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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), the supplier that sold four new steam generators to Southern California Edison (SCE) for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), has issued a redacted version of its root cause analysis of the u-tube failures that have kept both of the station’s 1100...

Ted Rockwell has been an active participant in the development of nuclear energy production in the United States since the very earliest days of the technology. He started his nuclear career as an engineering troubleshooter in 1943 at the site that is now Oak Ridge National Laboratory during the Manhattan...

I’m doing a little history reading today and came across a passage worth sharing. The source is Glenn Seaborg’s “The Atomic Energy Commission Under Nixon” St. Martin’s Press, NY 1993 pg 101-102. In December 1965, the management of Northern States Power Company (NSP) reached...

In the summer of 2012, Argonne National Laboratory recorded the first hand memories of two members of the group of 49 engineers, scientists and students who were present when mankind first proved that it could control a fission chain reaction. Just imagine – you can watch a very recently recorded...

Reed College is perhaps best known among technologists as the place where Steve Jobs learned about calligraphy – among a number of other useful topics. It is also the only liberal arts college that owns a research reactor that is operated primarily by undergraduates. I hope you enjoyed Will and...

Note: Len Koch, whose participation in nuclear energy research started in the 1940s, wrote the below open letter to colleagues who are striving to restore interest in the progress that they made in research and development of the Integral Fast Reactor during the period from 1954-1994 the year that President...

Kirk Sorensen is the founder of Flibe Energy. He has been prospecting in libraries for years to learn more about a path not taken (yet). He is convinced that the way forward for energy in the United States and around the world is the molten salt thorium reactor that can produce an almost unlimited amount...

By: Cal Abel (submitted for publication on December 2, 2011, but slightly delayed by an inept editor.) Today marks the 69th anniversary of CP-1 criticality and 54th anniversary of Shippingport criticality. Perhaps with too much time to think I wrote some thoughts and observations about my brief experience...

On December 2, 1942, a small team of scientists and technicians methodically pulled neutron absorbing rods out of a carefully stacked pile of graphite bricks and natural uranium/uranium oxide spheres. The pile has been assembled in just a few weeks with a total project budget in the range of a few hundred...

I have been fascinated by radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs), aka nuclear batteries, ever since I saw a display at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor sometime in the early 1990s. In that energy exhibit, there was a tiny RTG that was designed to power a cardiac pacemaker...

Kirk Sorensen is an inspiring speaker and teacher who is motivated by an incredible vision. As he eloquently describes in the video below, he has excavated and dusted off ideas and documentation from the archives at Oak Ridge National Laboratory about using thorium in molten salt reactors. According...

On October 10, 2011, Thorium Remix became publicly available. The video is worth watching – there is a lot more information than can actually be squeezed into five minutes, so the headline of this post is actually a bit of a tease. ...read more

I’ll admit my bias – my father spent his whole career in the business of making electricity. I learned very early in life just how important that job is. Some of the unsung heroes that I have celebrated over the years include the linemen who restored our electricity nearly two weeks after...

Ray has released the final chapter of the Shoreham documentary. He has also established a store on CafePress.com that features merchandise and artwork. The proceeds from any purchases will help support the documentary artist as well as the educational efforts of PopAtomic Studios. I hope you enjoyed...

This segment of the Shoreham documentary lays some of the groundwork for the interviews that will be a part of the story. James and Ray spent a lot of time in libraries and press vaults finding material and identifying potential candidates that could provide views from various perspectives. Interview...

Though many casual observers of the nuclear energy industry in the US believe that Three Mile Island and a fear of “The China Syndrome” are the root cause of our 35 year hiatus in new nuclear plant construction, perceptive observers more often point to the Shoreham Syndrome as the more important...

One of the most useful ways to overcome fear of the unknown is to gain knowledge about the source of the fear. There have been a lot of scary sounding reports recently about the state of the nuclear fuel cores inside the pressure vessels at Fukushima Daiichi units 1, 2, and 3. Many of them... ...read...

(Post was originally published on July 1, 1995. It was updated on April 2, 2011 to include information and videos that were not available in when it was first written. The title has also been revised to open up a new discussion – was the NS Savannah a failure or a successful demonstration of a...