I’ve had the great pleasure and honor to be invited to attend and speak at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’s inaugural conference in London, UK, this week. Yesterday was the first day of the conference and I found it, just remarkable. There is a tremendous gathering here of people dedicated to several key propositions, which […]
“ORNL molten salt concept could lead to ‘smartphone’ of reactors”, Carolyn Krause, Oak Ridger I recently had the opportunity to speak to the some of the ORNL “old-timers” who comprise the Friends of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (FORNL) in Oak Ridge, TN. FORNL is a non-profit organization focused on promoting the goals of ORNL. I […]
This is the talk that I gave over lunchtime at the Clean Growth Leadership Network conference, held in London on September 6, 2022: We’re all glad to be here and enjoying one another’s company as we talk about these important issues, but there’s no denying that we’re meeting under a shadow. All of us are […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Today our hopes for a thorium-powered future took a huge step forward as Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas introduced the “Thorium Energy Security Act” in the United States Senate. S.4242 – A bill to provide for the preservation and storage of uranium-233 to foster development of thorium molten-salt reactors […]
Huff approved to head Office of Nuclear Energy Katy Huff has been confirmed by the Senate to lead the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. I’d love to be happy about this confirmation, but I’m not, because Katy has taken a pretty hard-line opinion against thorium energy. What’s even more baffling about that to me is […]
For many, many years now, we have endeavoured on this blog to help the public understand the value of uranium-233 and the unique advantage that the United States possesses with their U-233 inventory. But for just as long, we have lamented that the Department of Energy is bent on the destruction of this valuable material. […]