Twice during the past week, I have run into antinuclear rants that point to Admiral Rickover’s final testimony to Congress in January 1982 as evidence to support an assertion that nuclear energy should be avoided. Admiral Rickover was one of the pioneers in the field of capturing nuclear fission energy for beneficial use; he is…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8CqdECzklI In early 2009 a recently graduated film student and a journalist who grew up on Long Island got together to produce a film about the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant fiasco. Originally planned as a 10 minute YouTube video, the project grew to what might be a documentary lasting 100 minutes. Rod Adams and Gwyneth…
John Wheeler, the host of This Week in Nuclear and I got together for a chat about a variety of nuclear topics. We talked about John’s recent trip to the western end of Puerto Rico, where he surfed near the dome of an experimental reactor called BONUS (Boiling Water Superheated). We talked about the effects…
John Wheeler, the host of This Week in Nuclear and I got together for a chat about recent developments in nuclear energy. We also talked a bit about a very old, completely decommissioned reactor called BONUS on the west coast of Puerto Rico. Topics discussed during our chat include the development of South Korea as…
John Wheeler, Kelly Taylor, Robert Margolis, and Michael Stuart visit with Rod Adams about a variety of topics including Ft. St. Vrain, energy comparisons, energy price inflation, and the recent UK government decision to encourage new nuclear power plants. First of all, I apologize for the sound quality. I goofed something up with the settings…
If you Google “toshiba personal reactor” you will find hundreds of recent blog posts. Here is one example from dvorak.org/blog titled Toshiba’s Personal-Sized Nuclear Reactor. I have had several readers send me links asking what I thought about the design and wondering whether or not the system is real. I have taken some time this…
Ted Rockwell has been there and done that when it comes to nuclear power plant design and construction. He was a key member of the team that built the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, the first solely commercial nuclear electric generating station in the world. On December 18, 1957, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station started supplying…
Ray Haroldsen tells the story of how BORAX III became the first US nuclear plant to supply electricity to a town. In the fall of 1954, the US Atomic Energy Commission learned that the Soviet Union was planning to participate for the first time in the annual International Atomic Energy Agency conference on nuclear energy….
Ray Haroldsen, back by popular demand, shares some more stories about his experiences on the technical team of the EBR-1, including some information about the results of the core melt that occurred in Nov 1955. Last week, Ray Haroldsen shared some of his memories as a member of the technical team at the National Reactor…
Ray Haroldsen is an atomic pioneer who began working at the National Reactor Testing Station in January 1952. He talks today about his experiences with EBR 1 and the BORAX series of reactor experiments. A good friend of mine contacted me recently and told me that I needed to interview Ray Haroldsen for the Atomic…
Sources for Atomic Energy Insights Oct/Nov 1996 (PM-3A) Foster, M. E.,Jones, G. M., History of the PM-3A Nuclear Power Plant McMurdo Station, Antarctica, Naval Energy and Environmental Support Activity, Port Hueneme, CA Final Operating Report for PM-3A Nuclear Power Plant, McMurdo Station, Antarctica, Prepared by U. S. Naval Nuclear Power Unit, P. O. Box 96…
Before the discovery of nuclear fission, the only power source capable of supplying reliable electrical energy in remote locations was a combustion engine. Because of its compact nature compared to a coal fired steam engine, the internal combustion engine was the power system of choice. When engineers realized that a fission power plant could operate…