The Bussard Ramjet drive has been proven not to work, but laying out a runway of fuel could work. This has been examined in more detail. Fuel is deliberately emplaced in the path of the spacecraft before the flight. Kare proposed that, at the velocities proposed for interstellar flight, nuclear fusion can be accomplished at …
ThorCon Power’s main investor, Chris Anderson, who is also the manager of TED Talks and a friend of Elon Musk, and Operations Director of PT ThorCon Power Indonesia , Bob S Effendi, held an audience with the Head of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) , Laksana Tri Handoko. BRIN together with ThorCon agreed …
In the late 1960s, Oak Ridge National Labs in the USA built and operated a 7.5 MW thermal molten salt reactor. During 1968, it operated 75% of the time and generated 41,000 megawatt hours of heat. The film below was produced in 1969 by Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the United States Atomic Energy Commission …
Korea’s SK Group will invest USD250 million in TerraPower to develop small modular nuclear reactors. The round was co-led by SK Inc and SK Innovation and TerraPower’s founder Bill Gates. Additional funding will come from other investors. The US Department of Energy is giving TerraPower cost-shared funding through the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) to …
Abilene Christian University (ACU) has applied to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a construction licence for a molten salt research reactor (MSRR), to be built on its campus in Abilene, Texas, as part of the Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing (NEXT) laboratory. ACU plans for the MSRR to achieve criticality by December 2025. The …
Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) has been given approval by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment to commission an experimental thorium-powered molten-salt reactor. This is the first molten salt nuclear reactor since the US shutdown a test reactor in 1969. The TMSR-LF1 will use fuel enriched to under 20% U-235, have a thorium inventory …
Japan will restart nuclear reactors and develop new plants using next-generation nuclear technologies. Japan wants to restart seven more nuclear reactors from next summer onward, Japan PM Kishida said at a government meeting on “green transformation.” That would bring the number of reactors brought back online after the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe to 17 out of …
California and Germany could both act to save their remaining nuclear power plants. California could save one nuclear reactor that provides 15% of its clean power and Germany could save reactors that would prevent adding about 60% more natural gas. Germany has been short natural gas that it imports from Russia. The California Diablo Canyon …
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will certify NuScale’s small modular nuclear reactor design for use in the United States. The NuScale is a smaller version of the approved pressure water reactor design which is the primary NRC design that has gotten new design variation approval over the 48-year existence of the NRC. The NRC (from …
There are three main types of nuclear fusion and PB11 (hydrogen-boron) is the most desired. PB11 nuclear fusion would have almost no neutron radiation but it takes 1 billion degree temperatures instead of 100 million for deuterium tritium or about 500 million for deuteriurm-deuterium. The PALS laser facility in Prague has reported a major advance …
I have a farely comprehensive understanding of the huge challenges needed to create commercial nuclear fusion power. This is why I am more optimistic about molten salt nuclear fission. I try to explain this in two videos. However, this is a complex topic. I will try to state this as clearly and briefly as possible …
