Economy of Scale?: Is Bigger Better?

It is possible for engineers to make incredibly complex calculations without a single math error that still come up with a wrong answer if they use a model based on incorrect assumptions. (Originally published May 1996) Pick up almost any book about nuclear energy and you will find that the prevailing wisdom is that nuclear…

Atomic Show #278 –  Micro-Modular Reactor (MMR) project partners USNC, GFP and OPG

Atomic Show #278 – Micro-Modular Reactor (MMR) project partners USNC, GFP and OPG

Global First Power (GFP), Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) and Ontario Power Generation (OPG) recently announced that they had formed a joint venture called Global First Power Limited Partnership. That venture will build, own and operate an installation called the Micro Modular Reactor (MMR™) at the Chalk River Laboratories site. Mark Mitchell and Eric MGoey…

Atomic Show #277 – Simon Wakter, pro-nuclear engineer in an ambivalent country

Simon Wakter is a strongly pro-nuclear engineer in a country that passed a referendum officially phasing out nuclear energy since several years before he was born. He has to round up to be called a thirty-something. Simon works in the nuclear energy branch of AFRY, a well-established 17,000 employee, all-of-the-above. engineering company that recently adopted…

Atomic Show #276 – HolosGen Claudio Filippone and Chip Martin

Atomic Show #276 – HolosGen Claudio Filippone and Chip Martin

HolosGen has attacked the nuclear power plant cost and schedule challenge from the opposite direction chosen by many nuclear reactor developers. Claiming to be agnostic about the reactor specifics – as long as it produces reliable heat in a small-enough configuration – HolosGen founder Claudio Filippone decided to focus on radical improvements to the “balance…

X-300 Blazing a Different Kind of Trail in Smaller Nuclear Reactor Development

GEH spent about half a billion dollars designing, testing and certifying the ESBWR. Despite that investment, the 1,520 MWe Enhanced, Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) design documents are just gathering dust with no active projects in sight. GEH is a joint venture between US-based GE, a $95 billion annual revenue conglomerate and Hitachi, a Japanese…

Oklo has filed first combined license application (COLA) with the NRC since 2009

Oklo has filed first combined license application (COLA) with the NRC since 2009

Oklo, Inc. announced yesterday that its combined license application (COLA) to build and operate an Aurora at INL was undergoing acceptance review at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Key project specifics Oklo’s Aurora is a 1.5 MWe liquid metal fast reactor with heat pipes to move fission heat out of the reactor core and into the…

What exploded in Russia on Aug 8? My estimate is a (chemical) booster rocket for a nuclear powered cruise missile.

A cruise missile with a nuclear reactor heated turbofan engine and a liquid fueled booster rocket is the most likely description of the Russian developmental weapons system that exploded while being tested on August 8. It’s likely that the explosion occurred during maintenance or fueling operations on a barge floating off shore and not during…

Project Pele – Part II. Enabling technologies

Project Pele – Part II. Enabling technologies

Building mobile nuclear power plants will be a challenge, but successfully meeting the challenges could alter the future trajectory of the energy and fuels supply industry. That is one of the largest and most consequential sectors of our modern, mobile, industrialized economy. There are no guarantees, but compared to many research and development projects, Project…

ML-1 Mobile Power System: Reactor in a Box

This is an August 2022 update of an article first published in November 1996 and updated in February 2019. The first update was stimulated by discussions associated with DOD’s issuance of an RFI for mobile, modest power output atomic power systems. That RFI resulted in Project Pele, which has now selected BWXT to build a…

Turning nuclear into a fuel dominated business

Under our current energy paradigm, nuclear power has the reputation of needing enormous up-front capital investments. Once those investments have been made and the plants are complete, the payoff is that they have low recurring fuel costs. Just the opposite is said of simple cycle natural gas fired combustion turbines. They require a small capital…