-1 with ACU.The fuel and salt needs for the MSRR are unique, and Natura Resources and ACU are committed to working with the DOE to finalize details related to the provision of fuel and salt.
“We are proud to have been working with Natura over the past year on the detailed design engineering for their first molten salt reactor system, a truly groundbreaking project in clean energy. This partnership highlights the innovative leadership both of our Texas-based companies bring to the industry as we work together to drive progress and shape the future of energy.Our shared commitment to advancing technology and economic growth makes this collaboration especially meaningful,” said John B. Zachry, President and CEO of Zachry Group.
“ACU is thrilled to have Natura as a partner as we work together to answer the world’s increased demand for reliable energy, medical isotopes, and clean water through the deployment of liquid-fueled molten salt reactors. With the NRC’s issuance of the construction permit, we are one step closer to making that a reality. The performance-driven approach of Natura Resources to advanced reactor deployment has quickly moved them from a relative unknown to a leader in the upstart advanced reactor industry,” said Dr. Phil Schubert, ACU President.
“If we're going to meet the growing energy needs, not only in the State of Texas but in our country and the world at large, we must begin deploying advanced nuclear reactors,” said Douglass Robison.
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Climate Alarmists Now Attack Growing Your Own Food
Allotment produce, much prized by proud food-growing citizens the world over, has six times the ‘carbon’ footprint of conventional agriculture, according to a recent paper published by Nature
“Steps must be taken to ensure that urban agriculture supports, and does not undermine, urban decarbonisation efforts,” demand the authors.
What have these people been smoking? Surely not some of the puff circulating at the recent Psychedelic Climate Week in New York.
Highlights included a discussion on funding ketamine-assisted therapy and a panel on ‘Balancing Investing and Impact with Climate and Psychedelic Capital’.
The lead authors of the Nature paper are academics working out of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. They suggest using urban farms as sites for “education, leisure and community building”.
Perhaps the locals could sit cross-legged and listen to early Pink Floyd music. Maybe clap the setting sun to some Atom Heart Mother.
Excuse your correspondent if he cannot take this paper seriously. It is a classic example of ‘greens’ picking on a human activity – almost any will do – and complaining that it causes the devil-gas carbon dioxide to be released.
At the recent New York climate happening, according to the Guardian, revellers were told that using hallucinogens can spark “consciousness shifts” to inspire ‘climate-friendly behaviour’.
What climate friendly behaviour, one might ask, given that almost anything humans do to improve their lot of Earth is demonised by an increasingly weird millenarian ‘green’ cult.
The authors of the Nature paper seem to have a particular down on home composting. Poorly-managed composting is said to exacerbate the release of ‘greenhouse gases’. “The carbon footprint of compost grows tenfold when methane-generated anaerobic conditions persist in compost piles,” it says.
This is particularly common during small-scale composting, apparently. With a seeming complete ignorance of how small allotments farming functions, the authors suggest that “cities can offset this risk by centralising compost operations for professional management”.
Wherever these cultists look, there are gases being released that are contributing to their invented existential climate crisis. The high application rates of compost in urban agriculture can also lead to nitrous oxide, we’re told.
Needless to say, “strategic management of application scheduling and fertiliser combinations may be required to minimise emissions”.
For allotment holders, few pleasures in life compare with a break from arduous work and a hot cup of tea in the shed. Surrounded by the tools of the trade, it is the labourer’s equivalent of passing around a few liveners at National Climate Week, with the added attraction that it doesn’t turn you into a self-important dope.
But such pleasure will come to an end if the climate cops have their way. Infrastructure, we’re told, is the largest driver of ‘carbon’ emissions at what are termed “low-tech” urban agricultural sites.
As well as sheds, this includes beds (for vegetables, not a crash pad for ketamine heads) and compost facilities. A raised bed built and used for five years will have approximately four times the environmental impact as one used for 20.
Other infrastructure supplies are said to include fertiliser, gasoline and weed block textile.
Plants need water, but only the ‘right’ sort of water can help ‘save the planet’.
In their site samples, the researchers found that most allotment-holders use potable municipal water sources or groundwater wells. Big no, no, of course, since such irrigation emits ‘GHG’s from pumping, water treatment and distribution.
“Cities should support low-carbon (and drought-conscious) irrigation for urban agriculture via subsidies for rainwater catchment infrastructure, or through established guidelines for greywater use,” it is suggested.
Presumably, the subsidies will come from the magic bread tree and the infrastructure will be of the special type that does not produce ‘GHG’s.
This crackpot climate paper is just the latest sign that the ‘green’ movement is riven with disagreements as its climate crisis grift starts to fall apart in the face of reality.
There are no realistic back-ups for intermittent wind and solar, while ‘carbon capture’ is a colossal and potentially dangerous waste of money.
Without hydrocarbon use, humankind is doomed. Billions will die and society will be returned to the dark ages.
Hydrocarbons are ubiquitous in modern society, and so almost everything that humans do to survive and thrive can be demonised.
Eventually, you end up with Sir David Attenborough making the appalling observation that it was “barmy” for the United Nations to send bags of flour to famine-stricken Ethiopia.
Or to read earlier this year the tweet from the UN contributing author and UCL professor Bill McGuire that the only “realistic way” to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown is to cull the human population with a high fatality pandemic.
Many ‘green’ extremists seem to take the view that anything humans do, including growing their own veg, is causing existential harm to the planet.
https://principia-scientific.com/climate-alarmists-now-attack-growing-you-own-food/
************************************************Overnight Success: Biden’s Climate Splurge Gives Billions to Nonprofit Newbies
Although there isn’t much public information available about the Justice Climate Fund, it appears to have been an overnight success.
After gaining nonprofit status in August 2023, the organization was awarded $940 million by the Biden administration just eight months later in connection with the White House’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which aims to provide financial assistance to reduce carbon emissions and reduce pollution.
The Justice Climate Fund is not the only nonprofit newcomer suddenly made rich by the GGRF. Within a month of gaining nonprofit status from the IRS, Power Forward Communities, which reported 2023 revenues of $100, was awarded $2 billion.
The awards were made by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is new to the world of major grantmaking. The agency acknowledges it has never handed out such gigantic sums of money, and its inspector general told Congress last month it marked a “fantastically complex” and “unusual” setup that his small staff would be hard-pressed to follow.
Critics note that many of the awardees are run by politically connected figures. The single biggest winner in the awards, which were announced in April, was the Climate United Fund, which is slated to receive $6.97 billion. The fund’s directors include prominent Democrats, such as Phil Angelides, a former California State Treasurer. After this article was published Climate United told RCI that Anthony Foxx, who served as Transportation Secretary in the Obama administration, was “listed as a board member for our [grant] application but did not commit to serving post award.” A press release on the group’s website names Foxx as a member of its “Inaugural Board of Directors.”
The unprecedented nature of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created as part of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, is raising concerns about the Biden administration’s efforts to spend tens of billions of dollars in its final months, a gusher of taxpayer money that will flow into a poorly understood, untested, and difficult to audit format. The tremendous sums involved, the novelty of the program, and the EPA’s lack of experience in the field, as well as the unproven track record of some of the newly hatched recipients, have drawn the attention of lawmakers and others uncertain about how the taxpayers’ billions will ultimately be spent and who will keep track of it all.
“These groups are political front groups that are simply created to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to Democrat campaigns under the guise of doing something good,” said Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff in the Trump administration.
Daren Bakst, director of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment and a sharp critic of the Biden administration’s climate change spending splurge, said, “It’s worse than a slush fund – it’s a slush fund to create non-profit slush funds.”
The EPA describes the Greenhouse Fund as “an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate the adoption of greenhouse gas reducing technologies.” By investing in making residential homes and neighborhoods more “eco-friendly,” the money will pay dividends in both lower utility bills and higher employment, the agency says.
Neither the Justice Climate Fund nor Power Forward Communities responded to questions about their plans to spend the close to $3 billion in public funds they had received.
The $27 billion assigned to the Greenhouse Fund represents a fraction of the money the Biden-Harris administration has embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act for its green energy revolution. Biden acknowledged the bill’s true purpose this summer when he called the IRA a “climate” bill, thereby aligning the administration’s position with what leftist environmental groups such as the World Resource Institute hailed from the beginning as “the largest piece of climate legislation in U.S. history.” The IRA involved “hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy, electric vehicles, environmental justice and more.” Billions more would be spent on the global warming front under the Biden-Harris Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed in 2021.
The EPA has made it clear it views the bonanza as seed money. The agency expects that each dollar the nonprofit recipients spend in seeking to reduce America’s carbon footprint will attract seven times its value in private investment. This anticipated capitalist activity has led many media accounts to label the nonprofits “green banks,” and it has created an entirely new wrinkle in the EPA, according to its inspector general. The Fund’s requirements also carry mandates that at least 40% of the billions be spent in “low income or disadvantaged communities” or “tribal” lands, and in some cases, winners have pledged to spend up to 70% of the money in those same areas.
“I can’t say enough about how complex this system will be,” EPA Inspector General Sean O’Donnell testified to a House subcommittee in September. “It’s like they created an investment bank. It’s fantastically complex. I think it’s unusual.”
“I think it’s more than unusual,” responded Ohio Republican Rep. David Joyce.
EPA Special Advisor Zealan Hoover pushed back at the claim that unusual secrecy surrounded the process and criticism that there are flimsy guardrails to ensure the $27 billion is well spent.
Greenhouse Fund money has been divided into three programs. The biggest is in the National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), which will divide $14 billion among three groups, followed by Solar For All, which has $7 billion, and then $6 billion divided among five groups under the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA).
While the degree of competition involved was not immediately made public, the EPA did provide the numbers to RealClearInvestigations. Three National Clean Investment Fund winners were chosen from a dozen applicants, while Clean Communities Investment Accelerator winners came from a pool of 26 proposals. “Solar For All,” which has the smallest awards, had 60 winners and 150 applicants, according to the EPA. Some of the NCIF and CCIA winners are associated with one another and publicly speak of their collaboration.
“In some cases, the umbrella organizations are new, but it’s set up to help long established groups such as the United Way or Habitat for Humanity,” Hoover said. “These are partnerships and coalitions in which we are very confident, and they submitted remarkably comprehensive applications.”
Hoover also told RCI the EPA will retain spending and auditing oversight, though that responsibility was not spelled out in any of the press releases that have accompanied the Greenhouse Reduction Fund. None of the groups receiving the billions responded to questions or agreed to comment on their plans for spending and how the money will be tracked and audited.
State-directed spending on new technology raises major questions about the role of government in promoting industrial development and in “picking winners.” In other words, are neighborhoods clamoring for what the nonprofits will sell, and how will the award winners attract $189 billion in private investment?
“Is there really any organic demand for all this?” said Travis Fisher, director of Energy and Environmental Policy Studies at the conservative Cato Institute.
But Hoover said the answer lies in the gargantuan scale, and that the lump sum awards will actually be spent in myriad smaller projects throughout the country.
“The theory is that by unlocking the market we’ll create the market,” he said. “The top line numbers are large, but this will jumpstart lending.” That activity will also be spurred because the award winners will offer a smorgasbord of energy-efficient projects rather than one standardized one, Hoover said.
The EPA and the award winners speak in glowing terms of what they will accomplish.
“To date, the eight selected applicants have supported thousands of individuals, businesses, and community organizations to access capital for climate and clean energy projects,” the EPA said when announcing the awards. “With their awards, selectees will unleash tens of thousands of more projects like these across the country for decades to come.”
The press release went on to describe individuals who needed water heaters replaced, communities that are investing in solar panels, and even the “sustainable rehabilitation of the historic National Guard Armory building located in one of Owosso, Michigan.”
This sort of activity also contributed to the “green banks” label, and it aligns with IG O’Donnell’s testimony that the EPA had essentially created a “fantastically complex” investment bank.
Critics say such problems are compounded by the political connections of many of the awardees, whose boards and directors are peppered with people with careers in various credit unions and what are known as “Community Development Financial Institutions,” or banks that are focused on distressed communities.
The board of the Coalition for Green Capital, which got the second biggest NCIF award of $5 billion, includes Hugh Frater, who headed Fannie Mae at the end of the Obama administration. Another board member,Cecilia Martinez, was the top “environmental justice official” in Biden’s White House before moving to the advocacy and nonprofit sector. Stephen Brown, the Coalition’s chief network officer, began his Washington career in the Clinton White House, while Jessie Buendia, chief impact officer, was previously part of the California state government. Another highlighted officer with the Coalition is Daniela Nyiri, who worked on campaigns for Michigan Democrat Haley Stevens before moving to the Progressive Turnout Project.
The last NCIF installment of $2 billion was awarded to a group called Power Forward Communities, which was formed in 2023. It is led by Timothy J. Mayopoulos, who headed Obama’s Fannie Mae from 2012 to 2018. One of its directors is Shaun Donovan, who served in the Obama administration for all of its eight years, including a stint as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Power Forward Communities was granted its tax-exempt status by the IRS last March, one month before it landed the $2 billion award.
Some of the CCIA awards went to more established players, such as Inclusiv Inc., an outfit that has been around since 1977 and will get $1.87 billion, and the Opportunity Finance Network, which in 2022 had revenues of $76 million, according to tax records. Others are new arrivals on the scene, like the Justice Climate Fund, which formed in August 2023. The Justice Climate Fund’s CEO, Amir Kirkwood, had previously been with the Opportunity Finance Network, which received a $2.29 billion award.
Almost without fail, each award winner appears to have received a massive revenue boost from this surge of tax money under the Biden-Harris administration.
“The EPA does not have the wherewithal to handle $2-billlion grants – they were terrible at handling much smaller ones when I was there – much less an organization that previously disclosed a minuscule budget,” Gunasekara told RCI in an email. “There is very little oversight once the money goes out the door and even less accountability on whether the funds achieve the stated purpose in grant applications.”
House Republicans sounded a similar note at the September hearing, dubbed “Holding the Biden-Harris EPA Accountable for Radical Rush-to-Green Spending.” Democrats insisted that GOP concerns were hypothetical, given most of the actual spending has not yet occurred and is earmarked for a good cause. Republicans called attention to the unprecedented nature of the EPA’s arrangement.
“The Biden-Harris administration’s radical rush-to-green energy policies have fueled out-of-control inflation, which has driven up prices by more than 20 percent and destroyed the economic stability American families deserve,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“While American families are increasingly worried about unaffordable costs, the Biden-Harris administration is working relentlessly to expand its radical energy agenda,” added the Washington state Republican.
O’Donnell acknowledged that his staff, which has not grown apace with the EPA’s massive surge under Biden, would not be able to keep tabs on the $27 billion Greenhouse Fund.
Republican representatives said the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund follows enormous sums of money the Biden-Harris administration had already sunk into the EPA in the form of some $100 billion via the Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Acts, effectively doubling the agency’s budget for five consecutive years.
“Spending at this pace and scale for any agency should raise concerns, but especially for an agency like the EPA with a known track record of waste, fraud, and abuse,” Rodgers said. “Under the Obama administration the EPA was given roughly $7.2 billion – nearly doubling its annual budget at the time. Even at that level, the EPA was not able to responsibly manage the spending.”
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Offshore wind’s bogus benefits bragged on
Resources for the Future (RFF) has produced a combined cost benefit analysis for 32 U.S. offshore wind projects now in development. They proudly point to the benefits outweighing the costs by a whopping 14 times. But these supposed benefits are not just exaggerated; they are fabricated. They simply do not exist.
Their lengthy title is “Offshore Wind Power Examined: Effects, Benefits, and Costs of Offshore Wind Farms along the US Atlantic and Gulf Coasts”.
The analysis is fairly simple which makes it easy to see the fallacies. There are just four basic benefit claims. And of course it is all based on highly questionable modeling.
Before looking at each of these benefit claims it is worth noting a pervasive misconception. They assume that when a MWh of wind displaces a MWh of coal or gas fired power the emissions of the latter are reduced by the amount it takes to produce a MWh. As I have written at length this is not true.
Baseload fossil fueled power plants run on very high pressure steam produced by gigantic boilers. These plants have to be ready to produce power while wind and solar run intermittently. They are typically running while their output is temporarily displaced by offshore wind. The reduction in emissions is relatively quite small compared to the power displacement.
Each of the RFF benefit quantities is based on this mistaken displacement assumption. Thus each would be much smaller than they estimate if it were real. But as we shall now see they are not real.
The first and by far the biggest purported benefit is in changing climate change. This benefit is greater than the other three combined.
The claimed climate benefit is in reducing global climate change deaths for just under the next 300 years. I am not making this up. Here is their preposterous explanation:
“The GIVE Model, one of the three models on which the EPA (2023c) social cost of CO2 is based, projects that each million short tons of CO2 emitted in 2020 will cause 43 premature deaths globally between then and 2300 (after which the GIVE model does not project effects). Using this deaths-per-million-tons value, we estimate that the CO2 emissions reductions caused by the modeled offshore wind farms, in each year of their operation, will prevent 1,600 premature deaths. This mortality reduction is a major part of the overall estimated dollar value of the GHG emissions reductions caused by the offshore wind farms.”
Our emissions are not causing any climate change deaths, much less from now until 2300 so this benefit does not exist.
The next biggest benefit is in reducing the purported deaths caused by power plant pollution. Here is their summary:
“Our model estimates that the offshore wind farms will prevent approximately 436 premature deaths per year in the United States by reducing ground-level PM2.5. We estimate an additional 84 avoided premature deaths per year from reductions in ground-level ozone pollution; however, this is more uncertain than our PM2.5 related mortality estimate because ozone formation is more sensitive to background assumptions, and we base the estimate on a national average estimated ozone mortality rate of power plant emissions (EPA 2023a) rather than on modeling that accounts for the locations of the emissions changes.”
Power plant emissions are not causing these EPA dreamed up deaths so this benefit does not exist. In particular a great book on the PM2.5 hoax is Steve Milloy’s “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA”.
The third supposed benefit is “electric bill savings”. Again I am not making this up. That the cost of backup makes renewables expensive is well established and offshore wind is very expensive renewables so bills will go way up not down.
To get these supposed savings they basically rebuild the land based power generation system and given the offshore generation they build with cheaper stuff. Here is their opaque summary:
“In our results, building 35 GW of offshore wind farms reduces the average capacity factor of non-variable generation capacity and causes a change in the mix of such capacity. The change is a shift of several GW of capacity from types with higher fixed costs and lower operating costs to types with lower fixed costs and higher operating costs, which reduces costs and increases profits in light of the lower capacity factor.”
That lowering the capacity factor reduced people’s electric bill sounds like a model driven fantasy for sure. Moreover it sounds like the so-called savings are from what bills would otherwise be in some future scenario, not from what they are today. In that case the claim is a trick.
The last benefit is even more far fetched. It is “Natural gas user savings outside the electricity sector”. The simple idea is that so much gas is displaced by wind that the price of gas to everyone goes down. Not much mind you but a little bit.
They say “The offshore wind farms reduce the US and Canadian projected average natural gas price by 2.5 percent, from $4.12 to $4.02 per MMBtu, because of decreased demand for natural gas in the power sector.”
If only economics were that simple but it is not. Gas is a huge market besides electric power. Also most of the area in question is now served by fracked gas that runs around $2.00. So this tiny 2.5% change is not credible.
That is it for the bogus benefits. They are claimed to be 14 times the cost but they do not exist. The costs however are very real. At least RFF did not include jobs as benefits, as they are costs. They just used fairy tales.
Perhaps this report is written for politicians and other people who will cite it but never read it. Or maybe for people who believe the fairy tale of America’s tons of emissions killing people around the world for the next 300 years. I like to think my readers are smarter than that.
Offshore wind has no benefits; it is a destructive and wildly expensive policy mistake.
https://www.cfact.org/2024/10/07/offshore-winds-bogus-benefits-bragged-on/
***************************************All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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