PNAS SMR waste study rebuttal
A recent paper by Lindsay Krall, Allison Macfarlane, and Rodney Ewing has garnered a great deal of attention: Stanford-led research finds small modular reactors will exacerbate challenges of highly radioactive nuclear waste Nuclear waste from small modular reactors The paper claims that small modular reactors (SMRs) will generate waste streams that are disproportionately large relative…
Overdue Homework for DOE
The Department of Energy has some overdue homework, and the US Senate is asking about it. To receive testimony on the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration on atomic energy defense activities in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2023 and the Future Years Defense Program, from 57:04 to 62:27…
Quotes from Glenn Seaborg’s autobiography
These are notable quotes from Glenn Seaborg’s 1993 autobiography “The Atomic Energy Commission Under Nixon”. Breeder Reactor Beginnings In the United States and several other countries, decisions were made quite early that a reactor employing fast neutrons, utilizing the uranium cycle, and cooled with liquid sodium, the so-called liquid metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR), was…
Quotes from Alvin Weinberg’s autobiography
These are notable quotes from Alvin Weinberg’s 1994 autobiography “The First Nuclear Era, the Life and Times of a Technological Fixer”. Thorium will create the Second Nuclear Era Until then I had never quite appreciated the full significance of the breeder. But now I became obsessed with the idea that humankind’s whole future depended on…