EDF must ensure the financing and profitability of its proposed EPR2
reactor before starting construction of any plants based on the design
in France, the country's state audit office has said.

(Last sentence of the message at: https://www.world-nuclear-n...

For me that means no chance to get it running in Europe just look at the financial disaster of the EPRs under construction in Finland and France... renewables are getting cheaper over time, but nuclear not, because you always have to build state of the art and according to applicable standards and so the required quality has increased all the time. Resulting in the seemingly endless postponement of commissioning.

Macron should have energy advisors knowledgable in the work of Mills and maybe Rossi. Using the hydrino reaction is much safer, less polluting and provides a sufficient density of power to solve the worlds power problems for at least one hundred years.

We've been waiting 11 years for Rossi, and 20+ years for Mills, with no energy products deployed. It would be irresponsible to "bet the farm" on these still unproven new techs, considering how long it takes to build big power plants, especially nuclear ones. Nuclear is currently the most energy dense carbon free source of electricity in the world, and the French are better at it than anyone else, including the US. Plus current Gen4 & Gen5 reactors are far safer than earlier ones. The US should be doing the same thing, but we are a country run by idiots.

Considering the various extremes involved for obtaining useful nuclear power the nuclear route: start up costs in the billions to get any size of plant, physical foot print typically several football fields, extremely dangerous regimes of thermal and particle energies, very high costs to transport materials, very extreme time lengths required for waste disposal, very great care to prevent incidental contamination, all offset much of its 1,000,000 gain of power. Compare that to the intuitive physics of the hydrino reaction, involving energies of no greater than 1500 degree in the form of a thin gas, at about 0.0001 atmosphere, almost a vacuum plasma; tiny amounts of fuel in the few litres of purified water per year, from which is produced one megawatt-hour per standard installation, and a one time charge of a few litres of low end cost precious metal, Silver having properties similar to that of Gallium per megawatt-hour installation.
Ubiquitous use of Silver in Suncells would not affect market stability of this lower end precious metal due to availability from huge reserves, or the mid range cost precious metal, Gallium
that, will eventually be replaced by Silver or some other suitable lower
cost conducting metal or compound; a physical footprint of an average office desk providing a 1000 gain of power from what is basically a very benign chemical reaction, the dissociation of H2O into 2H +2O2 or hydrolysis and then a further reduction where the hydrogen is converted by way of its electron to an isotope where its electron orbital is below ground state using catalytic reaction requiring household power regimes only for start up purposes which start up is further mediated by use of an included battery; produces no pollution to speak of, but does produce about one megawatt-hour of electric power per such installation. Scaling of the Hydrino reaction is every easy to achieve by ganging of as many such units as required for the power requirements of as any size population. Waste disposal consists of recycling due to only physical or chemical break or aging encountered by almost all machinery, electronics and chemical processes. The ash of the reaction takes care of itself nearly 100%, by doing what this kind of ash has always done for many eons, escape through the walls of the container and into outer space to eventually take its place among the rest of dark matter, at the outer edges of the our galaxy, which is where up to 90 % of all matter in the universe tends to be. Can't possibly dispose of a chemical reactant in a more convenient or no cost manner.

Except we don't have proof that the Mills & Rossi apparatuses really work. If we did, and we knew for sure that it will only be 3-5 years before either tech is rolled out commercially to scale, then I'd agree with you. Dump nuclear and go hydrino or vacuum/ZPE. But we are not there yet.

“This non-radioactive nuclear fusion technology has enormous potential as we seek clean, renewable energy solutions to replace fossil fuels.”

https://www.lakeheadu.ca/ab...

This is the guy I had to wait behind at FCO airport to speak with Francesco Celani after Assisi conference.
He is part of the WPP Energy consortium (Consulting Scientist) of which Dr. David Nagel is the Chief Science advisor.

https://wppenergy.com/home-...

Thanks tempo, interesting!
Would be nice if this professor would have published some more details, but I would guess its a Pd-D reaction as with Ponds and Fleischmann.

Pons, for the record. No need for fishy stuff found in ponds.

Flamanville 2.0 ? stupid, rich idiots are unable to learn. the working class has to pay.

Good.

And LENR, if allowed, can play a role in dealing with the waste.

Bob,
From my previous blogs you must have gotten the fact that I am a champion of nuclear fission energy since I have been involved almost from the beginning in the 1950s. Now more and more governments including China, India, England and France are perhaps seeing the light. Waste disposal problems have been a red herring from the beginning and even though nothing bad has shown up it is still used to discourage the development of a lot of valuable technology. The only reason the fuel is not being reprocessed is economical. Remember, the fuel came from the planet's mines and it can be returned if necessary. However it is worth billions of dollars as processed. Small feasible reactors have also been available as proven by their use by world naval forces. Despite all the negativity, society still managed to implement more than 20% of the energy used by people world wide.

- If you have been involved with nuclear fission energy in the USA since the 1950's, the obvious question is: where were you and what did you make of the SL-1 accident in early January, 1961?
The full Wikipedia article is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... . It is, if anything, so detailed it is difficult grasp on a human level. My first knowledge of it was via a NZ International Film Festival documentary, shown, I think, in the late sixties but cannot yet locate the YouTube copy of that film. What I have, so far, located is this short, fictionalised film, based on fact:
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Let's remember that this was BEFORE 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima but it has been almost forgotten in the popular memory (including, it seems, yours). As proof of this amnesia, anyone can google "SL1" and note the many consumer products, many from America, that have cheerfully captured all or part of that string.
The late, great Gore Vidal (Al Gore's cousin) described the USA as the "United States of Amnesia".

Brings back many memories. In 1952, I graduated with a BS in Physical Chemistry. I interviewed with the Argonne lab for a position in their reactor program operating in conjunction with the U of Chicago. They would offer me a position if I could assure them I would not be drafted for the Korean conflict which was ongoing. Of course being at 1A status in the draft, I could not. Because of this I was forced to accept a position with a company that took me on despite the uncertainty of my status. The company provided chemicals that were used to stabilize the water used in steam generator devices such as turbines. One of the first things the company did was to take all new hires to a site that had undergone an accident caused by improper treatment of the feed water to their electricity generating turbines. The site was a building constructed as a five story structure. One of the turbines exploded because sand in the feed water imbalanced the rotor blades and sent the blades and turbine parts throughout the building much like a shrapnel bomb. The accident killed 10 people working in the building and tore gaping holes through the roof of the building. Similar effect as the SL-1 accident. People died not because of radiation but because of bruit force. The accident was reported as a work place event and only as a work hazard event My point is that even though more accidents like this have occurred causing many more deaths, turbine generators are not banned from being a part of the energy industry. The nuclear reactor is considered by any criteria as the safest means of producing electricity for human use.
In my career, I have assayed fuel rods, determined radiation effects on reactors which were to be used in airplanes and was in charge of a 60000 Curie test facility to determine radiation effects on materials.
What have you done? Only advice I can give you is to take with a grain of sand any of the propaganda issued by sources with a selfish purpose. I must apologize if I have bored anyone with my personal history.

You ask what have I done? Well, in recent years I've helped Bob develop the on-line Parkhomov tables at nanosoft.co.nz and have been following ECW and all the many and varied posts on ECW and related sites for about 10 years. And, more recently still, I've started to develop the LENR_Events database at https://www.nanosoft.co.nz/...

Going back, though, I have an MSc (1970) in Nuclear Physics from Auckland University and my thesis was entitled "A Tritium Gas Neutron Source". Its opening paragraph reads:

"A program for fast, polarised neutron scattering experiments has been underway in Auckland for the last three years. A system using 6 MeV unpolarised deuterons from the AURA11 accelerator to produce 16.4MeV, 50% polarised neutrons from a thin (.5MeV) tritium-in-titanium target by the T(d,n)He4 reaction has been developed by R. Garrett and A. Chisholm (my co-supervisors) and is described in the former's PhD. thesis. It uses the associated alpha particle to provide coincidence with pulses from the scattered-neutron detectors in order to eliminate the effects of background neutrons. This method is superior to the older ones - scatterer-in scatterer-out, time of flight recoil tagging (but the latter can be used in conjunction with the alpha particle method, providing a triple coincidence)."

I could go on but I think that should establish my ability to "take with a grain of sand any of the propaganda issued by sources with a selfish purpose". It was quite an experience at AURA11 (not to mention the Nuclear Physics lectures), I can tell you - but a lot of it centred around NOT perforating the mylar film containing an intended Tritium gas target or - if it did - somehow stopping the release of 100 Curies of radiation (for the record, that DIDN'T happen).

Of the many side conversations I had with Ross and Alex, the subject of the SL1 cleanup came up. Remember that this was less than a decade since the accident and they related how literally thousands of servicemen had been assigned to the job and that each one was allocated just few seconds inside the chamber to do what he could (such as turn a spanner on a nut) before then being excused any more "nuclear" duty.

My point about SL1 is that everything about its design and maintenance seemed to be very third rate and did not betray an ounce of foresight. There was no "what-if" thinking at all by what was obviously the "C-Team". In stark contrast, it was obviously the "A-Team" which designed the Nautilus.

Which says society learned from the failed experiment and made corrections to how things got done. That process never stops in ANY technology, fission or fusion.

It stopped fission reactors in my country. In NZ, the "N-word" is "Nuclear".

See "Finland". They have decided on the opposite direction and are implementing rapidly. Fission has problems....those problems CAN be solved.

- OK, you'd be referring to something like this:
https://world-nuclear.org/i...
- but the bottom line for NZ would probably be that we cannot match anything like "the deep geological repository for encapsulated used fuel at the Olkiluoto island in Eurajoki, some 400 metres down in 2 billion-year-old igneous rock." (see the paragraph labelled "Used fuel disposal").

Not to bore the readers but your comments about the routine used to enter the facility to avoid an overdose, reminded me of one of the experiments I conducted on the effects of nuclear radiation upon working parts of the proposed nuclear aircraft systems. We assembled component motors and other hydraulic parts into a large coffin which were activated by external energy sources. The coffin was then placed next to a swimming pool reactor at the U of Michigan facility and subsequently irradiated for many hours. The coffin of course became quite radioactive so in order to remove the components a team of 6 people were employed, one by one, to open the coffin for a specific period of time to remove the parts and place them into a shielded container for further testing. All this with the use of dosimeters to assure the safety of the team. One unforgettable experience was the view of the beautiful Cherenkov radiation emitted by the underwater reactor. Sorry if my pun using sand instead of salt was too stupid.

Similar techniques were used to install the Californium-252 neutron source at the LSU Nuclear Science Center.

- Hmm, that reminds me in turn of our dear "hot fusion" friends at ITER who, after using the "DT" reaction (if they ever get to that stage) will still need to cope with the neutron activation of the surrounding materials. Mind you, that problem could be even closer to home, even with LENR.

Yes. one advantage of my 60000 Curie test cell was that only gamma radiation was used and therefor no radioactive materials were produced.(Strontium 90)

Forgot to mention that my test cell radiation source consisted of 60000 Curies of Cobalt60. Strontium90 is an example of the hazardous isotopes created in fission reactions. Three lashes.

- Here is another video that captures more detail. It paints an absolutely appalling picture of bad design, maintenance, supervision and training, not to mention total inattention to mental health issues. A single control rod that could - and did - go critical when lifted - manually - by more than just four inches!!
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Thanks for your comment.

If the argument "what about the waste and the risk from contamination" was rendered null and void - fission could reach its full potential.

Bob,
If there were any really dangerous problems being created by the existence of nuclear materials from reactors the problems would be widely printed by the media. I read more about the effects for instance of radon or cosmic radiation causing cancer. Nobody hardly writes about the nuclear products causing any radiation effects to the general populations. We get much more exposure from the xrays used in medical procedures. Of course any exposure is not healthy but we need to put the danger from nuclear reactor generated materials in perspective. This source probably contributes far less than any other source and is the easiest to prevent exposure.

Hi Ernest
What is your opinion on
this technology?

https://youtu.be/oB1IrzDDI9g

We don't need another method. Same old anti propaganda will be employed to discourage it's development.

sam you are riding a dead horse.

To avoid proliferation, the world wide nuclear reactor rules that the thorium reactor must abide by means that the thorium reactor is mostly a uranium reactor that avoids U235 proliferation by denaturing its fuel with U238.. But the U238 that makes up most of the fuel load in a thorium reactor is producing loads of Pu239, which is a more serious proliferation risk than U235.

Removing the Pu239 from the waste of a thorium reactor is not allowed so there is tons of Pu239 in nuclear waste. Pu239 removal is what breeder reactors do, Breeder reactors were forbidden by Jimmy Carter.

If you are interested, the following is why this reactor will never come to be.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pa...

U. S. policy is once again solidly in opposition to reprocessing. The phrase used is that "reprocessing is inconsistent with the Government's nonproliferation policies." The Clinton administration has accepted the reasoning of the Carter years. This rigidity wasted several years and undermined our ability to work effectively with other nations toward disposition of excess nuclear weapons. If we were reprocessing commercially, and had MOX fabrication plants in routine operation, burning the excess weapons plutonium could be almost half completed by now.

But more important, our policy against reprocessing also holds hostage the rebirth of nuclear energy. While there is no immediate prospect for investment in nuclear power plants, and in fact, U. S. utilities are not investing in any large power plants (coal-burning or anything else but natural gas), things could change. It is only twenty years since Congress, so concerned about our domestic resources, passed the Fuel Use Act banning new large oil or gas-burning plants. Who can be sure about energy in the coming decades? How much will natural gas prices rise? Will global warming be serious enough to curtail burning coal oil and gas for electricity?

The thorium reactor must reprocess its waste on line to extract U233 as a fuel to continue operations. This exposes Pu239 to a proliferation risk.

This unsolvable proliferation issue is the main reason why my interest in energy shifted from nuclear energy to LENR. Now and for a very long time, my goal has been and still is to put my old buddy Lars out of bisiness.

Also see

Breeder_reactor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

That proliferation argument is so illogical it makes you wonder about the intelligence of its originators or their intent.

When all was said and done, the U.S. war in Iraq has cost $6 trillion based on the fear of weapons of mass destruction to justify the decision to go to war.. Does that make sense?

The war was instigated to protect the countries( Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) that we were dependent upon for fossil fuels and supposedly continued to protect us from terrorists after the bombing in New York. The Iranian nuclear threat is more of a Middle East(Israel) threat.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on what we now know to be false intelligence - that it had or was actively developing weapons of of mass destruction (WMD). That seemed to be a reasonable assumption, given that Saddam Hussein had expressed that goal previously. But, as we all now know, there were no WMD there. The suspicion was that Bush and Blair already knew that and the real reason for the invasion was partly that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator (although he was hardly unique in that) but was also starting to demand payment for "his" oil in Euros, which could have set a world-wide trend to accelerate the decline of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. Nearly 20 years on, that decline has resumed, partly due to the rise of Bitcoin, but that is another story

In 1998 I flew into Riyadh Saudi Arabia on a trade mission. The country was awash in oil money and provided almost everything from medical coverage to food and lodging for its citizens. Almost all labor was provided by foreign citizens since no Saudi had to work. One thing that caught my eye was that almost every street corner was occupied by crowds of young Saudi men doing nothing but milling around and conversing with each other. Perhaps convincing each other that foreign infidels were detrimental to their religious beliefs. My first thoughts were that this was a fomenting situation which could lead to no good. Two years later 9/11 occurred where the majority of terrorists were young Saudi men. Coincidence or reality?

Reality. As I said below, OBL was furious about the American military "infidels" staying on in Saudi after the rulers had allowed them to use it as a base in the First Gulf War. No doubt, those young Saudi men were discussing OBL's thoughts and plans. He would have been their hero.

IMHO - Ernest is closer to being correct. With the underlying goal of defending/supporting Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, I contend the Iraq WMD thing was more a desired justification (i.e. fabrication) and was later sold as an intelligence failure.

On re-reading your comment, I agree that we (the US) were likely wanting to spank Saddam for other reasons as well. My main point is that the WMD justification didn't pass the smell test from the beginning.

Saddam was shooting missiles into the Riyadh area and there were many rumors circulating that he was thinking of using gas warfare. We shipped so many gas masks to Saudi that a shortage worldwide was created. Justification easily stated.

Yes, it looks like you and many of my contemporaries were right about WMD not passing the smell test from the beginning. I was prepared to give it an interim pass because it seemed logical that Saddam would persist in trying to get the bomb - after he fell out with Washington: Let's not forget that the same Saddam Hussein was Washington's "hero" in the Iran-Iraq war. And before that, Iran had also been Washington's favoured nation but only as long as its puppet ruler - The Shah - was in power. That all changed with the return of Ayatollah Khomeini.

- Blimmin' heck - isn't Middle East politics complicated?? But a lot it (and global warming) comes back to oil and that's why alternative energy research is so important - so let's all get back to the job. In my case, helping Bob and the LENR cause as well as I can.

I agree. Old hash... Wish I had more energy and brain cells left to help figure out practical OU. I'm hopeful Rossi has nailed it and you guys will eventually figure it out too. Thanks!

- Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had already been defended and secured in the first Gulf War (1990-1991) and US troops were still in Saudi in 2003 - a fact that had long infuriated Osama Bin Laden and had motivated his 9/11 plans. Remember that OBL had been one of the the US's "heroes" of the resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the eighties.

"I contend the Iraq WMD thing was more a desired justification (i.e. fabrication) and was later sold as an intelligence failure." Err ... that's effectively what I said!!

- That's an almost perfect example of the "The Emperor's New Clothes" argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

I have news for people who worry about adding more fuel to the nuclear arsenal. There are more than enough bombs to destroy the planet in war chests now. What's a few more going to accomplish?

The issue is not how many bombs exist, but who has their fingers on the red buttons.

- There's a Wikipedia page on EVERY topic!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

A few more deaths added to the death toll not to worry, right? NO! Completely wrong and wrong headed.

What would you worry about more? The millions of people dying from Covid, from drug overdose, from tribal wars, from auto accidents, from cancer, from Biological weapons just to mention a few. 60 million deaths from 2 world wars. Fear mongering does nobody any good.

The problem with a few more is in whose arsenal they end up in. There are those whose belief system allows them to think they will be spared.

If they are advanced enough to build Pu devices they are more than capable to build U bombs. Lot easier to obtain U235 for H bomb triggers. In comparison, U or Pu bombs are firecrackers.

So, we are to accept your suggested "inevitable" conclusion? No "thanks.