Though I am not actively pursuing the idea right now, I have had several opportunities in the past couple of days to explain to people why I made the design decisions I did when putting together the Adams Engine concept. As a rather lazy man, I figured it would be easier to repurpose those arguments […]
Smaller reactors
Merchants of Doubt about nuclear energy
The vast majority of technical specialists in the field of energy production favor the use of nuclear energy and recognize that it is a safe source of power that produces no direct greenhouse gases. Even when measured on a complete lifecycle basis, CO2 emissions from nuclear energy are roughly equal to the emissions from wind […]
B&W mPower™ Reactor Control Room Simulator Begins Operations
(CHARLOTTE, N.C. – December 4, 2012) – The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W) (NYSE: BWC) is pleased to announce that the production-standard control room prototype for its B&W mPower™ small modular reactor (SMR) is now operational. This engineering simulator is a key milestone in the B&W mPower development program. The B&W mPower control room prototype, […]
Musing about resilient power systems – natural gas, NGL (propane) and nuclear
Widespread power outages stimulate me to intense bouts of thinking about building resilient power systems, both when they happen to me and when they happen to someone else. During the summer of 2012, during one of the hottest weeks of the year, we lost power for a little more than a week as a result […]
Theo Simon and George Monbiot – Rational discussion about nuclear energy development
During the past week or so, I have been spending quite a bit of time following a discussion about nuclear energy between Theo Simon and George Monbiot. It is a deeply philosophical engagement between two literate and concerned people who view nuclear energy through different lenses and have, so far, reached different conclusions about its […]
Atomic Show #186 – SMRs, Climate Change, and Natural Gas Competition
On the evening of July 29, 2012, Suzy Hobbs-Baker, Director of the Nuclear Literacy Project and founder of PopAtomic Studios, Dan Yurman, who blogs at Idaho Samizdat and writes for Fuel Cycle Week and the ANS Nuclear Cafe, Margaret Harding, an independent nuclear energy consultant who blogs at 4 Factor Consulting, and Cal Abel, a […]
Pronuclear videos continuing to proliferate – The Nuclear Option
With a hat tip to Ben Heard at Decarbonize SA, I thought it might inspire you to see two videos side by side. These videos were created in geographic locations that are about as far apart as you can get and still be on Earth. As far as I can tell, neither creative team knew […]
Pebble bed reactor safety demonstration test – ABC video from 2007
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 […]
LFTR in Five Minutes – Is thorium better than a silver bullet energy solution?
On October 10, 2011, Thorium Remix became publicly available. The video is worth watching – there is a lot more information than can actually be squeezed into five minutes, so the headline of this post is actually a bit of a tease.
Update from Hyperion Power Generation Chief Operating Officer
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. […]
Where is Hyperion Power Generation headed now?
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 […]
Small Modular Reactors Could Be An American Export – But We Need to Move Faster
In the March 23, 2010 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Steven Chu published an op-ed piece titled America’s New Nuclear Option that describes the Administration’s growing interest in smaller nuclear energy systems that can be produced in factories and delivered nearly complete to sites around the country and around the world. Here is […]
