Jake DeWitte and Caroline Cochran, the cofounders of Oklo, a start up company that is developing a 1-2 MWe nuclear reactor-based power system for remote areas, have been credited with drawing attention to a problem that can be solved by a government policy decision. “Nearly all advanced reactors have a need for low enriched fuel…
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)…
I have an all-star team of people I can assemble to debate your position on the urgency of fast reactors (top DOE brass, nuclear industry, environmental leaders, etc). You pick the place and time. Near the end of 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a summary of a report titled The Future of the…
I am in a snarky mood this morning. Please forgive me while I try to explain the sources of my wry amusement – and my continuing worries that keep me from getting a good night’s sleep. Yesterday, I was in a conversation with a man who was explaining the recent changes in Nuclear Regulatory Commission…
The New York Times published a story titled Certainties of 1970s Energy Crisis Have Fallen Away that caused me to fire up my keyboard to send a note back to the author. Following my personal mantra of “reduce, reuse, and recycle”, I thought I would share that note with you. Ms. Galbraith: Your article titled…
For more than forty years, the United States and the Soviet Union built nuclear weapons and aimed them at each other’s heartlands. The process of building those weapons was expensive in strict monetary terms and in terms of sacrificing investments in more productive enterprises. Now, however, the confrontational attitude between the two countries has been…
The Simple Facts One pound of uranium contains as much energy as 2 million pounds of oil. Releasing that energy from the uranium results in less than one pound of waste material that can be stored in a simple container for decades with no effect on the environment. Burning 2 million pounds of oil will…