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 […]
Transcript: Atomic Show #278 – Micro-Modular Reactor (MMR) project partners USNC, GFP and OPG
Atomic Show #278 transcript, lightly edited for clarity. Intro music (00:15): Rod Adams (00:21):This is Rod Adams and it’s time for Atomic Show show number 278. Yes, these Atomic Shows are coming almost regularly these days. I guess it helps to have not only myself, but all of my guests, working from home. Today I […]
One vignette in radiation fear campaign
Abject fear of radiation, even at low doses, is a root cause of the cost and schedule difficulties associated with atomic energy development and deployment. At Atomic Insights, we believe that most of the fear of low dose radiation is not only unwarranted, but it is also purposely created, taught and carefully reinforced by people. […]
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 […]
Review: Juice: How Electricity Explains the World
It’s clear that Robert Bryce and Tyson Culver like living on a planet populated by humans. They have produced a movie that celebrates electricity as the key enabler of the modern world that we have created. Their film challenges us to keep on building and improving our technology until everyone has abundant, reliable access to […]
How did leaders of the Hydrocarbon Establishment build the foundation for radiation fears?
On December 8, 1953 President Eisenhower announced to the UN that the US knew how to harness atomic energy to produce useful power. He stated that the US was willing to widely share that knowledge. He described an especially intriguing possibility of using atomic energy to bring power to the “power-starved areas of the world.” […]
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 […]
Atomic Show #275 – Managing advanced nuclear development during pandemic
Managing any business is hard work, especially during a global pandemic with stay-at-home orders in place. It requires creativity and flexibility along with some amount of prior preparation. On May 11, 2020, I gathered a group of representatives from several start-up companies that are developing advanced nuclear technologies to talk about how they are making […]
Atomic Show #274 – Thomas Jam Pedersen, Copenhagen Atomics
Copenhagen isn’t the first city name that comes to mind as the place to start a nuclear company. Denmark has decommissioned its last research reactor and has never had a nuclear power plant. That hasn’t deterred Thomas Jam Pedersen and his colleagues at Copenhagen Atomics. Starting a decade or more ago, they began learning about […]
Nuclear energy makes a cameo appearance in Jeff Gibbs’s Planet of the Humans
Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs teamed up to produce a piercing, controversial, gut punching documentary titled Planet of the Humans. Partly as a result of the global closure of theaters, and partly as a result of wanting to make an impact on the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, they released their film for free on […]
Atomic Show #273 – Liz Muller, Deep Isolation
Liz Muller is a co-founder and the CEO of Deep Isolation, a company that makes the modest claim of having invented a solution to nuclear waste. The politically unsolved waste issue has plagued nuclear energy development since the mid 1970s. That was when it became abundantly clear that the original plan to recycle used fuel […]
Atomic Show #272 – Karnfull Energi
Karnfull Energi is a young company that is successfully proving that nuclear energy is more popular than politicians believe. They have created the world’s first 100% nuclear energy offering. Customers have responded with their wallets, showing they are willing to pay a modest premium for higher quality electricity. People are shopping at Karfull’s online store. […]
