NEI Nuclear Notes

We’ve written a bit about NuScale over the last week, primarily to spotlight its small reactor expo. The NuScale design includes a boiling water reactor, a technology that is, in its essentials, well-understood and time tested. It’s not the only such technology, but it is used in about a third of American reactors (pressurized water reactors are the others). Plenty of other technologies have been developed over the life of domestic nuclear energy. Canada primarily uses home-grown pressurized heavy water reactors; it has exported its CANDU technology to other countries, notably India. Russia has developed light water graphite-moderated reactors, which are similar to boiling water reactors. (World Nuclear Association has a roundup of reactor types here .) Another design that came to life in the 1960s is the molten salt reactor. WNA describes it thusly: In the normal or basic MSR concept, the fuel is a molten mixture of lithium and beryllium fluoride (FLiBe) salts with dissol...

Under the somewhat alarming title, How Startups Can Save Nuclear Tech, Fortune writer Katie Fehrenbacher offers a survey of, well, startups promoting nuclear technology. Fortune finds this interesting for reasons that have become obvious to anyone who has looked at recent energy policy: But four years after the infamous accident [that is, Fukushima], environmentalists, nuclear advocates, and researchers are now looking at nuclear tech as an almost necessary way to generate power without carbon emissions that, if used correctly, could be crucial to help the world avoid the worst of global warming. And unlike with solar and wind, nuclear reactors generate power around the clock. The article zeroes in on the investor community, which, even if your primary interest is new nuclear technology, drives that technology to market. It makes sense for Fortune to spin the nuclear diamond to this particular facet – it’s the magazine’s bailiwick – and provides a unique perspective. La...

Dr. Leslie Dewan Later this morning, the House Science Committee will hold a hearing on the "Future of Nuclear Energy" . Click here to watch the hearing live on UStream at 10:00 a.m. Featured on the witness list is a name that our readers will be familiar with - Dr .Leslie Dewan of Transatomic Power . She was kind enough to pass along a copy of her testimony so we could preview it for you right now. We've gotten to know Dr. Dewan very well over the past year thanks to her role in NEI's Future of Energy campaign . Transatomic is developing a new reactor that's designed to burn used nuclear fuel . It's an incredibly promising new technology, but one that Dr. Dewan is concerned won't come to market first in the U.S. because of regulatory hurdles. It was just those sort of challenges that led the Bill Gates nuclear startup Terrapower to decide to build their first prototype in China : The commercial nuclear regulatory structure in the United State...

When Bill Gates became Chairman of the Board of TerraPower a few years ago, the potential role of angels and venture capital to push energy technology forward became more apparent. Gates became involved with TerraPower because -  of his belief that nuclear energy will play a key role in addressing the imperative to move to low-carbon or zero-carbon energy. Because energy is a critical element in global development, he has personally supported numerous businesses working to develop safe, affordable and environmentally-friendly sources of electricity. He is an advocate for dramatic increases in government spending on energy research and is a founding member of the American Energy Innovation Council. Another Microsoft veteran, Nathan Myrhvold, is TerraPower’s Vice Chairman of the Board, so perhaps collegiality and friendship also play a part. In any event, they have helped TerraPower move forward. Gates would be classified as an angel, an individual who materially cont...

Transatomic Power Logo We generally don't pay much attention to news from the venture capital community here at NEI Nuclear Notes, but for one day we're happy to make an exception for this announcement from Transatomic Power : 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. The funds will be used for bench-top laboratory testing and refinement of the company’s designs and computer models. "We believe there are massive opportunities for innovation across all parts of the energy sector, ranging from technologies to improve production and transmission to new methods of baseload generation, like the Transatomic Power reactor. Transatomic has the potential to make nuclear energy clean, safe, and affordable, providing a low-cost source of carbon-free power and consuming the waste of older react...