Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

PBMR

The Atomic Show #138 – Jaco Kriek, CEO PBMR Pty LTD

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Jaco Kriek has been the CEO of PBMR Pty LTD of South Africa for five years. On July 7, 2009 he spoke with me for nearly an hour about a wide range of topics.

The topics we discussed included the following:

  • History of PBMR as a stand alone company
  • Change in technical direction
  • Customer focused design efforts
  • Licensing challenges for unfamiliar nuclear technology
  • Potential for process heat supply market
  • Interest from petrochemical industry
  • Interest from American company talking about unit volumes in the thousands
  • PBMR as a national technical asset for South Africa

Hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. PBMR has a unique role in the nuclear industry and might be pointing the way to new sources of revenues and new customers that have never before considered using atomic fission as their heat source.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:01 — 26.6MB)

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The Atomic Show #129 – Atomic Gas Turbines

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On March 30, 2009, I had the privilege of presenting a talk at my alma mater on the topic of nuclear heated Brayton cycle machines – also known as atomic gas turbines or Adams EnginesTM.

This episode of The Atomic Show is my first attempt at an enhanced podcast using chapter markers and trying to add a slide presentation. The constraints of the file format truncates the edges of the slides, but I think you will get the gist of what they are trying to show. Here is a link to the presentation in PDF format (warning – it is a 12.4 MB file), just in case you are interested in seeing the full size slides.

As always, feedback and constructive criticism is welcome. Of course, if you have something nasty to say, feel free to add that as well – I can always used the delete button if necessary.

Promised link to Australia Broadcast Corporation (ABC) Catalyst program about China’s HTR-10

NUCLEAR CHINA (22/02/2007)

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:46 — 29.1MB)

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The Atomic Show #105 – Atomic Show #105 – Some PBMR science and technology from the inside

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Hans and Mary Lou Gougar return to The Atomic Show for an update on their respective PBMR related research projects. One of our show sponsors is by Entergy Nuclear. (They take no responsibility for any of the comments by the show host or the guests.) Imagine how cool it would be to work for a […]

Atomic Show #103 – PBMR Engineering Contract

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Kelly Taylor, Rod Adams and Joe Montague discuss nuclear news, including PBMR’s announced EPC contract Kelly Taylor, Joe Montague and I meet to chat about PBMR, nuclear events and nuclear industry history. Hope you enjoy the show. If you want to find out more about careers in the nuclear industry, please visit nuclearenergycareers.com. Podcast: Play […]

The Atomic Show #094 – Hans and Mary Lou Gougar (with Charlie and Betty) – a nuclear family living in South Africa

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Hans and Mary Lou Gougar are two of most interesting nukes that I know. They are currently living and working in South Africa for PBMR Pty Ltd. Their story is fascinating. I got up bright and early this morning (0400) to prepare to record a conversation with two fascinating people. Hans and Mary Lou Gougar […]