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….
My Google News Alert that searches the world of publications for me every day for the words “new nuclear power plants” brought me a rather interesting link yesterday afternoon. The article, titled A Good Day for Nuke Power, was published on September 28, 2007 on the blog for The Texas Observer. The author, Forrest Wilder,…
Now we are talking! I mentioned in a comment on my last post that I was a competitive guy. I love participating in sports, especially various types of racing (I was a swimmer while growing up) and I admit that I spend more than half of my allotted TV time on ESPN or other sports…
I read an important article on Bloomberg.com this morning. Here is the letter that I wrote to the author in response. Dear Mr. Smith: I read with great interest your detailed article titled Nuclear Utilities Redefine One Word to Bulldoze for New Plants. It is a fine work of investigative journalism. I am sure that…
As a longtime researcher into the controversy surrounding the safe and effective use of atomic energy, I am sometimes struck by how long the discussion has been going on with little change in the nature of the talking points by the mainstream members on each side. Here is an excerpt from a 1977 Ford Foundation…
According to an article in the Times of India, Bangladesh aims to set up a nuclear power plant by 2015. The country is currently hampered by a lack of enough generating capacity; the estimated peak demand is 5,000 MWe, but the capacity is only 3,600 MWe. The only way to make that work is to…
I am as excited as anyone about the prospects for new nuclear power plants in the United States, but I have also spent a lot of time over the past 17 years trying to understand what went wrong during the first Atomic Age. I fear that some of the same mistakes are being repeated. It…
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…
As part of my preparations for interviewing Ray Haroldsen, one of the pioneers from the National Reactor Testing Station near Idaho Falls, Idaho, I have been reading a fascinating history of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory titled Proving the Principle. (The link takes you to a site where you can download all of…
The Ukraine operates 15 nuclear power plants, all of them currently supplied with Russian fuel. As reported on September 21, 2007 by the Russian News and Information Agency – RIA Novosti – the Ukrainian National Security Council has sent a draft resolution to the country’s Fuel and Energy Ministry requesting that it begin supplying three…
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…
I believe that every technological field needs its tinkerers. Those are the people who get so passionately wrapped up with the potential applications of a discovery – even if it is only new to themselves – that they want to know everything they can about how to use it. They are the kind of people…