As I previously mentioned, I was involved in a proposal to the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) on an investigation in using liquid-halide reactors (both chloride and fluoride) along with salt-based reprocessing techniques to investigate how to address our issues surrounding spent nuclear fuel–often erroneously called “nuclear waste”. In a nutshell, we proposed to fluorinate […]
(On a personal note–today has been a very good day for me. My dad is having open-heart surgery and I’ve been so concerned for him, and just received word that his surgery was successful and he is doing well.) So I’m very happy about that. But I did get some disappointing news today. I was […]
The semiannual reports issued by the Molten-Salt Reactor Program (MSRP) at Oak Ridge National Lab from 1958 through 1976 are an absolute gold-mine of information. The problem is, despite the fact that nearly all of them are available in the Document Repository, it’s a bit difficult to parse through 20-30 different PDFs, each about 30-60 […]
My friend Rod Adams has encouraged me to make comparisons between thorium and fossil fuels, and did one today that I thought might be worth posting. It compares the recently constructed Cameron Liquefied-Natural-Gas (LNG) terminal on the Calcasieu Channel, 18 miles from the Gulf of Mexico in Hackberry, LA. Cameron was started in August 2005 […]
I think that if a technophile like myself were to design their dream work environment, it would look very much like the Google campus. Coming from the sweltering summer heat of Alabama to the cool evening breezes of Mountain View, one might say that they started out ahead–but the Google experience just kept getting better. […]
(note: I have a blog post about the Google-trip all written and ready to go, as soon as the video is posted…in the meantime…) In January of 2008, I had the pleasure of touring the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant with a student group from the University of Tennessee. Watts Bar is the newest reactor in […]
I should have known right from the moment I walked in the building that this was going to go well. Right inside the main door are two large statues; one of James Prescott Joule, the famous physicist and thermodynamicist, and the other of John Dalton, chemist and pioneer of atomic theory. As I walked by, […]
I’ve just returned from having an opportunity to brief the Manchester Report panel and it went very well. I will give a fuller report after returning home tomorrow. In the meantime, I wanted to point you to some stories that are already written in the UK Guardian on the Manchester Report that describe the scope […]
It’s no secret that I have not supported the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, but I want to commend Rep. Joe Sestak for trying to make some lemonade out of those lemons with his amendment to the bill: AMENDMENT TO HR 2454OFFERED BY MR. SESTAK OF PENNSYLVANIA Page 296, after line 6, insert the following new section: […]
IAEA-TECDOC-1450 is a document that was issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency in July of 2005. It is a fairly comprehensive treatment of the use of thorium in many different types of nuclear reactors. Most of the attention in the paper is focused on the use of solid thorium oxide fuel assemblies in light-water […]