SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCE
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• Health Solutions • Energy Solutions • Environmental Solutions • Economic Solutions Fo r Oh i o, Am er ic a, and t he Wor ld !
THE SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCE CENTER
THE SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCE center • HEALTH SOLUTIONS • ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTIONS • ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS • ENERGY SOLUTIONS
A BALL OF THORIUM THE SIZE OF A GOLF BALL CAN SUPPLY ALL OF YOUR ENERGY NEEDS FOR A LIFETIME! HEALTH SOLUTIONS
In its creation, Thorium based energy produces less pollution, and provides more affordable energy, than any other energy source on the planet. Because of its affordability more people will have access to energy than ever before. Access to energy improves the human condition and lengthens our lifespan. Specific benefits to us will include production of medical isotopes for imaging (such as bone scans) and to treat us for cancer, and abundant heat to remove the salt from seawater to give us drinkable water, and to clean presently polluted water from rivers and lakes.
Learn more at www.SustainableAbundanceCenter.com
ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTIONS
Thorium does not produce any carbon dioxide, or any other airborne pollutants. Thus thorium based energy does not contribute in any way to global warming. In fact, thorium based energy will clean up our planet in a multitude of different ways and will reverse the effects of many kinds of human caused pollution.
ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS
Thorium energy is an environmentally friendly free-market solution. It will not require any taxpayer subsidies because this energy source will produce many different streams of income in addition to electricity. Thorium based energy is very attractive to private sector investment.
ENERGY SOLUTIONS
Thorium derived energy is a practical “all of the above� long-term solution to the urgent problem of producing affordable energy, very safely, in a most environmentally responsible manner.
THORIUM IS THE MOST PLENTIFUL, COMPACT, AND CLEAN ENERGY RESource ON THE PLANET!
Contents 05
Chairman’s Statement
06
Energy Crises
08
Thorium
10
Development Timeline
12
More Than Energy
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Our Team
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Safety and Savings
The Sustainable Abundance Center is dedicated to telling the world (and our legislators) about the economic, medical, and social impacts to us of low-cost, plentiful, and clean energy from thorium. The LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) is the machine that will make this low-cost, plentiful and clean energy from thorium a reality. LFTR technology addresses many of society’s needs, and commercialization of LFTR technology is of great importance to all Americans. LFTR will fix for us a wide array of worrisome issues: • Energy Independence • Energy Security • Carbon Dioxide Emissions Remediation • Global Warming Remediation • Climate Change Remediation • Nuclear Waste Remediation • Medical Imaging Isotope Independence • And Even Cancer Treatment Energy from thorium in the form of hightemperature process heat from LFTRs will: • Greatly reduce landfill waste. • Reduce oil imports by production of synthetic gasoline and diesel fuel. • Desalinate sea water. • Produce electricity cost competitive with gas and coal. • Make many other technologies economically viable.
• And will eliminate CO2 emissions from electrical generation This may sound too good to be true, but we urge you to read on to understand how LFTR technology will deliver these benefits, and more. Surprisingly, LFTR is based on 1960’s molten-salt reactor technology that we are just now pulling off the United States’ technology shelf. There were understandable reasons to leave this technology on a shelf during the Cold War, as there were other pressing problems more demanding of nuclear research. After you read this Sustainable Abundance™ prospectus your organization will see the benefit to America and the world in supporting our non-profit foundation, the Sustainable Abundance Center, so we can educate the public and advance private development of this technology.
William H. Thesling William H. Thesling PhD Executive Chairman
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WORLD ENERGY CONSUMPTION CRISES
Third World populations are expanding at the fastest rate, and their populations need energy to sustain growth.
The current world’s population is expected to soar from today’s 7 billion inhabitants to 9.6 billion inhabitants by 2050. Almost all of the additional 2.6 billion people from now to 2050 will enlarge the population of developing (Third World) countries, which is projected to rise from 5.9 billion in 2013 to 8.2 billion in 2050 and to 9.6 billion in 2100. Much of the overall increase between 2013 and 2050 is projected to take place in high-fertility countries, mainly in Africa, as well as in some countries with large populations, such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United States of America.
1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0
2010
2020
2030
2040
2050
World Energy usage in Quadrillion BTU’s 6
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“You only have to imagine what will happen to the world when other resources become as scarce as oil.”
Population growth is expected to be particularly dramatic among the nations on the UN’s list of 49 least developed countries. Among them, the populations of Burundi, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia are projected to increase at least five-fold by 2100.
Energy that is affordable, abundant, and accessible is inextricably linked to prosperity Generally, as populations become more prosperous, their population growth rate slows, and there is evidence that prosperity is linked to the ability to provide energy that is affordable, abundant, and accessible.
Learn more at www.Crisis2050.com
2050 9.6B 195 Year
People
Countries
Long term resource and population problems can both be addressed by bringing to the third world the opportunities that abundant, accessible, and affordable energy provides.
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Goddess of abundance statue in Piazza del popolo
Thorium, a Sustainable Abundance Solution!
TM
Power Enough For Everyone! We all need energy in many forms to sustain human life and our complex society. Energy is needed in the form of light and heat to support life all over the Earth. Energy in the form of food sustains our physical bodies. Energy in chemical form is used for fertilizers and as liquid fuels that power machinery for manufacturing, farming, construction, and transportation. Energy in the form of electricity powers a vast assortment of devices, from manufacturing equipment to home appliances, all of which enhance the quality of our lives. It is no surprise that most measures of “standard of living” correlate strongly with “energy consumption per person.” Energy is simply essential to every aspect of our modern world. Energy dramatically improves the human condition and allows us to live much more productive, convenient and enjoyable lives. 1 pound of thorium will produce the same amount of energy as 1,100 tons of coal or 6,000 barrels of oil. Thorium is about as common as lead, and that means the world has billions of years worth of clean electricity. No other potential power source can make that claim (not even wind and solar)....
A LFTR cannot meltdown and is inherently safe!
A LFTR does not produce any long lived nuclear waste!
A LFTR is very proliferation resistant!
A LFTR can be made to consume present nuclear waste!
A LFTR has a very small environmental footprint!
A LFTR does not need water to generate electricity!
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There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to execute them. – Seth Godin
Learn more at LearnAboutLFTR.com If it is So Great.....
Proven Technology
...then why don’t we have it now?
We at the Sustainable Abundance Center advocate for adoption of LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) Thorium based energy was well on it’s way to becoming a technology in the United States. reality. Over $1 billion taxpayer dollars were spent by the federal government developing this very promising MSR (Molten Salt A working LFTR has never been built. A LFTR though, is a Reactor) technology. A working proof of concept reactor was built, special class of molten salt reactor, and MSRs were built and that operated flawlessly for four years in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. operated here. Thorium derived energy however, ran into a snag during the Nixon years. With the economy in trouble and the Cold War in Many of the other technologies that are integrated into a LFTR full swing, America was focused on producing nuclear bombs (that makes a LFTR more than just an MSR) have been proven and cutting expenses. Because the thorium fuel cycle could not at other American nuclear laboratories. produce materials suitable to make nuclear weapons, and research into other reactors could, the thorium fuel cycle was LFTRs are based upon proven technologies, but the LFTR itself abandoned, despite its great potential for civilian applications. has not yet been demonstrated. Enough data exists from MSRs to conclude that the creation of a LFTR would not be a large The reasons for abandoning the thorium fuel cycle then, are technological hurdle. With today’s modern materials, many actually selling points for thorium energy production now. The scientists feel very confident that they will revive the thorium thorium fuel cycle is very proliferation resistant, which is of great fuel cycle in a very safe, quick, and responsible manner with concern in developing new technology. LFTR technology.
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AN ACCELERATED LFTR PROGRAM
2014 Mainstream Media outlets and Public Decision Makers begin to educate the public about Thorium Energy and Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs). Thorium Energy Begins to gain support by the public through Grass Roots Orginizations.
Congress directs the DOE and the NRC to establish streamlined regulations for MSRs and Liquid Fluroide Thorium Reactors (LFTRs). Several Start-up companies and a few established companies begin development of MSRs and LFTRs.
2012
2016
10
2017
202
New medical advances in antibody delivery systems target cancer cells with High Efficiency. Low Cost Alpha Emitters needed!
First pro built LFTR the assem Producti exceeds 1 da
First Prototpye MSRs are built and operate. Research begins in a variety of areas including MSRs that consume our stockpiles of spent fuel.
2018
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2023
2026
oduction R rolls off mbly line. ion soon 1 unit per ay.
New Companies convert Coal to Gasoline with LFTR process heat. Synthetic Gasoline reaches the market. Gasoline prices begin to drop.
Actinium-255 production, as a by-product of LFTRs, becomes available in volume. Also, cleaner buning synthetic fuels exceed production of conventional petroleum based fuels for first time.
Power Companies Bring LFTR power online. LFTR process heat begins to find application in many other industries.
2021
LFTRs power desalination plants producing huge supplies of fresh water. Water is pumped inland. Farming begins on formerly arid land.
2025
Price of new cancer treatment using advanced anti-body delivery systems and Actinium-225 alpha emitters plummets. 5-year Survival Rates for many types of cancer nears 100%!
2027
www.SustainableAbundanceCenter.com SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCETM
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More than just Energy LFTR has the energy to power your home and many other things. But, unlike many other power sources, LFTR has the power to save lives.
Learn more at www.HealthforOurChildren.com
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Cancer
Better Diagnoses
Clean Water
LFTR will produce isotopes that will kill cancer cells within the body. While there are beta-isotopes that currently do this in chemotherapy and other treatments, LFTR will produce alpha-isotopes that kill just the cancer cells. Traditional betaisotopes kill a lot of healthy tissue in the body besides the cancer, which can make those being treated very sick. With treatment of the very young or very old, beta-isotope therapy can be fatal. Alphaisotopes allow the very young and the very old and weak to be treated, as well as making sure that everyone treated will be much less sick.
Even though the United States invented modern nuclear technology, our country does not produce any of the molybdenum 99 isotope used in thousands of medical imaging tests ordered by American doctors each day.
Fresh water is one of our most vital resources, and when our water is polluted it is not only devastating to the environment, but also to human health. A large factor in infant mortality in developing countries is lack of access to clean drinking water.
Alpha isotope therapy is also a promising cure for HIV and AIDS!
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America has already felt the pain of not producing its own isotopes! When foreign producing reactors were shutdown for repairs, Americans were put on the waiting list for their diagnostic procedures until those reactors started producing molybdenum 99 again. LFTR will be able to produce molybdenum 99 in abundance, and very affordably, and produce it here in the United States!
Because LFTR will be able to produce heat and electricity very cheaply, it will be able to produce clean drinking water from seawater very economically. LFTR’s heat also enables the treatment of contaminated water through a flash sterilization process. This would eliminate many diseases in developing countries.
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WE CAN SIT ON OUR PRESENT NUCLEAR WASTE STOCKPILES FOR 30,000 YEARS - OR - WE CAN DEVELOP A SPECIAL KIND OF LFTR THAT CONSUMES NUCLEAR WASTE AND PRODUCES ELECTRICITY AT HALF THE COST OF ELECTRICITY PRODUCED BY COAL. WHAT WOULD YOU DECIDE TO DO WITH NUCLEAR WASTE?
50% A 50% reduction in the cost of electricity compared to the cheapest fossil derived electricity (coal). $.02/ KWH versus coal at $.04/KWH.
REDUCTION OF THE RADIOACTIVITYOF WASTE FROM 30,000 YEARS TO 300 YEARS A 100 fold reduction in the length of time spent fuel (nuclear waste) is considered harmful (from 30,000 years to 300 years) compared to traditional nuclear power plant waste.
99% 90%
+
A 99% reduction in the volume of waste produced by a LFTR compared to present day nuclear power plants.
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A 90% reduction (or more) in present stock piles of longlived nuclear waste by converting waste into electricity or heat in a modified LFTR
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$14B Cost of Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Storage thru 2013
$1 Billion to produce the first LFTR test reactor $5 Billion to produce the first LFTR production line reactor $1 Billion to produce the first LFTR nuclear waste consuming reactor
Using nuclear waste to create electricity and reduce the amount of waste we store (that would be a burden to future generations) is a bright idea whose time has come!
Learn more at www.NoMoreRadioactiveWaste.com
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OUR TEAM William H Thesling PhD. Executive Chairman
Donald Larson ME.. Executive Director
Michael Goldstein JD. Alliance Coordinator Government Affairs Director of Fundraising
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Dr. Thesling holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from Cleveland State University, where he performed research for NASA and the Ohio Aerospace Institute. He is an experienced serial entrepreneur. In 1994, Dr. Thesling co-founded TS Engineering, a technology company providing controls equipment. TS Engineering was sold to a private firm in 2001. In 1998 he co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of Efficient Channel Coding (ECC), a provider of advanced digital communications products. ECC was sold to Viasat, Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT) in 2005. Dr. Thesling continues to work for Viasat on advanced development efforts. Additionally, Dr. Thesling is currently active as a technologist and investor with a particular focus in advanced energy solutions. Dr. Thesling holds over 20 patents in such fields as telecommunications, industrial controls and power electronics. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Mr. Larson holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering, and an MS in Nuclear Engineering from The Ohio State University. He also has an MBA from The Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Mr. Larson spent five years on active duty in the U.S. Navy, serving at multiple duty stations, leaving the Navy as a Lieutenant. Mr. Larson spent over 15 years in information technology, engineering, and sales. His experience includes serving in the roles of CIO, General Manager, VP Sales, Chief Engineer and other positions at a number of companies and clients. He founded MCF Technology Solution’s, a Cleveland, Ohio business focused on automating business processes with web based solutions. The clients ranged from small million dollar firms to the Fortune 100.
Mr. Goldstein has a B.A in Economics, Political Science, and History from Michigan State University, and his law degree from Cleveland Marshall College of Law. Mr. Goldstein served on active duty in the U.S. Navy as a Linguist overseas, including nuclear submarine duty, followed by 26 years in the active Naval Reserve, from which he retired as a Lieutenant Commander (cryptology officer). Michael is currently President of the Northern Ohio Chapter of the Association For Intelligence Officers (AFIO), a national organization of both former and active duty military and civilian intelligence officers dedicated to educating the American public on the need for a strong intelligence community in the defense of the United States. Mr. Goldstein is a Workers’ Compensation litigation attorney on behalf of Ohio employers state-wide. He served as a Senior Attorney with the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company for nine years, and was the first CEI attorney stationed at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Northeast Ohio. .
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David Amerine Nuclear Safety Consultant Regulatory Consultant Management Consultant
Kirk Sorensen Chief Technologist
Julian Rosenman MD. PhD. Nuclear Medicine Consultant Nuclear Imaging Consultant
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David Amerine has 45 years of experience in the nuclear industry. He began his career in the U.S. Navy, after graduating from the United States Naval Academy and obtained a Masters in Management Science from the Naval Post Graduate School. After leaving the Navy, he joined Westinghouse at the Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford Site. There he worked as a shift operations manager and then as the refueling manager for the initial core load of the Fast Flux Test Facility, the nation’s prototype breeder reactor. He served as the Site Manager at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station during startup of that three-reactor plant and then as Assistant Vice President Nuclear at Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station. At Davis Besse he led special, interdisciplinary task forces for complex problem resolutions involving engineering and operations during a recovery of confidence period at that facility in the late 1980’s. Davis-Besse was the first of eight nuclear plants where he was part of the leadership team, or the leader, brought in to restore stakeholder confidence in management and/or operations. In addition to Davis-Besse he worked in recovering the confidence in facilities that included the Replacement Tritium Facility, the Defense Waste Processing Facility, and the Salt Waste Processing Facility projects. In 2000, Mr. Amerine assumed the role of Executive Vice President of Washington Government, a $2.5 billion business unit of Washington Group International (WGI). In this role, Mr. Amerine was responsible for integrated safety management, conduct of operations, startup test programs, and synergies between the diverse operating companies and divisions that made up WGI Government. Mr. Amerine was then selected as the Executive Vice President and Deputy General Manager, CH2M Hill Nuclear Business Group, Mr. Amerine was selected as President of NFS (Nuclear Fuel Services) in early 2010 after the NRC had lost confidence in its ability to operate safely and shut down that facility which is vital to the security of the United States (it is the sole producer of fuel for our nuclear Navy). He led the restoration of confidence of the various stakeholders including the NRC and Naval Reactors. The plant was restored to full operation under Mr. Amerine’s leadership. He retired from NFS in 2011. Kirk Sorensen earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering at Utah State University and his master’s at Georgia Institute of Technology. He was an aerospace engineer at NASA for 10 years, and a chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering. Kirk Sorensen is a co-founder and chief nuclear technologist at Flibe Energy Inc., where he leads development of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). Kirk previously worked for ten years as an aerospace engineer for NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and as chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering. Kirk has been a prominent advocate for thorium energy including speaking engagements at TEDx, Google Tech Talks, Thorium Energy Alliance conferences and the International Thorium Energy Organization conferences.He has been featured in Forbes, Wired magazine, Machine Design Magazine, the Economist, the UK Guardian, and Telegraph newspapers.
Dr. Rosenman is the Clinical Director of the Department of Radiation Oncology at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. Dr. Rosenman is also an Adjunct Professor at the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Dr. Rosenman graduated with his MD in 1977 from the Southwestern Medical School, after earning a PhD in physics from the University of Texas in 1971. Dr. Rosenman has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles, as well as numerous book chapters, and given hundreds of scientific presentations. His research includes extensive work on radiation treatment and therapy, Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC), and the use of computing and 3D technologies in cancer treatment.
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LFTR will produce no CO2! LFTR will produce 99% less waste! LFTR can be modified to consume nuclear waste! LFTR could make many recycling technologies economically viable!
LFTR will be able to produce electricity cheaper than coal! LFTR will be adapted to produce synthetic gasoline and diesel fuel from trash, sewage, oil shale, coal, and even from sea-water and air!
Safety A LFTR’s core is molten and cannot meltdown because it is, in laymen’s terms, already melted. In a LFTR, a molten core is the planned, safe, configuration. A LFTR’s core is not pressurized and it does not use water to cool the core. This means there is no possibility of explosive decompression and of clouds of radiation forming in the event of a failure in the LFTR’s core operating systems. There are no known nuclear weapons produced from the materials created by a LFTR. While it may be possible to produce a nuclear weapon from LFTR made nuclear materials, it is much easier and less costly to produce these materials in a variety of other ways than from a LFTR. Thus there is little proliferation risk from LFTRs. LFTRs will produce electricity without the use of water. This means a LFTR does not have to be placed close to water, so it will not be susceptible to catastrophic events such as tidal/tsunami waves (as was the case of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster).
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LFTR will allow American businesses to be more competitve by lowering their energy costs! LFTR will create many private sector jobs in the energy production and manufacturing fields!
LFTR will reduce
healthcare cost while providing better healthcare by allowing doctors to make better diagnoses, more quickly, and with less cost! LFTR has shown to be very promising in producing isotopes that are a potential cure for cancer and HIV AIDS!
Benefits The LFTR will be refueled continuously and easily while in operation, which will improve the competitiveness of utilities and manufacturers by eliminating refueling shutdowns. The abundance of the element thorium throughout the Earth’s crust promises widespread energy independence through LFTR technology. LFTRs will be mass produced in factories and delivered to utilities and relevant industrial sites as modular units. The modularity of LFTR production will result in reduced capital costs and shorter build times. Modular installation near the point of energy need will also reduce transmission line length. Higher temperatures and increased turbine efficiencies will enable air-cooling away from water bodies and result in less expensive electricity. LFTRs are small: they have a very small footprint in the environment, and are easier to site compared to a traditional reactor because of LFTR’s small size, lack of complexity, and inherently passive safety.
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www.LearnAboutLFTR.com Coal $.04 kwh vs LFTR $.02 kwh
37%
According to the EIA (Energy Information Administration) coal produces 37% of America’s electricity and puts about 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere annually. If LFTRs were used to produce this electricity, there would be 1.5 billion tons less pollutants and a savings of about $30 billion dollars to consumers. This would equate to close to $100 savings per year for every American citizen.
$400 per year savings for an average family of four! Natural Gas $.06 kwh vs LFTR $.02 kwh
30%
According to the EIA, natural gas produces 30% of America’s electricity and puts about 494 million metric tons of CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere per year. When LFTRs are used to produce this electricity there will be 494 million tons less pollutants in the airand a savings to rate paying consumers of about $48 billion dollars. This will be close to $150 for every American citizen each year.
$600 per year savings for an average family of four! Nuclear $.08 kwh vs LFTR $.02kwh
19%
According to the EIA, America’s nuclear light water reactor fleet produces about 19% of our power and about 2,300 metric tons of nuclear waste per year. When LFTRs are used to produce this electricity, only 23 metric tons of nuclear waste will be produced, and the savings to the rate paying consumers will be $46 billion dollars. This will be close to $146 for every American citizen per year.
$584 per year savings for an average family of four! Wind $.12 kwh vs LFTR $.02 kwh
3.46%
According to the EIA, wind energy accounts for 3.46% of America’s power needs. When LFTRs are used to produce this electricity, the saving to the rate paying consumers will be $13.4 billion dollars. This will equate to saving every American citizen close to $42 per year.
$164 per year savings for an average family of four!
Bottom Line: $1,748 savings per year for the average family of four! SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCETM
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THE CANCER FIGHT! ACTINIUM 255 The judicious and increasingly sophisticated use of radiation therapy over the last century has resulted in the cure and/or palliation of millions of patients who suffered from cancer. Today, as many as 50% of all cancer patients need to receive radiation as part of their overall treatment. However, as is the case with all cancer therapies, there are significant limitations in the use of radiation therapy because of patient tolerance and because certain kinds of tumors are inherently radiation resistant. Examples of limitations due to patient tolerance would be in the treatment of inoperable, but still localized lung cancers. These tumors are often so large that the radiation doses required to completely destroy them would irreparably damage the lungs, possibly the spinal cord, and heart as well. Examples of inherently radio-resistant cancers are malignant brain tumors, renal cell carcinomas (kidney cancers), osteogenic sarcomas (primary bone cancers) and, sometimes, malignant melanoma (cancerous moles). Because of limitations such as these, cancer researchers are always trying to find ways to increase the effectiveness of radiation therapy, and the field has enjoyed a steady series of technical and biological improvements over the years. Most radiation that is given today is in the form of highenergy x-rays or electrons, both of which can be generated from commercially available linear accelerators designed for medical use. Alpha particle radiation (helium nuclei), which is given off by some naturally occurring radioactive material, is far more potent at killing any kind of cell, cancer or non-cancer, than are x-rays or electrons. But machines that generate alpha particles for medical use are extraordinarily expensive — in the 200 million dollar range — and are also inordinately expensive to maintain, and clumsy to use. Currently there are just a few of these operating in the world. Why is alpha radiation so potent in killing tumor cells as compared to x-rays or electrons? That is because alpha particles interact with matter so strongly that they dump all their energy into a tiny volume, whereas x-rays and even electrons distribute their energy over volumes that are far larger. Thus if you bring an alpha particle to a cell, it will kill that cell (guaranteed), but it won’t do anything to the surrounding tissue if it is more than 20 microns (less than 1/1000 of an inch) away. Although bringing an alpha particle-emitter to a cancerous cell sounds simple enough there are two very difficult problems to solve before this can be done in a real patient.
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The first problem to solve is to have an available supply of the “right kind” of alpha emitter. By “right” we mean that the alpha-emitter must have a short half-life so it doesn’t remain in the body very long, and that it emits only alphaparticles — many alpha-emitting isotopes also emit highenergy x-rays (called gamma rays) or decay into other isotopes that do, and that means that those gamma rays will travel randomly throughout the body and could damage the bone marrow and other radiosensitive organs that are normally protected during radiation therapy. It would also be nice if the isotope were not chemically poisonous. Surprisingly few radioisotopes fulfill all these requirements. Actinium-225 is one isotope that does meet these requirements, and it is nearly ideal with a 10-day half-life and a decay chain of isotopes that only emit alpha particles themselves. Unfortunately, actinium-225 is almost unobtainable today, but liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) create actinium-225 as a by-product of their energy production — conventional U-238 powered nuclear plants do not. The second problem to solve is equally daunting. (No one ever said that finding effective new cancer treatments is cheap or easy). There has to be a way to deliver the killing power of the alpha emitters to the malignant cells and keep it away from normal tissue as much as possible. This is true for all radiation treatment, but very much more so for alpha- emitters as normal tissue cannot repair after being struck with an alpha particle as they often can after receiving a high dose of x-rays. Until 5-10 years ago the task of building an antibody or other drug carrier that would be specific enough to deliver an alpha emitter to a cancer cell seemed hopelessly difficult. However, in the past few years there have been substantial improvements in our knowledge of tumor- specific targets, and our ability to build antibodies to hone in on them. What once seemed “piein-the-sky” research has now begun to be used clinically, with some limited success using antibodies that deliver cytotoxic agents to cancer cells. In the near future, antibodies and other targeting agents may be developed that can deliver the cellkilling power of actinium-225 to a wide variety of tumor cells. Some preliminary work at Memorial Sloan- Kettering in New York with leukemia and breast cancer has formed a promising beginning. But without the availability of actinium-225 and other suitable alpha emitters this research cannot go forward. The Thorium LFTR can fill this need.
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Learn more at www.DiscoveringtheCure.com
MOLYBDENUM 99
A medical isotope produced by LFTRs that is not used for research, but rather every day in the clinic, is molybdenum 99. “Molly” as it is affectionately called, quickly decays into metastable technetium-99 that is used extensively in nuclear imaging such as bone scans; it is estimated that more than 20 million such studies are done each year in the US. America will be facing a “Molly” shortage very soon because of new restrictions on the shipment of enriched uranium overseas from which Molly is made. Therefore we can (and must) produce, Molly here in the US, but without LFTRs, that will require spending hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars to build new cyclotrons. For the same money we could build energy producing LFTRs, as we estimate that it would take fewer than 1⁄2 a dozen of these to supply all the “Molly” that is currently needed.
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THE NEW ENERGY
GENERATION
I
T’S NOT ALL ABOUT ELECTRICITY! LFTRs (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) will produce high-temperature process heat that will be used in many energy-intensive industrial applications. LFTRs will be built to supply process heat without electrical power generation systems (e.g., turbine and generator). Using process heat directly is an efficient way to use the energy from a LFTR. Because the LFTRs operate at high temperatures (650 C or 1200 F), their process heat will be used for many industrial applications. This means that many industries will be made cleaner because their high-temperature processes will no longer rely entirely on coke and coal for heat generation. Large cities in the Rust-Belt will become free of a major source of airborne particulate matter. Improving the looks, the air quality, smell, and the surrounding environment will help cities like Cleveland and Detroit make old businesses profitable and attract new businesses to the area. Affordable electricity and low-cost heat will be a tremendous driver for industry that will spark an industrial renaissance for many established manufacturing communities. Some economists estimate that access to lower-cost electricity and process heat will reduce the costs to build an SUV by about $2,500. These same sorts of LFTR-induced savings will apply to other industries, as well. This will dramatically increase the competitiveness of American manufacturers. We will establish a lasting commercial advantage by developing LFTR here, in America first. China already has a thorium reactor program with hundreds of engineers and hundreds of millions of dollars for development. American leadership has yet to commit to enter the race to develop LFTR technology. What will happen to America’s competitiveness if China is the first or only successful developer of LFTR technology?
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Learn more at www.BringingBacktheJobs.com SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCETM
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CONTACT US! LEARN MORE
ADDRESS
PHONE
www.Sustainable AbundanceCenter.com or www.Th90.org
PO. BOX 770963 Lakewood, OH 44107
(216)-367-0602
INFO@Th90.org
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