I just received my copy of Plentiful Energy: The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor. The complex history of a simple reactor technology with emphasis on its scientific basis for non-specialists by Charles Till and Yoon Il Chang. There is no doubt that it is going to be a fascinating read, but I had to…
By: Donald Jones, P.Eng. There is a widely held belief that commercial nuclear-electric plants are only capable of baseload operation when in fact they can be more flexible than a natural gas-fired generating station. This belief has led the Ontario government to restrict nuclear generation to 50 percent of total demand, in its Long-Term Energy…
I spent about 15 years trying (unsuccessfully) to get a small modular reactor company off the ground. Our concept was based on an adaptation of the successful German pebble bed demonstration reactor called the AVR. In 2003, Tsinghua University in China completed the construction of the HTR-10, which was essentially a direct copy of the…
Gordon McDowell, the film maker who produced Thorium Remix, has released some additional mixes of material gathered for that production effort. One in particular is aimed at those people whose main concern about using nuclear energy is the often repeated question “What do you do with the waste.” Many people who ask that question think…
Yesterday morning I wrote a post titled Where is Hyperion Power Generation headed now? By the time I was ready for a lunch break, I had received an email from the Chief Operating Officer of Hyperion Power Generation offering to fill me in on some of the details that he was able to make public….
CBS TV 6, one of the television stations closest to the North Anna nuclear power station was allowed to take a tour to see the massive damage caused by one of the largest earthquakes that has ever occurred in the US east of the Mississippi River. Caution – the video you are about to see…
Hyperion Power Generation has been one of the more interesting and vocal companies in the small modular reactor (SMR) business during the past few years. I have attended a number of conferences and meetings at which John “Grizz” Deal and/or his sister Deborah Blackwell have been featured speakers or the centers of interested crowds in…
I’ll admit my bias – my father spent his whole career in the business of making electricity. I learned very early in life just how important that job is. Some of the unsung heroes that I have celebrated over the years include the linemen who restored our electricity nearly two weeks after Hurricane Hugo decimated…
If you have a young person in your life who loves a good page turner with colorful illustrations, I highly recommend placing an order for future delivery of Nuclear Power: How A Nuclear Power Plant Really Works by Amelia Frahm.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. That is one of the sayings that I remember whenever I read works about energy by people like Amory Lovins or Ralph Nader and find myself agreeing with something they have written. (I rarely agree with either of them, but that does not mean that I…
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…
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…
This site uses a cookie for Google Analytics. Accept or decline — your choice.