Pursuing the unlimited energy dream – history of the Integral Fast Reactor

Note: Len Koch, whose participation in nuclear energy research started in the 1940s, wrote the below open letter to colleagues who are striving to restore interest in the progress that they made in research and development of the Integral Fast Reactor during the period from 1954-1994 the year that President Clinton and Hazel O’Leary, his…

What do you do with the waste? – Kirk Sorensen’s answers

Gordon McDowell, the film maker who produced Thorium Remix, has released some additional mixes of material gathered for that production effort. One in particular is aimed at those people whose main concern about using nuclear energy is the often repeated question “What do you do with the waste.” Many people who ask that question think…

Two interpretations of the fight against the plutonium economy

Why does anyone oppose nuclear fuel recycling and breeder reactors? The vocal arguments against recycling nuclear fuel focused on weapons and the concept of nuclear nonproliferation. It was a major topic in the mid 1970s with a large political impact. Part of the stimulus that brought the issue center stage was a test conducted in…

Plutonium: Valuable Fuel or Costly Waste?

For more than forty years, the United States and the Soviet Union built nuclear weapons and aimed them at each other’s heartlands. The process of building those weapons was expensive in strict monetary terms and in terms of sacrificing investments in more productive enterprises. Now, however, the confrontational attitude between the two countries has been…