Radiopharmaceuticals, also called medical isotopes, are specialized forms of medicine that help to diagnose and treat many challenging medical conditions including cancer. Their central advantage over other pharmaceuticals is that they emit radiation in the form of a photon of light that can be used to diagnose or identify specific conditions, or a charged particle […]
Several days after the successful start of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment, the local paper, the “Oak Ridger”, published this editorial: THE OAK RIDGER FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 1965, page 4 Editorial: Significant Step To ‘Burning The Rocks’ Many important stews lead up to the “going critical” of a new reactor. For instance, in the case of […]
For many nuclear engineers, the moment a new reactor first achieves criticality is considered the “birth” of their creation, the moment it “comes alive”. Criticality is special, because it means that the reactor is generating new neutrons at precisely the rate at which they are consumed in fission. Unlike a rocket launch, or a ship […]
Dr. Rusty Towell, professor of physics at Abilene Christian University, presents the benefits of LFTR technology at TEDxACU:
At the invitation of Dr. Jan-Leen Kloosterman of the Delft University of Technology (Technische Universiteit Delft, TU Delft) I attended a symposium on thorium in molten-salt reactors held on April 17, 2015. Other participants included David LeBlanc of Terrestrial Energy and Leslie Dewan of Transatomic Power. My objective was to make the case that the […]
Thorium has tremendous promise as a future source of nuclear energy. It is the only material whose fissile product (uranium-233) produces sufficient neutrons in thermal fission to sustain its own consumption. The important implication is that a properly-designed thorium-fueled reactor, once started with fissile material, can continue to produce energy without additional fissile material. Inherent […]
For many years now I have been interested in the work being done at UC-Berkeley in the modeling of molten-salt reactors using a simulant fluid. Prandtl number matching between salt and simulant fluid: (1) Dynamic viscosity is often a strong function of temperature while specific heat and thermal conductivity are generally weak functions of […]
(guest post by Jon Morrow) From time to time there appear in the public domain stories and advertisements about revolutionary consumer products and their technical underpinnings. These communications make outlandish, but very exciting, claims. Many of these involve promises of huge dollar savings to the consumer. These opportunistic authors use the interesting technique of attaching […]
I flew to Seoul, South Korea for a workshop at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) on the subject of thorium molten-salt reactors. I arrived Monday night and took a taxi from Gimhae International Airport in Busan to the Lotte Hotel in Ulsan, and being incredibly jet-lagged I pretty much collapsed into […]
Not really. Not if you’ve been paying attention to this field for years. But the thing that excites me is that the issue is beginning to percolate into the public consciousness a bit more than before. Could it be a bit of a backlash against the fear/uncertainty/doubt that the media drove upon us after the […]