Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

ARPA-E will provide $30 million for nuclear fusion research


http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/08/arpa-e-will-provide-30-milllion-for.html

Common Misunderstandings About Nuclear Energy


Common Misunderstandings About Nuclear Energy

http://us.arevablog.com/2014/08/06/common-misunderstandings-about-nuclear-energy/

Nuclear Waste Is Allowed Above Ground Indefinitely By MATTHEW L. WALD


Nuclear Waste Is Allowed Above Ground Indefinitely


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/us/spent-nuclear-fuel-is-allowed-to-be-stored-above-ground.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

Westinghouse Wins Fuel Contract for Three Swedish Reactors


Westinghouse Wins Fuel Contract for Three Swedish Reactors


https://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2014/08/29/westinghouse-wins-fuel-contract-for-three-swedish-reactors-082901.aspx#.VAKK9khH1FU

Workers drop refueling crane console into Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3 spent fuel pool


Workers drop refueling crane console into Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3 spent fuel pool

http://enformable.com/2014/08/workers-drop-refueling-crane-console-fukushima-daiichi-reactor-3-spent-fuel-pool/

India's 500 MW Fast Breeder Reactor should be commissioned in 2015 and other India Nuclear News


http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/08/indias-500-mw-fast-breeder-reactor.html

Tehran, Moscow keen to enhance nuclear cooperation

Tehran, Moscow keen to enhance nuclear cooperation


http://en.trend.az/iran/nuclearp/2306648.html

Iran Preparing to Ink Contract with Russia to Build 2 More N. Power Plants

Iran Preparing to Ink Contract with Russia to Build 2 More N. Power Plants
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13930608000258

Concerns Raised At Community Panel on Decommissioning San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant

Concerns Raised At Community Panel on Decommissioning San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant


http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/aug/29/concerns-raised-community-panel-decommissioning-sa/

Nuclear power is indeed greener -- unless sea levels continue to rise [Letter]

Nuclear power is indeed greener -- unless sea levels continue to rise [Letter]


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-nuclear-power-safety-20140829,0,5436038.story

Doubts over India'€™s ability to handle nuclear power expansion

Doubts over India'€™s ability to handle nuclear power expansion



http://www.theage.com.au/world/doubts-over-india128153s-ability-to-handle-nuclear-power-expansion-20140830-10aggo.html

Edward Davis, USNIC: In the Matter of Waste Confidence, We so Deem


Edward Davis, USNIC: In the Matter of Waste Confidence, We so Deem

By Edward M. Davis

http://www.nucleartownhall.com/blog/edward-davis-usnic-in-the-matter-of-waste-confidence-we-so-deem/

TVA makes $4.5 billion bet on nuclear resurgence


TVA makes $4.5 billion bet on nuclear resurgence

http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/environment/2014/08/29/tva-makes-billion-bet-nuclear-resurgence/14811565/

Transatomic Power - nuclear industry take note



5 August 2014
Business Insider
Billionaire Investor Peter Thiel Now Wants To Disrupt The Nuclear Energy Industry
"Billionaire investor Peter Thiel and his venture capital firm Founders Fund will make a $2 million investment in Transatomic Power, a startup that's focused on developing a new type of nuclear reactor that safely turns nuclear waste into clean energy."


5 August 2014
Re/code
Going Nuclear! Founders Fund Plugs $2 Million Into Transatomic
"Founders Fund has made its first investment through FF Science, its new allocation for early-stage science ventures, putting $2 million into Transatomic Power."


5 August 2014
Gigaom
Nuclear startup Transatomic Power scores seed funding from Founders Fund
"On Tuesday, nuclear startup Transatomic Power announced that it has closed a seed round of $2 million from the Founders Fund's newly-launched science-focused fund FF Science."


5 August 2014
Xconomy
Nuclear Startup Transatomic Power Lands $2M From Founders Fund
"Cambridge, MA-based Transatomic has raised $2 million from FF Science, a portion of Founders Funds $1 billion investment pool that is targeted at science- and engineering-based companies."


5 August 2014
Transatomic Power
FF Science Invests $2 Million to Support Transatomic Power's Breakthrough Nuclear Reactor
"Transatomic Power, developers of a breakthrough in nuclear reactor design, announced today that FF Science, an investment vehicle of Founders Fund, has invested $2 million to assist the company with its seed stage development."


4 July 2014
Sourceable
Molten Reactor Prevents Nuclear Proliferation
"Scientists from Massachussetts-based Transatomic Power believe the improvements they've made to molten salt reactors have the potential to render the technology commercially viable by permitting the usage of uranium fuels with reduced enrichment levels."


3 July 2014
Fortune
Startup nuclear energy companies augur safer, cheaper atomic power
"Between them, they portend leaps in safety, cut way down on nuclear waste, use "waste" as fuel, minimize weapons proliferation risks, slash costs and tremendously boost efficiencies."


24 June 2014
The Atlantic
Is Nuclear Power Ever Coming Back?
"Transatomic Power's reactor operates at normal atmospheric pressure, eliminating the need for the heavy-duty containment structures that drive up the cost of building traditional plants. "


21 June 2014
PhysOrg
Molten salt reactor concept has new Transatomic Power lift
"The company sees potential in an innovative nuclear reactor that can turn nuclear waste into a safe, clean, and scalable source of electricity."


20 June 2014
IEEE Spectrum
Transatomic Power Wants to Build a Better Reactor
"Improving on the 1950s design, Dewan and Massie's reactor could run on spent nuclear fuel, thus reducing the industry's nuclear waste problem."


5 June 2014
Bloomberg Businessweek
Transatomic Power's Safer Reactor Eats Nuclear Waste
"Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie had a little time on their hands in February 2010, so they decided to fix what's wrong with nuclear reactors."


11 May 2014
The Boston Globe
Nuclear startups reimagine atomic energy
"This technology, Transatomic added, could recover the remaining energy from spent fuel rods stored in US nuclear plants - more than 70,000 metric tons, enough to cover a football field about seven yards deep."


16 April 2014
The Weather Channel
Nuclear Waste Disposal
"MIT engineer Dr. Leslie Dewan co-founded Transatomic Power to solve the problem of nuclear waste that stays hot for centuries."


11 April 2014
New Scientist
Start-ups fuel boom in small-scale nuclear power
"A new wave of nuclear scientists aims to build small-scale reactors that provide carbon-free power more cheaply and safely than today's huge power plants."


3 April 2014
Engineering.com
Generating Power from Nuclear Waste - A Moonshot Proposal
"Dewan has proposed a nuclear reactor that runs on, and completely consumes, nuclear waste as its fuel."


26 February 2014
Gizmodo
Nuclear Energy: What is its place in the future global energy landscape? (in French)
"[...] Russ Wilcox, Mark Massie, and Leslie Dewan have designed a nuclear reactor capable of simultaneously producing electricity by consuming radioactive waste from conventional power plants, and significantly reducing the radioactive lifetime of the waste."


26 February 2014
Nuclear Energy Institute
Nuclear Energy: What is its place in the future global energy landscape?
"Leslie Dewan, the chief science officer and co-founder of Transatomic Power Corp., said that her company's proposed molten salt reactor design could achieve a high burnup rate and consume low-enriched uranium or used nuclear fuel. "


16 February 2014
Contrepoints
Producing energy with nuclear waste? (in French)
"Using the hundreds of thousands of tons of nuclear waste already stored, future Transatomic Power reactors would be able to generate enough electricity to power the entire planet for 72 years."


13 February 2014
Next Big Future
Transatomic Power presents their molten salt reactor at Google Solve for X 2014
"When running on fresh fuel, the TAP reactor is able to generate up to about 75 times more electricity than a light water reactor per kilogram of natural uranium ore."


7 February 2014
RayRock
Transatomic Tackles Spent Nuclear Fuel Waste with Green Energy
"Transatomic Power, a new company founded by MIT PhDs, Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, and Russ Wilcox is tackling the spent nuclear fuel issue head on!"


5 February 2014
The Breakthrough Institute
The Passion of Alvin Weinberg
"A new generation of engineers concerned about climate change are rediscovering Weinberg and his design. ... MIT engineer Leslie Dewan co-founded Transatomic Power, which uses a MSR design."


4 February 2014
Next Big Future
Transatomic Power's molten salt nuclear reactor design that would generate 75 times more electricity per ton of uranium
"Transatomic Power (TAP) is developing an advanced molten salt reactor that generates clean, passively safe, proliferation-resistant, and low-cost nuclear power."


3 January 2014
Q Finance
Molten Salt Reactor Can Transform Nuclear Power Costs
"One of the biggest, most insuperable problems with nuclear power generation, namely what to do with the waste that remains toxic for aeons to come, looks like it has been solved by a US start up. Say hello to the Massachusetts-based Transatomic Power."


2 January 2014
Harvard Business School Magazine
The Power to Change
"After disrupting the book industry with E Ink, Russell Wilcox (MBA 1995) hopes to transform the energy sector by converting nuclear waste into a safe electricity source."


31 December 2013
Gizmodo
The Most Monstrous Machines of the Year
"America alone produces about 2,000 metric tons of nuclear waste annually and our best solution for disposing of it: bury it deep in the Earth. However, a pair of MIT scientists believe they've found not only a better way of eliminating nuclear waste but recycling the deadly detritus into enough clean electricity to power the entire world until 2083. Win, meet win."


30 December 2013
Energy & Capital
The Fuel of the Future
"A new company based out of Massachusetts by the name of Transatomic Power of Cambridge has plans to build molten salt reactors to burn off nuclear waste by tons."


20 December 2013
Reuters
Thorium and the dream of clean nuclear power
"A privately owned U.S. start-up, Transatomic Power of Cambridge, Massachusetts, says it plans to build molten salt cooled reactors to burn some of the 270,000 metric tons of nuclear waste accumulated worldwide."


15 December 2013
Smart Planet
Business! Innovation! Startups! It must be nuclear power
"Innovation is returning to nuclear in a manner that the industry hasn't seen since the early days in the 1950s and 60s."


12 December 2013
Klean Industries
Molten Salt Reactor Can Transform Nuclear Power Costs
"Novel designs with alternative cooling fluids other than water, such as Transatomic Power's molten salt-cooled reactor ... are in development."


6 December 2013
Scientific American
The future of nuclear energy: Let a thousand flowers bloom
"They have transformed nuclear technology into an entrepreneurial game of ideas and funding sustained by a healthy interplay between academic, industrial and government laboratories. ... They are bucking the trend set by the large, bureaucratic government organizations and their industrial counterparts. And most importantly, they are having fun doing it, trading ideas and exploring new technical ground. "


4 December 2013
TIME Magazine
These Are the 30 People Under 30 Changing the World
"The innovative design ... mixes nuclear material with molten salt to contain reactions and reduce both waste and the risk of a meltdown."


27 November 2013
GreenBiz
How radical innovation can shake up the energy sector
"Transatomic Power is more quietly making its progress in energy-hungry China. It has developed the mass-producible 500 MW-generating WAMSR, the Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor, which turns high-level nuclear waste into clean electric power."


19 November 2013
Tech and Innovation Daily
The Technology That Will Help Prevent Another Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
"Suppose there's a company whose nuclear design not only avoids meltdowns, but also puts the spent fuel rods left over from conventional nuclear reactors to good use. ... Well, there is. It's called Transatomic Power."


1 October 2013
The Weather Channel
Climate Change Conversation Focuses on Science, Solutions
"'My wish for this week is that we stop hitting the snooze button, that we get out of bed and do something,' Weather Company CEO David Kenny said during his opening remarks. 'We are making progress. We are slowly, slowly winning this battle and I hope today we move it a little further along.'"


16 September 2013
US Embassy - IIP Digital
Nuclear Entrepreneurs
"New-generation nuclear reactors promise to make nuclear power generation safer, more efficient and less expensive and address the issue of radioactive waste, its byproduct, now stored at nuclear plant locations."


20 August 2013
MIT Technology Review
What if we could build a nuclear reactor that costs half as much, consumes nuclear waste, and will never melt down?
"The nuclear power industry has a reputation for resisting innovative changes. But Leslie Dewan and a colleague have dared to invent a new type of nuclear reactor."


5 August 2013
TIME Magazine
Amid Economic and Safety Concerns, Nuclear Advocates Pin Their Hopes on New Designs
"They see atomic power not as an existential threat to the planet but instead as the best way to save it, and they're trying to revive the stalled industry with next-generation reactor designs that could change the way a skeptical public views atomic energy."


10 July 2013
Elle China
Geek Girls Can Save the World (in Chinese)
"This is a more secure, more economical, and more environmentally friendly energy source that will provide energy ... while addressing the world's mountain of nuclear waste."


8 July 2013
TIME Magazine
Nuclear Energy Is Largely Safe. But Can It Be Cheap?
"The reactor design could also potentially run off nuclear waste - addressing another problem that holds back atomic expansion. ... Pass the molten salt."


13 June 2013
The New Yorker
A New Way to Do Nuclear
"Theoretically, the reactor can put out as much electric power (five hundred megawatts) as a standard coal plant without belching carbon into the atmosphere. It can also run on nuclear waste, generating power even as it relieves another environmental burden."


11 June 2013
Popular Science
The Energy Fix: How Waste Could Power The U.S. For Decades
"Engineers at a start-up called Transatomic Power say a reactor they designed could use this stockpile [of spent nuclear fuel] to meet the nation's energy needs for 70 years."


1 June 2013
Glamour
Glamour's First Ever Glamstarter Awards: 7 Women Entrepreneurs You Need to Know
"She's taking complex issues and developing creative solutions that affect our environmental future."


14 March 2013
Gizmodo
The Future of Nuclear Power Runs on the Waste of Our Nuclear Past
"America alone produces about 2,000 metric tons of nuclear waste annually and our best solution for disposing of it: bury it deep in the Earth. However, a pair of MIT scientists believe they've found not only a better way of eliminating nuclear waste but recycling the deadly detritus into enough clean electricity to power the entire world until 2083. Win, meet win."


13 March 2013
Extreme Tech
The 500MW molten salt nuclear reactor: Safe, half the price of light water, and shipped to order
"Transatomic's proposed reactor would also have a so-called freeze plug - an actively cooled barrier that melts in the event of a power failure, leading all nuclear material to automatically drain into a reinforced holding tank. These reactors are 'walk away safe,' meaning that a power failure, a runaway heat cascade, and a general worker's strike could all happen on the same day - and the worst we'd suffer is loss of service."


12 March 2013
MIT Technology Review
Safer Nuclear Power, at Half the Price
"Transatomic Power, an MIT spinoff, is developing a nuclear reactor that it estimates will cut the overall cost of a nuclear power plant in half. It's an updated molten-salt reactor, a type that's highly resistant to meltdowns. Molten-salt reactors were demonstrated in the 1960s at Oak Ridge National Lab, where one test reactor ran for six years, but the technology hasn't been used commercially."


27 February 2013
Smart Planet
And the DOE energy innovation award goes to ... a new type of nuclear power
"A couple of Transatomic Power's young co-founders - Mark Massie and Leslie Dewan - look more Twitterati than Nuclearati. But make no mistake. They're obsessed with nuclear power. So much so that this week, the newfangled nuclear reactor they're developing beat over 200 inventive contestants from across all areas of energy to scoop the top award at a U.S. Department of Energy "innovation summit," voted by investors and entrepreneurs."


13 December 2012
Discovery News
Nuclear Plant Powered by Spent Fuel
"An old nuclear technology is getting another look, and it could mean clean, emission-free electricity, while at the same solving the problem of nuclear waste. It's called a molten salt reactor, and it's an idea that dates to the late 1950s. A start-up called Transatomic Power, based in Cambridge, Mass., is working on a newer version that uses nuclear waste as fuel."


17 December 2012
Forbes
30 Under 30 - The Future of Energy is Nuclear
"With no risk of meltdown, no carbon emissions, and powered by nuclear waste, Dewan and Massie's design could change the world. ... (Plus, they're exceptionally charismatic and well spoken: check out their captivating TED talk here, and Leslie Dewan's new interview with Forbes here.)"


2 November 2012
90.9WBUR
E Ink Founder's Startup Goal: Power The World With Efficient Nuclear Power
"Russell Wilcox has helped change the way we read. Now he wants to change the way we produce nuclear power. Wilcox co-founded E Ink, the company that created and built the screens in e-readers such as Kindles and Nooks. Now he's taken the helm of another start-up out of MIT. The goal? To make a new kind of safe and efficient nuclear reactor that could run on nuclear waste."


27 September 2012
Forbes
A Pair of MIT Scientists Try to Transform Nuclear Power
"'Nuclear power is in a cul de sac,' Russ Wilcox, the CEO and co-founder of Transatomic, told me in a phone interview. 'The nuclear industry knows it's in trouble, it's not quite sure what to do, and it's just trying to survive for the moment. It's a fabulous time to do a leapfrog move.'"


4 June 2012
Gigaom
When digital entrepreneurs go nuclear, literally
"Entrepreneur Russ Wilcox, who is the former CEO and co-founder of display-maker E Ink, has just joined next-gen nuclear startup Transatomic Power as its CEO."


22 March 2012
BostInno
Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup
"In an age of lean startups and hyper-focus on capital efficiency, you might think nuclear power is anathema to the startup and venture world. But you'd be wrong."