I first met Cal Abel during a flurry of correspondence associated with actions he recommended after the Fukushima event. Cal, a former submarine Engineer Officer and current PhD candidate at Georgia Tech, had produced some rapid response papers with useful ideas for the people responding to the events. One idea in particular that Cal produced […]
Advanced Atomic Technologies
The Atomic Show #167 – Jeff Merrifield – AP1000 Design Certification Application
The topic of this podcast is the status of the design certification application for the Westinghouse AP1000, the system that has been chosen for about half of all of the new nuclear power plant projects that are currently planned in the United States. Last week, the Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a […]
Atomic Show #156 – ANS Annual Meeting, Platts SMR, NRC’s shrinking budget
Lisa Stiles and Rod Adams met for a chat about recent nuclear industry meetings including the American Nuclear Society annual meeting that Lisa attended in San Diego in early June and the Platts – DOE Small Modular Reactor meetings that Rod attended in Washington, DC in late June. After signing off with Lisa, Rod asked […]
The Atomic Show #154 – Atomic Round-up With Five Experts
Rod Adams got together with Margaret Harding, Dan Yurman, Meredith Angwin, and Charles Barton for a round up of recent atomic industry and technology developments. Topics discussed included new enrichment facilities, enrichment technology, public meetings about new nuclear power plants, and small reactor plant developments. Meredith Angwin is a physical chemist with long experience in […]
The Atomic Show #150 – Presidential Announcement of Loan Guarantees, Small Reactors
On Sunday, February 21, I gathered a group of well experienced nuclear professionals to talk about the impact of President Obama’s February 16, 2010 speech announcing loan guarantees for Southern Company to build two additional units at its Vogtle Nuclear Station. Margaret Harding, Kelly Taylor, John Wheeler from This Week in Nuclear, Dan Yurman from […]
The Atomic Show #148 – Hyperion Power Module Update
On January 21, 2010, I caught up with Forrest Rudin and TJ Trapp of Hyperion Power Generation. Forrest is Hyperion’s Chief of Staff; TJ is the Vice President of Engineering. They were on the road meeting with various stakeholders to explain more about their product. They took the time out of their schedule to provide […]
The Atomic Show #146 – South Korean Nuclear Technology Development
The United Arab Emirates has recently selected a consortium that includes Korea Electric Power Corp., Westinghouse Electric, Hyundai Engineering and Construction, Samsung C&T Corp and Doosan Heavy Industries to supply it with 5.6 gigawatts of electrical power capacity. The order includes four APR-1400 nuclear reactor power plants and all associated secondary equipment. I made contact […]
The Atomic Show #145 – NGNP Fuel Testing Success
On December 4, 2009, I spoke with Dr. Madeline Feltus, the Department of Energy technical program manager assigned the responsibility of coordinating the efforts of a team of scientists and engineers working on the refinement and testing of TRISO fuel particles for high temperature gas cooled reactors. During the interview, Dr. Feltus mentioned a few […]
B&W’s mPowerTM Reactor – Who Says America is Behind in the Nuclear Renaissance?
Sometimes, games really do change while few people are watching. That is what happened yesterday when Babcock and Wilcox announced their mPowerTM modular nuclear power plant. The big difference is not the basic technology – after all, the mPower reactor is a pressurized water reactor using the same kind of coolant, the same kind of […]
Beyond Electricity – Fission as a Source of Process Heat
One of the great things about working in a city like Washington is the occasional opportunity to attend fascinating gatherings of forward thinking people. Yesterday I was able to take a few hours off in the middle of the day to attend a lunchtime talk sponsored jointly by The Heritage Foundation and Third Way titled […]
Atomic Show 81 – More than 100 years of nuclear experience on a phone call
On Sunday, February 10, I got together with four of my favorite nuclear industry correspondents for a chat about the current state of affairs in the electric power industry. You can listen to the show at The Atomic Show #081 – Five friendly atomic geeks. The guests on the show included: John Wheeler – host […]
The Rapid-L reactor – designed by Japan’s CRIEPI for JAERI – is getting a lot of blog attention
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 […]
