Project BRIGID : Liquid Fuel Thorium Reactors in the Belgian Context

Project BRIGID is a private initiative with the ambition to solve Belgium’s energy problem for the next 1000 years. One thousand, that is. Give or take a few.

BRIGID contributes significantly to the solution of the global warming problem, by eliminating virtually all emission of the green house gas CO₂ from the entire Belgian energy conversion.

As a side effect, BRIGID also offers a solution to the so-believed unsolvable historical nuclear waste problem of Belgium's spent nuclear fuel legacy.

Finally, if used properly by society, BRIGID will also contribute significantly to diminish air pollution, especially in the field of automotive and airborne applications, and materials recycling as well.

BRIGID connects energy, climate and waste into a single consistent and long term plan: Plan A.

Energy, pollution and climate issues form an intrinsic puzzle. The good news is: all the technical pieces of the puzzle are known, for those who care and dare to think. And for those who dare to take firm decisions, not for mere profit but rather for the common good of mankind. Actually to save modern society as we know it, no less.

BRIGID avoids the biggest mistake in all current renewable energy transition plans: it's not about electricity. It's about all energy needs, including transport, aviation, heating and cooling houses and work spaces, fertiliser production, industry and energy needs for the energy conversion itself. It gets rid of all fossile fuels, enhances geopolitical independence, and largely recycles the existing energy distribution systems.

Project BRIGID is laying the puzzle, and is being organised into an operational company producing the entire Belgian energy needs, including the base load electricity, hydrogen and various synthetic fuels as of 2030-2050. And BRIGID has the potential to do so for the next 1000 years.

Now, hear this! BRIGID intends to build a fleet of 10+ operational Generation-V MSR-type liquid fuel thorium-based Annevoie^TM nuclear reactor plants in Belgium between 2030 and 2050. Each of these identical plants will produce a continuous 3 GWth feed of high-temperature steam, compatible with direct hydrogen production by steam electrolysis, worth 270 TWh of energy output per year. Ball park figure.

Because energy is a life-need, the size of these plants is determined by energy efficiency constraints, safety and security rather than economical arguments. Therefore they will be big and modular, not small and modular. The number of plants is restricted by the required cooling capacity. There's no way around it: BRIGID needs the entire Belgian territory to cool down its thermal output.

As Belgium currently carelessly consumes about 750 TWh of energy per year, there's some rational savings to do too. BRIGID knows how. It's not by someone else tightening the belt. It's by becoming efficient by using leverages that are inherently connected with the BRIGID strategy.

The BRIGID Annevoie^TM nuclear reactor fleet will continuously produce much more power than the 80 TWh per year required to service the Belgian power grid with electricity. As the Annevoie^TM reactors continuously run at 100% power level, all excess will be used by ALVIN^TM to produce sufficient synfuels for the Belgian market to abandon mineral fuels completely. Besides hydrogen, this includes nitrogen-cycle based ammonia and hydrazine and carbon-cycle based methane, dimethylether and synthetic JP5 and FT/SPK jet fuel. Storing energy in a practical chemical form is a lot easier than storing electricity. So is distribution.

The heat waste of these ALVIN^TM plants will be recycled in Belgium's classical Rankine cycles to provide the Belgian base load electricity production, and will effectively stabilise the Belgian power grid, even when intermittent renewable electricity is injected into the grid. Peak electricity will be generated using high-temperature Brayton cycles operating sCO2 and hydrogen-fired gas turbines, trading off synfuel production and electricity production while stabilising the grid. BRIGID eliminates the need for battery parks, home batteries and "smart grids".

The final goal is to carbon-neutral bridge the gap to fusion energy. BRIGID! As in: bridge-it!

In a nut shell: nuclear fusion works, that's for sure. At least the D-D, D-T and D-He-3 reactions can be performed in a lab. It just hasn't been able to produce net secondary energy. We are not even close. These Earthly fusion reactions are not the energy of the sun, as often told. The main fusion reaction inside the sun is the proton-proton fusion, which cannot possibly be organised on Earth, as it relies on the Sun's gravity. Instead we use the D-T-reaction, which does work at sustainable pressure, but requires such extreme temperatures, that sustaining the reaction continuously, feeding fresh fuel, removing the helium ashes, and efficiently harvesting the heat, are currently all open problems, with no clear planning for a major break through. Materials problems are just too hard.

Also, it does not burn water, as often stated. Instead, it burns heavy water and it requires vast amounts of lithium to produce the tritium required for the D-T fusion reaction. Yes, the stuff that goes into Li-ion batteries.

And it too, produces nuclear waste.

In the end, fusion will work. Hopefully. But in the mean time, we need BRIGID.

In the mean time, we re-focus on fission.

As opposed to nuclear fusion, BRIGID does not rely on revolutionary new physics. All the pieces of the puzzle have been available for some time, both for the nuclear and the chemical components. All subsystems have been prototyped and ran for significant amounts of time, on a small scale, earlier. Unlike fusion, BRIGID is an engineering project, not a research project.

Surprisingly, the puzzle was never actually laid. Instead, the nuclear industry selected very different options in the past, for technical, economical and strategic reasons viable at the time. But times are changing. And politicians keep making the wrong decisions all the way...

Nevertheless, many technological and practical issues pop up when designing the BRIGID reactor, in area's of safety, reliability, security, materials, non-proliferation, regulations and efficiency.

The ideal goals of BRIGID are very ambitious indeed. The main limits are material issues, and occasionaly missing or unreliable engineering data. However, goals can be temporarily scaled down if material limits cannot be resolved economically or in due time. Subsequent optimisations are possible as soon as open material issues are solved. BRIGID is determined to tackle them and we are solving them one by one.

BRIGID is based on old technology, which was never developed because there was a developed alternative that was considerd viable at the time. In the mean time, political dismay with respect to nuclear power conversion is a fact. And the nuclear fuel cycle was never closed.

So if we are using an old technology, that was never developed into a workable system in the past, why is BRIGID something that's suddenly going to succeed?

Here's the list of reasons:

• because the environmental circumstances have changed, and consequently the energy economics will change too
• because the timing to make a radical change in energy conversion has become critical
• because BRIGID has a clear focus on one goal and one goal only
• because our goal is totally legitimate, self-financed and suffers no venture pressure
• because it covers a holistic view on energy conversion
• because the underlying physics are known
• because we do not care about backward compatibility with the existing nuclear industry
• because we allow no political inertia in the loop
• because the rest of the world is persuing the same path way ahead of us - did you know that?
• because the green dream about simple solutions for renewables is a non-event

We hate green washing. So: no. BRIGID is not green.

BRIGID does not produce renewable energy. It does consume natural resources in an irreversable way. It's not green energy. Instead, we call it "golden energy^TM".

BRIGID's golden energy^TM is not green, but it is a key asset to make our society as a whole green, clean and sustainable, for a substantial period of several decades. So: yes. BRIGID is green.

You decide.

Bonus: in due time, BRIGID will process Belgium's legacy spent nuclear fuel (SNF), by converting it into useful energy. SNF should NEVER be declared nuclear waste, or converted into a useless waste form, because it's an extremely valuable asset rather than a legacy. Even when the traditional nuclear fuel cycle will never be closed. It just needs a touch of BRIGID.

In the end, energy is more important than climate problems. Here's why...

BRIGID assumes climate change is a fact, and indeed man-made. However, no one can predict at this point in time if the climate is going to turn hostile, and when, and how nasty it will get. Fair and square, we can not predict climate change effects in any reliable way. But we better are cautious.

Deciding to step down energy production from now on, hoping to stop the climate turning hostile, is a wrong move. Because no one can guarantee that the process of climate change will come to a halt by these measures.

It is however mandatory to stop wasting energy and to stop burning fossile fuels with all means possible, in an atempt to stop climate change.

On the other hand, if the climate becomes hostile, in spite of all rational efforts to stop it, the world will need lots of energy to adapt and ultimately survive. If we fail to provide sufficient energy to society in an attempt to stop climate change by cutting energy base load production, and the climate becomes hostile nonetheless, we face an unsolvable problem situation.

And that is why solving energy problems is more important than solving climate problems.

The kick-off moment of Project BRIGID was October 1st, 2018. We have been very busy since that day.

What were you doing?

What can YOU do?

If you have an open mind, and a technical degree, you may contribute.

The development is done as a collective effort of shareholder-volunteers, independent of government funding and political influence both. For the production phase, we envision a collective owership of energy consumers.

So if BRIGID Plan A calls on your responsability, call in to volunteer, become a share holder, sign our NDA, and read the BRIGID Wiki. And observe what we are cooking...

After reading the BRIGID Wiki, do you still consider BRIGID Plan A to be not realistic? Tough luck. Because we haven't seen any viable Plan B sofar. Have you?

Project BRIGID public website/ © Ian's Corner BV, Dept DoNE 2018-2050 All rights reserved Last update: 2024-07-19 Stay tuned!