Oklo is rapidly becoming a household name, at least among households with members who pay attention to energy industry developments and/or the headliners in the financial press. Oklo is in the process of designing and permitting a family of small modular reactors that it plans to own and operate to produce electricity, heat and isotopes…
![How Did the MOX Project Get So Expensive? [Redux]](https://spcdn.shortpixel.ai/spio/ret_img,q_cdnize,to_webp,s_webp/atomicinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/mox-plant-2017-768x409.png)
Plutonium, a source of nuclear reactor fuels with incredible potential, is getting a new look. President Trump’s Executive Order 14302, Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base (May 23, 2025), directed the Executive Branch to strengthen the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. Though plutonium reuse is mentioned several times, paragraph 3(c) specifically pertains to using surplus material from…
Copenhagen Atomics is an ambitious Danish company with a bold, potentially world-changing vision. They’re driven by a goal of manufacturing one reactor per day from a high quality, certified factory. If they achieve that goal, they would be adding an additional 37 GW/year of heat to the global energy supply. They want to help make…
Deep Isolation is one of Nucleation Capital’s more impactful portfolio companies because its technology can enable greater success for most of the rest of the companies – and for the entire nuclear energy sector. The company has been developing, testing and refining its systematic approach to nuclear waste disposal for a decade. Despite the fact…
Forgive me. It’s been almost three months since I last wrote a long form blog or article about the importance of atomic energy as a useful tool for solving many of the world’s most complex and pressing problems. I’ve been stimulated to take a partial break from my blissful state of being a mostly retired…
By Peter Lyons Somewhere in Russia, 34 tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium—enough material to make about 10,000 weapons—are awaiting disposal. Moscow was supposed to start destroying this stockpile, but has yet to start, leaving a huge threat lurking in an unknown location. If even a tiny fraction of this material fell into terrorists’ hands, they…
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…
Senator Carper (D-DE) asked each witness at a March 8 hearing about NEIMA – Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act – to give one suggestion for improving the bill. If asked, my answer would be to include findings that emphasize the importance of U.S. government-owned testing facilities that are capable of supporting the NRC licensing…
South Korea (ROK), Japan and the United States all have large nuclear energy programs that are facing a variety of challenges limiting their growth, namely opposition by the nonproliferation industry to wider deployment of enrichment and recycling technologies. There is interest and opportunity to collaborate in developing solutions in areas where challenges overlap. The Global…
Initial version posted Jan 27, 2006 A recent conversation about the dangers of false claims of expertise stimulated me to revise and republish a nearly 11 year-old post. It provides documented proof that Jimmy Carter was not a “nuclear engineer” and never served on a nuclear submarine. He left the Navy in October 1953, about…
Late on a Friday afternoon (September 23), the Department of Energy released an updated performance report on the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). DOE’s internal Office of Project Management Oversight and Assessment in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers produced the report using assumptions and data provided by DOE leadership. The report concludes…
Over the past week or so, I’ve engaged in a “root cause analysis” project to determine why the US is having so much difficulty implementing a plan to take 34 metric tons of nearly pure plutonium 239 — a fissile isotope with virtually the same energy value as uranium 235 — out of our nuclear…
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