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Fluorination Work under the MSRP

As was previously mentioned, the actual work on continuous fluorination was surprising small during the Molten-Salt Reactor Program (MSRP) that ran from 1957 until 1976. Fuel reconstitution was mentioned on pages 199-201 of ORNL-3936 in June 1966. Continuous fluorination was mentioned on page 202. They described an experiment using a 1-inch diameter nickel column with […]

Sorensen Rebuttal of IEER/PSR Thorium Paper

Several people who have recently learned about thorium have contacted me with regards to a “fact sheet” about thorium issued by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) called “Thorium Fuel: No Panacea for Nuclear Power.” The authors of this sheet were Arjun Makhijani and Michele Boyd. Last […]

UTK/ORNL Proposal to ARPA-E

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 […]

Getting out from between “MOX” and a “Hard Place”

In 2003, an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Between MOX and a Hard Place, described the difficulty of disposing of the vast amounts of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium left over from the Cold War. “Weapons-grade” material generally means plutonium that consists predominantly of the isotope plutonium-239, and uranium that consists predominantly of […]