Dr. Edwin Lyman, Senior Scientist, Global Security Program, Union of Concerned Scientists, has published a paper titled Small Isn’t Always Beautiful: Safety, Security, and Cost Concerns about Small Modular Reactors that poses many questions about the development of SMRs. I’ve seen Dr. Lyman taking notes and asking questions at a number of SMR related conferences;…
The Idaho National Laboratory released the following exciting news on September 25, 2013. IDAHO FALLS — A safer and more efficient nuclear fuel is on the horizon. A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have reached a new milestone with tristructural-isotropic (TRISO)…
Update: (August 2, 2013) – American Atomics is now claiming that there is no site in Detroit that is large enough to house the infrastructure that they are planning to build. Here is a link to their post. http://safereactor.org/post/57104636966/no-room-in-detroit It is a pretty incredible claim for a company that currently has no facilities. Supposedly the…
This is a guest post from NNadir, the well-known nom de plume used by a chemical engineer who has professional reasons for obscuring his off-line identity. It is far more technical than most of the posts here, but I found it fascinating. I hope most readers agree that it is a welcome respite from the…
Platts Energy Week recently interviewed Mike Rencheck, the CEO of Areva Inc., about the company’s outlook on the US nuclear energy market. During the interview, Rencheck talked about Areva’s business serving the operational needs of the existing fleet of nuclear power plants, its involvement with plant uprates, the Mixed Oxide (MOX) project at the Savannah…
Jim Ferland, the CEO of The Babcock & Wilcox Company, was recently interviewed by Bill Loveless of Platts Energy Week about the company’s global business outlook. During the interview, Ferland discussed the B&W mPowerTM reactor, one of the leading small modular reactor development projects; FutureGen 2.0, a carbon capture and storage demonstration project; the impact…
On Sunday, February 24, I gathered a group of fission fans to talk about a number of nuclear energy related topics. We discussed Romance of Radium and how perceptions about radiation have been molded over the 76 years since it was produced. Then, people had learned enough about the benefits of using power emitted from…
One of the most frequently used arguments against using nuclear energy is “the waste issue.” When people ask me, “what do you do with the waste”, my standard answer is “recycle it.” The truly curious then ask for more information. A few days ago, Nuclear Street shared a video produced by Argonne National Laboratory that…
I’ve been engaging in a discussion with several commenters who strongly disagree with my assertion that atomic fission is the ONLY technology that has the technical potential to beat hydrocarbon combustion in the market. It can provide cheaper, cleaner and more reliable heat that can be converted into useful power in almost exactly the same…
During President Obama’s February 12, 2013 State of the Union address, he spoke for six and a half minutes about the importance of energy to the American economy and the importance of being a world leading supplier of clean energy technology. As a proud contributor at an American clean energy company that is developing a…
Though I am not actively pursuing the idea right now, I have had several opportunities in the past couple of days to explain to people why I made the design decisions I did when putting together the Adams Engine concept. As a rather lazy man, I figured it would be easier to repurpose those arguments…
This morning I found an article titled Builders pessimistic about new nuclear plants published in the Tampa Bay Times, one of my former hometown newspapers. (As a retired naval officer, I have about a dozen former hometowns.) The author built his case about pessimism for new nuclear plant construction on the words of a single…