Power cheaper than coal – thorium AND uranium make it possible

Bob Hargraves, the author of Thorium: Energy Cheaper than Coal, recently traveled to Shanghai to present a 30 minute talk summarizing the main points of discussion that he covered in his book. The occasion of the trip was Thorium Energy Conference 2012. Bob is a professor with a good facility for numbers and a talent…

FFTF – What could a functional Fast Flux Test Facility do for the US?

A friend shared the above video about the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF). I thought it was worth sharing and discussing, though I am not sure how current it is. The FFTF was not a shining example of government efficiency; it was initially conceived in the 1960s, finally completed in the late 1970s, started up…

B&W mPower™ Reactor Control Room Simulator Begins Operations

(CHARLOTTE, N.C. – December 4, 2012) – The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W) (NYSE: BWC) is pleased to announce that the production-standard control room prototype for its B&W mPower™ small modular reactor (SMR) is now operational. This engineering simulator is a key milestone in the B&W mPower development program. The B&W mPower control room prototype,…

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 130 – Best of the pronuclear blogs for week of Nov 10, 2012

Update #2: (Posted at 1315 EST on November 11, 2012) Steve Aplin provided the following contribution from his insightful blog titled: Canadian Energy Issues Cities and power: revisiting Adam Smith’s Division of Labour Post blurb: Modern cities cannot function without electricity. That electricity is usually the product of other people from outside of the city,…

Virginia ANS – Uranium mining, mPower, NGNP progress

Last night I participated in a well-attended meeting of the Virginia chapter of the American Nuclear Society. It was great to be surrounded by a bunch of nukes who were interested in learning about technical developments and in discussing the current local and national political situation from an energy perspective. Before dinner, I had the…

Radiation probes indicate NO melt through at Fukushima Unit 1

Tepco has recently released measurements that provide convincing evidence that virtually all of the corium in Fukushima Daiichi unit #1 remains safely stored inside an intact reactor pressure vessel. Despite all claims to the contrary, no substantial quantities of that material have melted through the pressure vessel to fall onto the concrete floor of the…

Conservative groupthink afflicts US nuclear energy industry

Though I have a deep and abiding respect for the vast majority of the people I have met who work in the nuclear energy industry, it is time for me to risk losing a few friends with some brutal honesty. Decision making has become unbalanced in the “conservative” direction to a point of a dangerous…

The Atomic Show #184 – Kirk Sorensen, Co-Founder Flibe Energy

Kirk Sorensen is the co-founder and chief technologist of Flibe Energy. He is a member of a tiny club of people who can honestly claim to be atomic entrepreneurs. He is a brilliant man – one of the few people who has been both a rocket scientist and a nuclear engineer. Kirk is best known…

Identifying antinuclear slants in Richard Martin’s “Superfuel”

Richard Martin’s new book titled Superfuel: Thorium, The Green Energy Source for the Future is a book that should come with a warning label. Though the author professes to be worried about climate change and fossil fuel depletion and wants to be seen as favoring new nuclear power development, that support comes with a very…

San Onofre (SONGS) owner updates public on cause of steam generator tube wear

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Augmented Inspection Team (AIT) held a public information meeting on June 18, 2012 to present findings from their investigation into the cause of the excessive steam generator tube degradation found in units 2 and 3 of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). Southern California Edison (SCE), SONGS owner and…