Atomic Show #294 – Mikal Boe, Core Power Founder and CEO

Atomic Show #294 – Mikal Boe, Core Power Founder and CEO

Mikal Boe has spent 30 years in and around the commercial shipping industry. Several years ago, he began wondering how his industry was going to meet the increasingly stringent rules for air pollution and CO2 production that were being implemented by governing regulators, especially the International Maritime Organization (IMO). His extensive technical research led him…

Warning: Amory Lovins is influencing national security decision makers

Amory Lovins recently visited the Pentagon. After a glowing introduction by the flag officer who is in charge of fleet readiness and logistics for the US Navy, Lovins told people who are tasked with looking into the future and planning budgets that human society is moving from an age of carbon to an age of…

No obstacles prevent China from rapidly building floating nuclear power plants

No obstacles prevent China from rapidly building floating nuclear power plants

Credible entities in China have begun lining up the supply chains required to produce reliable electrical power from barge mounted nuclear fission power plants. There are no technical, industrial, or regulatory hurdles that prevents the first of those machines from being in service by 2020. China has a pressing need for the electricity those movable…

NSSA Response to BBC Article “The Ship That Totally Failed to Change the World”

Press release N/S Savannah Association, Inc. 8/8/2014 For immediate release On July 25, 2014, BBC News Magazine published a feature piece on NS SAVANNAH entitled “The Ship That Totally Failed to Change the World.” The N/S SAVANNAH Association, Inc. was contacted during the production of the article, and interviews were conducted with Stan Wheatley and…

NS Savannah tours May 18, 2014

Press Release Historic Ship N.S. Savannah Open for Tours May 18, 2014 in Observance of Maritime Day N.S. Savannah Association, Inc. 4/17/2014 The unique, nuclear powered ship N.S. Savannah will be opened for tours at her pier in Baltimore, Md. on Sunday, May 18, 2014 as a part of the annual commemoration of Maritime Day….

Trip report from visit to NS Savannah

About three weeks ago, I wrote an article about commercial nuclear ship propulsion. That post introduced Benjamin Haas, a student at SUNY Maritime, who has been leading a design team that is developing the conceptual design for a nuclear powered shipping system. Ben’s team is not just focused on the ship itself, but on all…

SUNY Maritime Student Advocates Commercial Nuclear Ship Propulsion

Stimulated by early atomic optimism, naval successes and Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative, four nations built ocean going ships with nuclear propulsion plants. The US built the NS Savannah, Germany built the Otto Hahn, Japan built the Mutsu, and Russia built a series of nuclear powered icebreakers. For reasons that are beyond the scope of…

Antarctic misadventure failed to plan for resilience

I’ve been pondering the misadventures of the Akademik Shokalskiy for several days, thinking about the difference in result between an excursion planned on the cheap by people who depend on things going smoothy and a voyage planned by people who included contingencies and had access to more capable technology. In the summer of 1994, the…

Grand Opening of the Apprentice School at Newport News Shipbuilding

Yesterday, on an unusually warm December day, I attended the grand opening of the new Apprentice School building in downtown Newport News, Virginia. It was an event that made me proud to be an American, proud to be a Virginian and proud to be a veteran of the US Navy. I was a member of…

Naval Reactors should be empowered to show the way – again

President Obama should task John Richardson with a mission similar to the one that President Dwight Eisenhower gave Hyman G. Rickover. Richardson is the current leader of Naval Reactors (NR), the organization that Rickover built. If directed, NR could begin a new assignment to show others how to manufacture complete nuclear fission power systems starting…