Update on fast reactor group challenge to MIT

Steve Kirsch, an MIT graduate and enough of an entrepreneurial success to have an auditorium at the school that carries his name, has updated his challenge to the faculty at his alma mater in a post on The Huffington Post titled Is MIT Afraid to Debate Nuclear Report?. Steve is quite serious about this challenge…

Recalling the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) passive safety experiments

I got notified via a Google Alert on “small nuclear power plants” about a post on a blog that I had not previously visited. The post was titled The Environmentalists Nuclear Debate (2) Mark Lynas. The post provided a link to a very interesting article by Mark Lynas in the New Republic titled How nuclear…

The Atomic Show #038 – George Stanford (sodium cooled fast reactors)

George Stanford talks about sodium cooled fast reactors George Stanford earned his PhD in experimental nuclear physics from Yale University and then spent his professional career doing nuclear reactor safety research at the Argonne National Laboratory. One of his special interest was the sodium cooled fast reactor program. He worked on the Experimental Breeder Reactor…

Letter from the Editor: Breeding Better Reactors

Conventional wisdom holds that a breeder reactor produces more fuel than it uses. This idea is fascinating to some, but confusing to a whole group of rational people. It sounds too much like science fiction or Madison Avenue hype. Actually, a breeder reactor is not magic, but it is a marketing exaggeration to state that…

Plutonium Fuel Cycle: Under Attack

AEI would prefer to concentrate its efforts on discussing the incredible technical potential of nuclear energy while leaving the discussion of politics and personality to others. When trying to understand nuclear energy technical decisions, however, it is essential to understand some of the political issues involved. For the last 20 years, there has been an…

Liquid Metal Fast Breeder: Right Answer, Wrong Question

Soon after the development of the first nuclear reactors, scientists and engineers began to discuss the possibility of a nuclear fuel shortage. As far as these nuclear pioneers knew, there was a rather limited supply of uranium that was concentrated in certain areas of Africa and Eastern Europe. The situation was considered even more critical…

Light Water Breeder Reactor: Adapting A Proven System

At 12:30 am, on August 26, 1977, the operators at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station began lifting the central modules of the experimental breeder reactor core into the blanket section. At 04:38 am, the reactor reached criticality. During the next five years, the core produced more than 10 billion kilowatt-hours of thermal power – equivalent…