Jim Ferland, the CEO of The Babcock & Wilcox Company, was recently interviewed by Bill Loveless of Platts Energy Week about the company’s global business outlook. During the interview, Ferland discussed the B&W mPowerTM reactor, one of the leading small modular reactor development projects; FutureGen 2.0, a carbon capture and storage demonstration project; the impact […]
Smaller reactors
NuScale announces achievement of unlimited coping time
At the Nuclear Energy Insider SMR Conference in Columbia, S.C., Dr. Jose Reyes, a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer of NuScale Power, announced that his team had achieved an impressive design breakthrough. Two years after the Fukushima event, NuScale is introducing a safety system for our nuclear reactor that does not require DC batteries […]
The Weather Channel visits B&W mPower, Inc.
On February 14, 2013, my day job employer hosted a contingent from The Weather Channel who wanted to learn more about the B&W mPowerTM Reactor project. The video is quite informative and encouraging; even though there is a little poetic license taken with the story and the technical description. Though I work for B&W mPower, […]
Atomicrod visits Dot Net Rocks to chat with Carl and Richard
On January 18, I joined Carl and Richard, the hosts of Dot Net Rocks, for an hour long conversation about nuclear energy. We spanned a number of topics including current light water reactors, breeder reactors, accidents, safety records, SL-1, NR-1, Mars Rover, pebble beds, IFR, and traveling wave reactors. Please go visit and listen.
Adams Engine – Goal is cheap, ultra low emission fuel coupled to cheap machinery
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 […]
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 […]
