April 7, 2013 To all it may concern, I was raised on the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and all my life I have

been searching for signs that the optimistic ideology and visible might of the industrial age as portrayed in her novels is still with us. Modern marvels are often difficult to spot because they are enmeshed in the landscape. Our once-cherished infrastructure has become invisible, unlauded. As of late focus on achievement seems to have shifted towards the miniaturization of gadgets, ethereal streams of data and the virtual constructs that appear only on computer screens. But I do not think the consumption of foreign goods (even if designed and bankrolled by us) or the stock market majesty that is the information age Internet bubble has the power to save us from collapse and extinction as a world power. There is no physical infrastructure in there! Ultimately there is nothing in the Information Age anyone anywhere else cannot do as well, or better. In this fixation on the ethereal I believe as a people we have lost our way, have forgotten the joy and satisfaction of building things. So we no longer make things. And because we are not self-sufficient in energy it is all doomed to fail. There is no opportunity left to create new wealth domestically through manufacture without incurring financial loss, so we are being lured into Ponzi schemes that are destined to fail. In absence of new and better ideas, Socialism and its inevitable heir Communism are right around the corner. Things are unraveling at an alarming rate. Which is why I will dispense with the gloom to speak of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor and why I think Halliburton should help build it and deploy it in this country to get America back on its feet and worldwide, to help satisfy the worlds insatiable desire to achieve a comfortable standard of living. Specifically molten salt reactors, not the light and heavy water reactors of today, and specifically fluoride not sodium. This is not nuclear energy as it is used on the grid today. If your time to read this letter has already run short please do check out the Youtube video linked below, Thorium Remix 2011 dvd [1]. Essential physics and engineering topics on nuclear energy, a roadmap of current water reactor designs, descriptions of safety features and failures and a compelling case for developing Thorium-based energy. This presentation is simply amazing!

Halliburton is strategically placed to jumpstart this technology and bring this new energy source to market. Diversifying into this particular branch of energy might not just be lucrative today; it may be a shortcut to the endgame. In 200 years time this may well be our only major energy source left standing. LFTR would open up new energy markets today in places that are distant from petroleum producers or out of reach of terrestrial pipelines. The deployment of reliable base load electricity grids satisfies a basic human need and would stimulate the market for petroleum products and services as industry develops. Africa does not want our charity dollars and green energy dreams, it wants electrical grids and cheap, reliable electricity. Halliburton already comprises the essential manufacturing tools and technique to build LFTR plants in my estimation. The main difference (and safety win) of liquid fuel over traditional reactors is that LFTRs operate at ambient atmospheric pressure. The principal component of present-day water reactors is a massive steel single-casted vessel necessary to contain sudden, catastrophic pressure increase. LFTR operates at high temperature but the fuel is dissolved into the salts. There are no fuel rods and pellets that could potentially become deformed or mechanically inoperative (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island #2); there is no water used in the reactor that could trigger a steam explosion (Chernobyl) and no ongoing separation of hydrogen from water to produce the potential for gas explosion (Fukushima outer containment building). The salts used are molten at high operating temperatures yet they are stable. And unlike water reactors where a failure of electricity within the plant is an emergency (Fukushima), LFTR has a simple electrical freeze-plug which, when power is lost, opens to drain the molten salts into a containment tank where they go sub-critical and do not require active cooling. In short, a LFTR is as walk-away safe as a reactor can be. There is no inherent risk of explosion and massive release of radioactivity. It is field-proven technology. From 1965 to 1969 Oak Ridge Laboratory ran a successful Molten Salt Experiment. There is no need to site a LFTR plant near a massive source of coolant water. The reactor vessel itself does not need to be single-casted for high pressure containment. This means that the vessel and all other components in the system can be fabricated in the USA from modular sections utilizing the same machining and finishing techniques as used to produce, say, Halliburton pumps. Why would I approach Halliburton about this? Why arent the big nuclear energy power companies all over this 50-year-old idea? In the Thorium Remix video there is a clue, a sad bit of irony. It seems that for water reactors the fabrication and supply of fuel pellets is a big business a more lucrative business than the windfall of building the plant itself.

So the fuel supply contract to produce patented pellet assemblies that only fit into ones own reactor is an integral part of the business model. Liquid salt reactors by their nature are fuel-diverse and there is little opportunity for proprietary lock-in aside from the contractual. So interest in salt reactors has been light until now. It may be that despite their long history of nuclear power generation, there is a time window in which involvement by a not-strictly-nuclear corporation may bear fruit. Virtually any dissolved fissile fuel may be used to start a sustaining thorium reaction. An interesting startup company [3] has leveraged this idea as a scheme to systematically consume all presently stored spent fuel, into free electricity. It is the modern embodiment of the game-changing mythical Rearden Metal of Atlas Shrugged, the greatest practical application of alchemy since the invention of fluid catalytic cracking itself. The future of petroleum is profitable and secure from gas heating to transportation to plastics to fertilizer; your applied hydraulic fracturing methods are sure to see the worlds reserves extended past any previously imagined peaks. Some day those peaks will arrive but long before then the extraction of hydrocarbons will become deeply enmeshed in political cooperation, then later perish the thought a dangerous game played with outright subjugation. I am saddened to see seeds of this in my own time. That is why I am seeking new frontiers that may save us all from years of bad road. There seems to be no inherent conflict for Halliburton to invest heavily to help develop and deploy molten salt reactors. It is a frontier market and eventually as the technology matures most energy companies will be diversifying in this direction. Halliburton could be one the first energy companies to stake out this frontier and ever after, find advantage in its unique position as a purveyor of research, deployment and infrastructure to act in an advisory and service capacity for the late-comers. Our present day electric grid is fragile. I feel that our energy mix is not sustainable, generating capacity not sufficient, power generation too centralized and our aging longhaul grid connections inefficient and vulnerable. While a synchronous HVAC grid concept has served well for almost a century now, timing issues prevent true power transfer coast to coast. Line losses though small are not insignificant. Of special note, any volcanic ash fall or cataclysmically severe winter storm will black out major regions of the country overnight, a disaster from which we might never recover. Therefore I believe this century must see the complete overhaul of the North American long haul electrical grids to use below ground HVDC conduits laid beside or under highways, railways. This is essential for our survival and when completed we will finally realize continent-wide energy transfer paving the way for an intercontinental and ultimately global grid.

It is a large project, and one stream of new capital I can envision would be a significant and steady reduction in the cost per kWh of delivered electricity with a set percentage of the savings reinvested into ongoing grid reconstruction. America needs to get back in the manufacturing business. Everyone says that and everyone means it. I am neither so nave as to join with the ominous Socialist voices that claim that someone must take a loss, we must pull industry back through coercion and nationalization through selective subsidy nor do I take a view that government and industry are made for each other and would naturally strike a healthy balance in the absence of all restraint and control. I believe in separation of Corporation and State as strongly as I do Church and State. Which is why I was gladdened to see Halliburton divest itself of KBR and return to its tool manufacturing and service roots. That, and the time I have spent inside the Duncan Manufacturing Center interacting with the good people there and observing its works, has convinced me that Halliburton does indeed embody a spirit of industrial might and intensity of purpose I had once glimpsed in Ayn Rands books. America needs to become completely self-sufficient in energy, and get back into the manufacturing business. But how can it happen? We are running towards the brink of a bubble-deficit. It costs so much to do business here. But yet the ideal of the United States standard of living, what remains of it, is predicated on a wage scale that promises that one will not wont for the necessities of life. How could we naturally draw innovation and base manufacturing back to our shores? Something has to give. Some thing, not some one. Perhaps if we could lower the cost of electrical grid energy substantially, in some coordinated national priority to occur within the same time frame we placed men on the moon. Energy is the catalyst of our modern life, as substantial as any physical product. Cheap base load electricity delivered by grid is the running water of the industrial age. Its effect on quality of life and economic health is analogous to the effect of clean drinking water on public health. When we look at the present economic state we see the middle class diminishing as our government continues to mint virtual money. There really is no way out of this mess except by producing; bringing into existence something new that can actually change the game. My dream is for a self-sufficient country with grids powered completely by molten salt reactors and ever-decreasing dependence on foreign oil, making full use of our own reserves for things in which petroleum excels gas for heating, oil for transportation and a renaissance of domestic manufacturing utilizing an even grander scale of hydrocarbon chemistry to shelter, feed and clothe us in abundance, with surplus for export. Nuclear energy has long been less risky than the public perceives it to be. But with LFTR we finally have a way to go all the way, fit the pieces together to build plants that are walk-away safe. 4

I can see Halliburton taking this much farther, in record time. Not merely working with pioneers in the field to obtain the working capital they need and helping design and build control systems and physical plant for the first prototype reactor, I see innovation in the modularity with which they can be constructed. I see a LFTR plant delivered by a fleet of trucks that contain all the necessary preconfigured components to excavate, pour concrete and assemble up to final plant test. In weeks, not years! I see LFTR plants that are so compact they can be sited and built completely underneath existing transmission long lines, fitting comfortably within the land already cleared for right-of-way. No additional branch feeders need be built and this would provide a long corridor of potential site choices. I see LFTR plants mounted on truck fleets to provide reliable megawatt power that can roll where needed, even in response to natural disasters or support for military operations. Central to all this is a point that must be driven home: aside from a reasonable level of containment and common sense safeguards against occupational exposure, these plants are self-contained and in operation there is zero risk of explosion or leakage. There is no continuous volume of water being drawn or discharged to lake or stream. Even in a worst case scenario such as a bomb set off inside a salt reactor that manages to shatter its containment building, the affected area is only as large as the blast radius. The liquid fuel will not react with water or air or be borne as dry dust, as happened when fine breathable super-hot graphite particles filled the sky at Chernobyl. In all likelihood it would be a mishap you could walk away from there would be no need to run. In short, a whole lot safer than some petroleum processes. This is literally the only winner-takes-all technology space race which exists today, and the race has already begun. China is another contender who has begun construction of a reactor and has committed to a viable production design by 2015. Will they be the only? It is my sincere hope that Kirk Sorensen [2] finds his funding, and that the concept of LFTR might be explored and brought into being with all the vigor demanded of an idea whose time is come. I will be unable to attend the upcoming 5th Thorium Energy Alliance conference in Chicago [4]. Dr. Sorensen was kind to invite me despite my rank amateur status. But if Halliburton were to send some of its best and brightest it is possible that they may return with some amazing ideas, and a clear vision of the future. Thanks kindly for listening. XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

________ LINKS ________ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG1YjDdI_c8 or search Youtube for thorium remix 2011 dvd A must-see video. Five minutes of concise summary followed by two riveting, informative hours. [2] http://flibe-energy.com Kirk F. Sorensen is a tireless modern day Johnny Appleseed of the LFTR concept, the principal lecturer in the video above. [3] http://transatomicpower.com The Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor is a reactor design that converts high-level nuclear waste into electric power. Dr. Richard Lester, Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie recently gave a talk at TedxNewEngland (video linked under Company) that managed to turn heads, not an easy task these days as Ted audiences are typically reluctant to explore nuclear options. [4] http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com The 5th Thorium Energy Alliance Conference will be held on May 30th and 31st 2013 in Chicago Illinois.