The latest news about the destruction of the precious uranium-233 at ORNL is that the price tag continues to go up: U-233 project in flux; pricetag’s on the rise The latest project estimate is $477 million. That includes the contractor’s “interim project baseline” (of $404 million), plus $73 million of DOE-held contingency, etc. The Oak […]
Image: Kleen Energy Middleton Natural-Gas/Oil Power Plant Witness To Middletown Explosion: ‘There Are Bodies Everywhere’ Early reports were that a natural gas leak could have caused a devastating explosion Sunday morning that killed two and injured as many as 100 at a power plant being built south of the city on the Connecticut River. Homeowners […]
Yesterday I was going through some old papers and I came across one that I must have photocopied quite some time ago. It was called “Advanced HTGR Systems” and was written by Peter Fortescue of General Atomics in 1975, and published in the Annals of Nuclear Energy, Vol. 2, pages 787-799. As I looked at […]
Recently it was reported in Defense Daily that the White House Office of Management and Budget has moved to remove all research in fast-spectrum fission reactors from the DOE budget. This in turn prompted an outcry from the Secretary of Energy, Stephen Chu, who stated: “Prohibiting research and development on fast reactors under the fuel […]
In a previous post I began comparing how a utility that operated nuclear reactors might look at a liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) or an integral fast reactor (IFR) relative to their existing light-water reactors, with a specific look at whether or not operating these advanced reactors would confer an economic advantage for them. Despite how […]
Several weeks ago, an engineer who has been involved in ocean-thermal-electric conversion (OTEC) technology wrote a piece in the Huffington Post quite favorable to thorium, based in large part on the recent article in WIRED magazine. Patrick Takahashi: There is Something About Thorium I enjoyed the article, and it caused me to reflect about my […]
There is a fundamental fork in the road when it comes to plotting an energy future, a fundamental difference between two approaches, grounded in the very principles of nuclear physics. It was recognized at the dawn of the nuclear age by luminaries like Eugene Wigner and Enrico Fermi. This division went on to be implemented […]
Thanks to monitoring the Twitter feed for “thorium” I find some really wonderful things on the net, like this–on their blog, “Global Artwork” did a size comparison of the amount of firewood, coal, oil, uranium, and thorium it would take to meet all of the world’s energy needs. The pictures speak for themselves! Global Artwork: […]
Regular readers of this blog know that saving the uranium-233 is a very high priority of our small but enthusiastic thorium community. For those who are new, please read some or all of these posts: EfT Blog: Why Should We Save the Uranium-233? EfT Blog: Save the Uranium-233! EfT Forum: Save the Uranium-233!Saving this precious […]
Forgive my alliterative title, but Dr. Per Peterson of UC Berkeley is a co-chair of the Generation IV Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection Working Group. Several months ago on the thorium-forum he posted five specific categories of performance issues/threats that serve as a basis to assess the proliferation resistance of a proposed reactor design. As […]