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The Thorium MSR Foundation was founded on the basis of the single thought that thorium MSR’s present a grand vision of our energy future: the possibility to have a society with clean and abundant power for all. In the shorter term, its goal is to build up presence and visibility on the internet and, specifically in the Netherlands, in the national energy debate...
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In the evening of January 29, 2016 Lucas Pool, Jorrit Swaneveld and Gijs Zwartsenberg raised a glass of Champagne to celebrate the official establishment of the Thorium MSR Foundation.
The initiative to establish this foundation arose from the Thorium MSR Symposium that took place in Delft on April 17, 2015 (read: Europe has a Thorium MSR Project - SAMOFAR). The three above mentioned agreed to establish and become board members of the foundation, supported by the rest of the so called ‘local group’. The foundation has a task of introducing thorium in the energy debate, by providing sound and solid information about thorium MSR’s and their struggle to become a reality. |
Gathered around a thought
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Gathered around a thought
This group has gathered on the basis of a single thought: that thorium MSR’s present a grand vision of our energy future, the possibility to have a society with clean and abundant power for all. Each of us has come to this vision through different routes. Most of us once had high hopes that wind, water and solar power would in due time be able to provide all the energy that our society would need. But each of us likes to do these little calculations every once in a while, and these little calculations tell us that this is going to be very, very difficult. Each of us, at different points in time, became aware of the vision of the molten salt reactor, of the fact that one had operated successfully in the 1960s, for more than four years. And were struck by the same question: why isn't our energy produced by MSR's nowadays, if the advantages were already known fifty years ago? Most of us had since been following the online discussions, the well-known websites, the reports of the international conferences, for the last five, six, seven years or more. And each of us had the frustrating experience of how difficult it can be to find reliable information, which helps one to distinguish fact from fiction.
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Kirk Sorensen from Flibe Energy and Sander de Groot from NRG
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An ambition starts forming
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Then, in the period preceding the Delft symposium, we started sort of bumping into each other online. Around the symposium, a small group emerged that consisted of both scientists and laymen. We had perceived that in the United Kingdom and in Germany, the inability to distinguish fact from fiction had quickly derailed the debate about thorium MSR’s before it could properly start (the same thing happened in Denmark recently). We agreed that it would be a shame if this would happen in the Netherlands as well.
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The ‘local group’ decided to establish a Thorium MSR Foundation |
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We started thinking about how we could provide the debate in the Netherlands with better chances of coming to fruition. We felt that there was need for an independent body, that could gather high quality information and make this available and accessible to a larger audience, and that in time could also serve as a platform for public debate. The scientists were prepared to play the role of checking the information that was to be made available, and to serve as an expert council for this independent body. The ‘local group’ decided to establish a Thorium MSR Foundation that could become this independent body, independent even from the scientists that supported its establishment. In the shorter term, its goal is to build up presence and visibility on the internet and, specifically in the Netherlands, in the national energy debate. In the longer term, its goal is to further build up credibility and facilitate a factual discussion about thorium MSR.
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Thinking about impossible questions
The mutual independence of science council and the foundation is important. While the scientific voice is essential for the debate, not all questions are within the realm of scientific rigor and scrutiny. Some are well outside that realm, even when addressed by scientists. Two of these questions happen to be the ones most commonly asked by both the public and politicians.
First: what time frame will be necessary to develop MSR’s? Second: what will the cost of the electricity be? Answers to those questions are essential, but speculative as long as they concern the future, and the best one can do here is to make educated guesses. As the foundation, we are definitely interested in such educated guesses, since although unanswerable, these questions will keep on being asked, both by the public and by politicians. Take the cost question. Several MSR-startups have been publishing calculations about this question. The first step of such calculations are pretty straightforward: once it’s possible to settle on a certain design, and making explicit the bandwidth of the known unknowns – like the cost of the flibe-salt – one can do one’s additions and come up with a number. While these show promising outcomes, there are still big unknowns left, a particularly big one being the cost for licensing. How is that going to work out? Presently, we are not aware of any educated guesses on this theme. The time frame question is no less elusive. Predictions vary from ‘we can do this in five years’ to ‘with the present funding levels it may be seventy years before we see them’. The foundation sees it as her task to investigate and clarify the assumptions that underlie such claims. The benefit of engaging in this type of speculative thought is not so much in the accuracy of the predictions. The essence is rather in the process itself: educated guessing helps to clarify one’s assumptions, and deepen one’s understanding of the subject. Simply put: it’s a good thing to think about the possible routes to realize this clean energy option, and check with science on the validity of the assumptions that underlie the claims. |
What time frame will be necessary to develop MSR’s? |
What will the cost of electricity be? |
A people’s thing
All of this, of course, is also very much a people’s thing. Coming from very different backgrounds, living in different parts of the Netherlands, we have to learn to cooperate, mostly online, as a team of volunteers. And although we may not be the first civil initiative in the Netherlands that supports the development of a nuclear technology, we are still an unusual phenomenon. As a group, I think each of us has these moments of being surprised about the company and the debates we find ourselves in.
But so far, things have been moving remarkable well. On November 5, 2015, Dutch national television broadcast a very positive 6 minute item (read: Can Europe be the first to build an MSR reactor?) about thorium, featuring Jan LeenKloosterman. |
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On February 4, 2016, the Foundation made its first public appearance, in Kopenhagen, Denmark, at the Atomkraft 2.0 symposium, organized by Danish society of engineers IDA in cooperation with Copenhagen Atomics. Two days later, Kirk Sorensen and Sander de Groot appeared on the prime time news in the Netherlands, with an item about the molten salt reactor research at NRG, Petten, the Netherlands, probably the first positive news about ‘nuclear’ on this network in the last 25 years. Around the same time, the website thmsr.nl was officially launched.
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Meanwhile, Dutch politics has started showing interest in thorium. On October 15, members of parliament Dijkgraaf and Bosman issued ‘motion 57’ asking the government to consult experts at TU Delft on the possibilities of thorium energy. Only three months later, thorium made its appearance in the Dutch Energy Report, that stated that ‘the government supports research of innovations, like thorium molten salt reactors and other Gen IV reactors (read: Dutch Government States its Support to Th MSR Research), that in due time could play a role in the energy supply.’
In each of these examples, members of the local group played an active part. And the interest is only growing, both among politicians and the general public. Educating the general public is essential for any future in which thorium molten salt reactors play a role. We tend to think that raising enthusiasm will not be the biggest challenge. The bigger challenge is to accompany this enthusiasm with accurate information and arguments: some claims are made too easily and unrealistic expectations will hurt the debate. Our website will be an important tool for this. We’ll be presenting information that is thoroughly checked by our science council, and accompany this with a more dynamic section of articles by specific authors. Personal engagement will be an important ingredient to get the message across. We have concrete plans for participating in the energy debate, and seize opportunities for public presentations. We’re investigating options for launching forum-like activities on our website, encouraging visitors to actively participate in the debate. A specific obstacle is the lack of knowledge of the press: there are few journalists with any expertise on nuclear technology. Nevertheless, our efforts to engage the writing press have had quite promising results. Almost all articles about thorium MSR in the Dutch press have been supportive, and as said also the news shows have reacted favorably. So we feel we made a good start in bringing our message to the public and the politicians. But there still is lots and lots of work to do. Which altogether isn’t surprising for a movement that has set out for uncharted territory: a future with abundant and clean, carbon free power for everyone. Q&A in the comments below
Have something to add to this story or a question for one of the experts in Netherlands?
Share it in the comments where Jan Leen Klosterman, Sander de Groot, Gijs Zwartsenberg and others from ThMSR.nl will try to answer your questions.
Author: Gijs Zwartsenberg, Thorium MSR Foundation, ThMSR.nl April 26, 2016, Netherlands
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