Thorium Energy Alliance Conference – October 19

ByRod Adams

I got permission to take a few hours off of my day job yesterday morning to attend a professional event related to future employment. I crossed town on the excellent Metro system to the Florida Ave-Galludet University stop and made my way to the Kellog Conference Center for the opening of the first session of the first ever meeting of the Thorium Energy Alliance.

I listened to some inspiring opening remarks, a talk by Kirk Sorensen about the history and potential of thorium based energy, one by Robert Hargraves about Aiming High for a dramatic improvement in the way that humans manufacture the power that they need, and one by Paul Houle on using existing codes for simulations of various configurations of molten salt (liquid fluoride) reactors.

There was one more morning talk on the topic of reactor design that described some interesting configurations and fluid fuel options that included a low enriched uranium plus thorium version, but my nearly 50 year old brain is simply not pulling out the name of the presenter. (I promise to fill it in later, but I left my notes in my day job office.) (Note: The presenter was David LeBlanc.) My major contribution to the conference was to remind the attendees that thorium is a wonderful fuel that works well in cooperation with uranium. In fact, it does not work at all without uranium.

If you happen to be in the DC area, the conference is still happening for one more day. The roster of presenters is good, the company is interesting and the venue is one that will allow some very personal engagement with the other attendees.

Rod Adams
Rod Adams

Rod Adams is Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, a venture fund that invests in advanced nuclear, which provides affordable access to this clean energy sector to pronuclear and impact investors. Rod, a former submarine Engineer Officer and founder of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., which was one of the earliest advanced nuclear ventures, is an atomic energy expert with small nuclear plant operating and design experience. He has engaged in technical, strategic, political, historic and financial analysis of the nuclear industry, its technology, regulation, and policies for several decades through Atomic Insights, both as its primary blogger and as host of The Atomic Show Podcast. Please click here to subscribe to the Atomic Show RSS feed. To join Rod's pronuclear network and receive his occasional newsletter, click here.

Similar Posts

  • Identifying antinuclear slants in Richard Martin’s “Superfuel”

    ByRod Adams

    Richard Martin’s new book titled Superfuel: Thorium, The Green Energy Source for the Future is a book that should come with a warning label. Though the author professes to be worried about climate change and fossil fuel depletion and wants to be seen as favoring new nuclear power development, that support comes with a very…

  • Nuclear facts and feelings in pink and green by Sunniva Rose

    ByRod Adams

    Sunniva Rose is a nuclear engineer working on her PhD at the University of Oslo. She is also a talented public speaker who likes to capture her audience’s attention, partially by choosing colors like pink and green to highlight facts about nuclear energy, deaths per terawatt hour, and growth in human population. In Nov 2013,…

  • Thorium Energy Alliance Conference – May 29-30

    ByRod Adams

    The Thorium Energy Alliance recently announced the dates and agenda for its 2014 annual conference (TEAC-2014). I had the privilege of attending the first TEAC and meeting some passionate, technically astute people. I’m still in touch with some of the friends I first met there. My schedule has not allowed me to attend the last…

  • The Atomic Show #141 – Thorium and other atomic topics

    ByRod Adams

    Robert Hargraves, Charles Barton and Rod Adams talk about the Thorium Energy Alliance Conference and other miscellaneous atomic topics. The conversation ranged from thorium, to uranium supplies, to chemistry versus engineering, to the history of Oak Ridge, to the unreality of energy solutions that require continuous cash transfers from the public to the developer. For…