For the first time in several months, I gathered a group of nuclear energy experts to chat about recent events and announcements in nuclear energy. Participants in this episode include: Meredith Angwin who blogs at Yes Vermont Yankee and Northwest Clean Energy Steve Aplin who blogs at Canadian Energy Issues Les Corrice who blogs at…
On September 1-2 2015, the US DOE and US NRC jointly sponsored a workshop on advanced non-LWR [light water reactors]. Your intrepid reporter from Atomic Insights attended and managed to ask a few questions. The presentations are available here. One of the highlights of the first day of the workshop came during the question and…
Moltex Energy has developed a unique conceptual design for a molten salt reactor called the Stable Salt Reactor. In this design, the fuel salt is loaded into tubes that resemble the standard cladding tubes into which solid pellets are loaded in a conventional water cooled reactor. The tubes are arranged into assemblies that resemble the…
This is a story that I really don’t want to tell, but bad news is like old fish. It doesn’t smell any better as it ages. All eight AP1000 construction projects are at risk “for want of a nail.” In this case the nail is a reactor coolant pump, the largest one in the world,…
During the period between 1961 and 1994, an extraordinary machine called the Experimental Breeder Reactor 2 (EBR-II) was created and operated in the high desert of Idaho by a team of dedicated, determined, and distinguished people. In 1986, that machine demonstrated that it could protect itself in the event of a complete loss of flow…
Rachel Pritzker is a philanthropist motivated to solve problems, even if they require rethinking long held notions. She is the founder and chairman of the Pritzker Innovation Fund, which she operates along with her brother, Roland. The tagline used by her organization is “Supporting the development and advancement of paradigm-shifting ideas to address the world’s…
On July 27, 2015, the Wall St. Journal published an article written by Rebecca Smith titled Prefab Nuclear Plants Prove Just as Expensive. That piece has been widely shared and discussed on social media with more than 2700 shares on Facebook and more than 150 shares on Twitter as counted from the original article. I…
Some of you might have been missing irregular, but frequent, updates here on Atomic Insights for the past few weeks. You may have wondered why most comment threads have been closed. You may have even noticed that the Twitter tool in the right hand column didn’t include any new tweets for days on end. I…
There is a growing perception that the Nuclear Renaissance in the U.S. is dead, killed off forever by low natural gas prices. Some members of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) are not so sure. At the June 7 President’s Reception for the 2015 ANS annual meeting, there were several intriguing discussions about new projects that…
On Wednesday, June 24 Bloomberg BNA (Bureau of National Affairs) conducted a morning meeting titled A Chain Reaction: The Role of Nuclear Energy in New England’s Energy Mix at the Westin Copley Place in Boston, MA. The timing was fortuitous for me, my wife and I were visiting family in Maine the weekend before the…
I learned some important new concepts yesterday from two of the leaders of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project – John Sackett and Yoon Chang. Among other things, they informed me — as a member of a group of about 35 other attendees at a workshop titled Sustainable Nuclear Energy for the Future: Improving Safety,…
Two stories caught my attention this morning. One came from the Taipei Times, one from the Beijing Review. The first one focused on a future energy supply prognostication from an American “expert” who has a light educational and professional background in energy technology, manufacturing, engineering, economics and market dynamics. The second one documents recent progress…