On several occasions over the last ten years I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the United Launch Alliance (ULA) rocket construction facility in Decatur, Alabama. This marvelous factory was first built by Boeing exclusively to build the Delta 4 family of rockets, but as time progressed, it later included the construction of Delta 2 rockets […]
First of all, I’m very glad that John Kutsch has gone to the considerable time and effort it has taken to form the Thorium Energy Alliance. Then John went beyond that and organized the TEA Conference in Washington, DC, that took place on the 19th and 20th of October. John called me up in about […]
We keep a fairly large supply of whole wheat on hand for emergencies–it’s stored in big, five-gallon buckets. The whole wheat isn’t very edible until you grind it to flour. My wife wanted to make some bread tomorrow, so she told me to get out the bucket and grind some wheat. While I was grinding […]
An excellent paper was posted to the thorium-forum recently on the work being done at the Nuclear Research Institute at Rez in the Czech Republic. The paper was written by Jan Frybort and Radim Vocka and was entitled: Neutronic Analysis of Two-Fluid Thorium Molten Salt Reactor Regular readers of this blog know that I am […]
NPYP: We must abolish wind power because of World War I and II. Yes it is true; the use of wind power is a constant reminder and an insult to all the millions of people that suffered and died in the world wars. And the reason for this is steel. Steel was used to kill, […]
(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 […]
(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’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 […]
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 […]