I took a fateful step very recently
I started a company to try to make this
vision come true along with my partner
Kirk Dorius and so we're going to be
introducing Flibe Energy to you today a
new company and one devoted to making
thorium a reality let me start out with
one of my favorite quotes from a writer
for Newsweek we Americans wanted all
endless and secure energy supplies low
prices no pollution less global warming
no new power plants or oil or gas
drilling either near people or pristine
places this is a wonderful wish list
whose only shortcoming is the minor
inconvenience of massive inconsistency
now mr. Samuelson wrote this in 2005 and
I immediately wrote him an email and I
started talking about thorium and he
said never heard of it and I kept
pressing on him and on my birthday in
2005 he wrote us a very small piece in
Newsweek saying well somebody wrote me
about thorium and it sounds really
interesting but you know who knows we'll
see few years later I had the good
fortune to meet ambassador Woolsey used
to be the director of the Central
Intelligence Agency and I love this
quote from him if you want to know who's
paying for the hate to be taught next
time you pull up to the pump look in the
mirror thanks to Colonel rogue he's
excellent presentation we understand the
seriousness of that challenge another
quote I love because I hate it we do not
have the resource base to be
energy-independent the fact is the
Middle East and the rest of the world
will have to depend increasingly for its
oil and also for its natural gas from
the Middle East is not a matter of
ideology and politics it is simply
inevitable no sir it's not no sir it's
not
another gentleman I've had the good
fortune to sit down with Peter Thiel of
clarium capital if you ever seen the
Facebook movie he was the guy that put
up the money technology entrepreneurs
and investors would do well to return to
hard and important problems not that you
know building farmville on Facebook
isn't important you know
and we would do well to start working on
the real problems so taking mr. Till's
advice to heart we started a company
with these value propositions energy
independence is possible yes mr. Raymond
it is possible and it's affordable but
the key is something that has been
almost uniformly overlooked by policy
makers thorium and of course in this
room we're hearing it but we have to
appreciate how little we hear about it
outside of gatherings like this we
almost hear about it not at all and I I
would challenge you to try to find
discussions about thorium outside of
things like this the machine is the
liquid fluoride thorium reactor which is
safe and mechanically simple and when we
set out to build lifters we will not
only produce electrical energy but we
will recover valuable medical Radio
isotopes that can provide an early
financial return we want to generate
electricity we want to desalinate water
and we want to make these Radio isotopes
not only for the medical sector but also
for NASA spent ten years at NASA and
they are in a terrible world or hurt
right now to produce a key material they
need to explore the outer solar system
we saw this chart thanks to Colonel
rogge so just remember we're the little
bitty thing up there in the in the left
hand corner most of us are familiar with
the thorium fuel cycle but the basic
principle is thorium has the ability to
be consumed if you are careful with your
use of neutrons if you are prudent with
your Neutron budget you can continue to
consume thorium so long as you have a
fissile starter of which uranium 233 is
the best thorium of course is not
uncommon and there are particular places
the United States where it is
exceptionally common but Flibe which is
where we derived the name of our company
is really the secret to unlocking
thorium's potential and I was very glad
that uh Raluca was talking a little bit
about fly band and the experiments are
doing it
UC Berkeley this is a picture of fly
with uranium tetrafluoride in it looks
like blue rocks when it's crystallize
looks like Palmolive when it's liquid
flows like water very hot but chemically
stable this was taken back at Oakridge a
long time ago nuclear reactors based on
Flibe were really built and operated the
molten salt reactor experiment was
successfully operated using Flibe salts
for
four years at Oak Ridge National Labs
much of the Flibe is still there a
couple years ago we tried to see if we
could get a hold of it before they threw
it away but uh Oak Ridge is now taking
possession of it as long as it's in good
hands I just want to get thrown away how
do we use this thing let me walk you
through our plans to utilize a thorium
in a fly Bri actor this is not the way
the court really looks this is a cartoon
to make things simple the fuel salt
which is a lithium beryllium uranium
fluoride salt enters the core region
where there is moderator material
graphite we're anticipating to slow down
the neutrons create a thermal spectrum
reactor and to sustain criticality now
as that core fluid moves out of the
reactor it's hot and fission stops about
half the neutrons in the core are
sustaining the criticality of the
reactor what I mean by that is one
fission is causing another fission
that's the basic definition of
criticality about the other half of the
neutrons are making their way out of the
core into this blanket region
represented in blue and that's where the
magic happens with thorium this is a
flied salt lithium beryllium thorium
fluoride thorium is great at absorbing
neutrons it's great at absorbing gammas
and it's just what we want to have
absorbed those neutrons so we can make
new fuel small amounts of uranium
tetrafluoride will begin to form in the
blanket and they can be extracted
through a simple chemical process of
fluoride volatility this is where you
expose the blanket salt to a small
amount of a fluorinating agent either a
fluorine gas perhaps nitrogen
trifluoride the basic principle is
because thorium is tetravalent on only
tetravalent and uranium has multiple
valence states that's a very easy
chemical way to separate it so out will
come uranium hexafluoride is a gas and
then you want to introduce it into the
fuel salt so you have a stream of fuel
salt that will enter the reduction
column by exposing uf6 hydrogen gas and
fuel salt together you can get the
hydrogen to go to two of those fluorines
stealing them from the uf6 and reducing
the uf6 back to uf4 which is now in
solution it goes back in the core so the
core is being continuously refueled from
the fuel that is being generated in the
blanket in turn the core is generating
new fuel by Neutron absorption of the
blanket another great thing about this
blanket is the fact that it's basically
your Prime
Neutron shield the two-fluid reactor
becomes a very scalable reactor in size
you can build them big you can build
them small and the whole secret is that
thorium blanket so good at capturing
neutrons the hydrogen fluoride you
produce in this can then be electrolyzed
to regenerate your initial component so
this is how we move fuel from the
blanket into the core salt a little bit
of mention has been made to an emergency
denaturing system and for some reason we
need to trash the iso topics of the core
we can do that very quickly I would just
assume keep u-238 out of the course I
don't want to make plutonium but if we
need to do emergency denaturing we can
okay in the core we're sustaining these
fission reactions were producing fission
products perhaps periodically perhaps
continuously we need to reprocess this
course all that also takes place through
a fluoride volatility process that will
convert UF 4 to UF 6 we separate out the
different hexafluoride we put UF 6 back
into the core
alright zooming out so to speak my
favorite part of the mechanical
engineering hot salt comes out of the
core it gives up its heat in a heat
exchanger to a coolant salt could be
bear fly but could be fly nak different
salt possibilities and then that gives
up its heat to a hot gas that runs
through this is extremely simplified
version of our gas turbine in reality
it's probably got multiple stages and
and regenerators and so forth but this
is a super simple version the gas is
heated it runs through the turbine it's
expanded the gas emerges from the term
and actually really goes into a
regenerator and then is cooled in a gas
cooler before being introduced into the
compressor it is then repressurized and
introduced again back into the
regenerator and then into the into the
heater this spinning turbine about half
the power it makes turns the compressor
the other half turns the generator
producing power for the grid the
significance of the gas turbine is we
can hit high efficiencies with a gas
turbine water is not a good working
fluid steam turbine for this kind of
technology this kind of technology is
going to be operating up in the thousand
K temperature range way beyond where we
go with water that's what enables you to
hit up in that 50 percent conversion
efficient that reduces the amount of
heat you're going to have to reject the
environment even more significantly the
heat you are going to reject to the
environment can then be used for
desalinization
when we condense steam right now at a
relatively low temperature we can't use
that effectively for desalinization as
we cool a gas as it drops in about a
hundred C to about thirty C we can drive
a desalinization system with that doctor
pair of Peters has done some great work
looking at how we couple gas turbines to
desalinization systems another
compelling product that can be generated
from this technology but mainly we're
out to make electricity runs around the
grid we want to run around pressurized
water reactor today for a year it takes
about 250 tons of natural uranium we
enrich it and put it in the reactor we
expose it for a while we burn up most of
the u-235 in it make some plutonium make
some fission products but most of it's
still unburned fuel and we take it out
because the fuel is sustained radiation
damage it's cracking and swelling it's
not gonna stay in there any longer plus
it's not breeding enough fissile to
continue its consumption we don't we
don't make more fuel than we consume on
the other hand and a lifter we
introduced aureum into the blank as I
mentioned earlier and the end product is
a ton of fission products we keep the
transuranics and the actinides out of
the waste stream that's very significant
from a waste disposal perspective
because that's what drives your waste
disposal criteria these fission products
are decaying quickly nutty within 10
years within just a few months two of
the most important one xenon and the
oedema are both stable and can be
partitioned and sold at NASA we love
xenon comes easy to explore the outer
solar system and run ion engines on it
when I made this chart I said well this
is the real waste actually I've come to
think in a lot of ways the the remaining
fission products could still be
extremely useful we've been talking
about passive safety in the lifter
community for a very long time after
Fukushima a lot of people started to pay
much greater attention to this aspect of
the reactor but we are no
johnny-come-lately to this in fact this
was all come up with long before I was
ever even born this was demonstrated
back in the 60s with the molten salt
reactor experiment the whole idea of
using this liquid salt having a freeze
plug where a blower would freeze a plug
of salt in the line if you lose all
power that freeze plug will melt the
salt will drain into a drain tank where
now passive approach to decay heat
removal you know you're maximizing heat
transfer to the environment where
to minimize it in this reactor it's a
reactor that can downshift fundamentally
to a completely different mode and
achieve a staggeringly impressive level
of safety even if there's physical
damage to the reactor see that catch pan
everything is there to direct the fuel
into the drain tank and into a passively
cooled configuration we can't say enough
about this feature and it is unique to
liquid fueled reactors in particularly
unique to liquid fueled reactors that
have elevated melting temperatures so
even though we have to get the salt hot
before it melts that's the very feature
that makes the freeze plug and drain
tank work so there's Goods and Bad's
with all of this we talked about Medical
Radio isotopes for a little bit because
this is an important aspect I've
mentioned molybdenum-99 let me talk
about bismuth-213
there's for natural decay chains of
alpha emitting radioisotopes one starts
with u-238 u-235 thorium 232 and then
there's one that's extinct because it
has no long-lived
precursors on it it was there in the
supernova billions of years ago it's
gone now and it is on the u-233 decay
chain there is a special product on
there bismuth-213 that could be a smart
bomb against cancer they attach the
bismuth-213
to an antibody it seeks out the cancer
cell binds to it and that alpha emitter
delivers a knockout blow to the cancer
cell this is a very very targeted
application of radio pharmaceuticals I
know we have two radiation oncologists
in the room today so forgive me if I'm
if I'm not describing this quite right
but I've sometimes even lay in bed
thinking you know if my kid had leukemia
how hard would I be working on getting
this therapy ready for them to save
lives and if it's that important why
aren't I going full-bore on it right now
this is a great technique against
dispersed cancers and again I hope I
don't get out of my out of my lane here
but from what I understand if you've got
a dispersed cancer this is the approach
you want to take to go after it and
there's only one way to get this
material as I said there's a uranium-233
inventory at Oakridge we
you to start lifters and we also need it
to go and extract this life-saving
medical radioisotope so remember
business 213 people known about it for a
long time look at the time on this
report March 2001 actinium and
bismuth-213
are currently extracted from purified
thorium-229 and that the real trick here
is to remember every time you have an
alpha decay that number goes down by 4
so 233 minus 4 is 229 so all these guys
are on the same decay chain the only
practical way is to get this with a
natural decay of 32 Draenei and it is
only produced from the natural decay of
233 it's very potent we only need on the
order of a billion to the gram to treat
a patient we need to go get this stuff
and we will do it in the course of
making lifts or a reality
another thing near and dear to my heart
after time at NASA
these radioisotope thermoelectric
generators are based on plutonium 238
and this is the only way that we've been
able to explore the outer solar system
the United States is unique the only
country in the world that has since
space probes beyond the asteroid belt
and it's all been based on having this
technology short answer we're out of the
stuff it's gone we've used it all up
the Russians used to sell us some
they've sold us all their inventory it's
gone NASA's got billions of dollars of
deep-space missions
hinging on having enough of this stuff
to run the batteries to let the thing
call home we will be able to make this
in lifter if you've heard some times
about us saying we burn up 99% of the
fuel there's 1% left the 1% left is that
stuff and it's worth it's worth almost
as much as the stuff we burn up again
recognized in in National Research
Council reports that we've got to
restart domestic production of plutonium
238 the United States is delayed-action
The Situation's become critical no pun
intended
continued inaction will exacerbate the
magnitude and impact of these shortfalls
causing them to eliminate missions until
a source of plutonium to 30 years ago
this was written a couple years ago this
is happening right now NASA is cutting
back on their plans to explore deep
space because they don't have this stuff
so what could we generate from our
cornucopia of material from the lifter a
thousand kilograms of uranium 233 would
be worth hundreds of millions of dollars
of electrical say
as we vision and generate electricity
even as we Peter this out to the point
where a thousand kilograms of this will
end up with 15 kilograms of
plutonium-238 NASA love that logo
bananas if we can get 15 kilograms of
u-238 for them along the way we'll make
20 kilograms of medical molybdenum-99
32:29 for targeted outfit therapy
treatments 20 kilograms of radio
strontium that can be used in remote
heating units and 150 kilograms of
stable xenon 125 kilograms of stable in
the edenian now these aren't worth all
that much money couple hundred thousand
dollars but they'll pay for the thousand
kilograms of thorium that did all this
trick so out of this marvelous machine
comes a variety of different revenue
streams each of which has got a
community that is literally begging for
them we are unique in our ability with
the lifter to make molybdenum-99 in an
operating power reactor a solid fuel
reactor would have to shut down and try
to take its fuel out of a process to do
it we don't have to do that we can make
it while we're operating we also don't
have to make plutonium 238 in the
expensive way until very recently I was
chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne
Brown engineering had a fantastic time
there really loved working with them and
I really love getting the paycheck every
two weeks - that was great so it was a
big moment see what God do fly previous
to that I was on assignment from NASA to
the army space and missile defense
command for two years I had the
privilege of meeting people like Colonel
Rogi others of our men and women in
uniform I also gained a lot of insight
into the challenge that our troops face
not only in combat regions but also in
remote sites like Kwajalein at Saul Fort
Greely Alaska we have a real need for
remote power systems and then Colonel
Rogi did such a good job describing that
I won't go any more detail at Marshall
Space Flight Center I've been working on
a nuclear engineering degree my very
long-suffering professors here in the
audience thank you sir I will graduate
one of these days
previous to that got my aerospace
engineering from Georgia Tech I want to
introduce my partner Kirk Tori's we were
both graduates of Utah State University
and and and friends there and he went on
to pursue a lucrative career in the law
profession so briefly so briefly Kirk
and I have known each other for about 20
years
we started engineering together in the
early 90s and after we parted ways at
the end of engineering program I went on
to work Boeing studied patent law at the
University of New Hampshire including a
stint at shingle law school in Beijing
studying international patent policy and
law I've currently practice as a Gordo
Brian Graham and before I was trained at
Fish & Richardson I am just absolutely
excited to help Kirk we've all been
following his tireless efforts in
advocating for thorium and we are
committed to making it a reality
although we have only recently
incorporated we are actively pursuing
strategic industry and research
partnerships educating decision-makers
exploring potential nuclear energy
markets and as Curtis highlighted
several times we're exploring byproducts
and secondary product streams as well we
have an ambitious development program to
at least have demonstration criticality
in June 2015 the 50th anniversary of
when the Oak Ridge National Lab reactor
went critical and to address some of
John's comments about the likelihood of
the United States capturing this
intellectual property and
commercializing lifter intellectual
property is one of my main hats I'm
wearing for Flibe energy along with
business development and engineering and
to address rescue I will keep him out of
trouble and export control as well and
then we have plenty to do we're working
on it and we'd like to give you our
first mainstream media introduction to
fly energy
[Music]
thank you so much Kirk
[Applause]