NOVEMBER 2019 | VOLUME 3, ISSUE 4
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL DIVISION NEWSLETTER
The Element of Economic and Energy Policy Failure: Thorium and the Divergence of National Interests Shortly after World War II, a number of Manhattan Project scientists were tasked with quickly developing civilian nuclear power. One of the mission goals was to distribute the ongoing cost of producing bomb-making materials across our secretive Manhattan Project campuses onto a ‘civilian’ nuclear energy program. That program eventually morphed into the Atomic Energy Commission and then to the Department of Energy. From an accounting standpoint, the DOE’s primary purpose is to divert the balance sheet cost of our nuclear weapons programs off the military’s books. For its entire history, 70% or more of the Department of Energy’s budget has been directed towards nuclear weapons development, maintenance, and research programs (and cleanup funding of legacy Manhattan Project sites). Results came quickly. The first reactor designs, the ones still in use today, are essentially ‘first concept reactors’: something more than a Ford Model A, but possibly less than a Model T, as economies of standardization were never achieved. Every Light Water Reactor (LWR), including Pressurized Water Reactors and Boiling Water Reactors, is uniquely engineered from the ground up—maximizing its cost. The original designs, largely developed by Alvin Weinberg, boiled water under pressure to turn a shaft, similar to the turbines of a coal fired power plant.
10
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL DIVISION | FALL 2019
Author James Kennedy is an internationally recognized expert, consultant, author, and policy adviser on rare earths and thorium energy. Disclaimer: The subject matter of the article is author James Kennedy’s view, not that of the ASQ Energy & Environmental Division.