Since giving my talk at TEAC2 several weeks ago on my proposed plan for our nuclear future, I’ve been spending a lot more time thinking about this issue, the plan, and how to describe what I would propose to do. Sometimes it helps me to sort out thoughts by drawing a picture, but in this […]
Here’s the talk I will be giving this morning at the Thorium Energy Alliance Conference: As we have for most of human history, we stand at the edge of an energy crisis. The methods by which we have powered our society have come to a limit, and a change is necessary. Seven hundred years ago […]
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 […]
The Department of Energy has an Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE). They have five overall strategic goals: 1. Extend life, improve performance, and sustain health and safety of the current fleet of nuclear power plants 2. Enable new plant builds and improve the affordability of nuclear energy 3. Enable the transition away from fossil fuels […]
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 […]
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, […]
A couple of months ago, I felt like a nuclear “Indiana Jones” when a trip out to Iuka, Mississippi took me face-to-face with the ruins of a nuclear reactor. Or maybe it was more like an episode of “LOST” where they find a four-toed statue. But there I was looking at a huge, unfinished cooling […]
[I]t is incumbent on those in high positions to reach wise decisions, and it is reasonable and important that the public be correctly informed. It is incumbent on all of us to state the facts as forthrightly as possible. – Hyman Rickover testifying before Congress in 1953, QUESTION FROM SENATOR SHAHEEN Q3. Of the six […]
(guest post by Charles Barton) Lars Jorgensen is an Electrical Engineer who is Chief Technologist for Radio Products for Texas Instruments. In his spare time Lars has an unusual hobby. He is doing unpaid work on the development of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, in a project that Rod Adams describes as the nuclear equivalent […]