Westinghouse’s eVinci is a 15 MWth, 5 MWe micro reactor. Westinghouse often refers to it as a nuclear battery. Unlike conventional nuclear power plants, eVinci uses no water and doesn’t produce steam. The eVinci is not “just another way to boil water.” There are no pumps in the system that moves heat out of the reactor. Instead, the system uses ~24′ long heat pipes to transfer fission heat to a heat exchanger. That device serves the same function as a combustor (burner)...

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a construction permit on September 16, 2024 to Abilene Christian University (ACU) to build a molten salt research reactor. This marked the first university research reactor approval in 30 years. It is the first liquid fuel reactor ever approved for construction by the NRC and only the second advanced reactor approved since the NRC was created in 1974. Aside: The first advanced reactor construction permit was issued to Kairos for its Hermes in...

Urenco is one of the few companies in the world that enriches uranium. It’s one of an even smaller group of enrichers that aren’t owned by the Russian, Chinese or Iranian governments. It plays a key role in the western world’s nuclear fuel cycle. That role became even more important after February, 2022. With the increasingly firm prospects of a long term increase in demand for its foundational product of low enriched uranium (LEU) and a looming demand for new enrichment...

The Nuclear Company exited a period of operating in “stealth mode” about a month ago. That exit was sufficiently well planned and executed that it is likely that Atomic Insights readers have already heard of the company. The Nuclear Company was incorporated a year ago. Its founding team has been working diligently to build the relationships and agreements needed to accomplish their self-assigned task. The company has a goal to build an initial fleet of reactors with a capacity of 6...

Brian Gitt, the Business Development lead at Oklo, visited the Atomic Show to describe his employer’s business model and current prospects. Oklo is an advanced fission and fuel recycling company with an expansive vision for becoming a competitive clean energy supplier. It plans to provide heat and/or electricity as a service from a fleet of small fission power plants that it owns, operates and maintains. Oklo recently became a public company through a SPAC merger with AltC, a...

Atomic Canyon is a six month old company that is developing AI tools to improve the efficiency of routine tasks associated with developing, licensing, building, owning and operating nuclear plants. Their first product, called Neutron, uses AI to modernize searching the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 52 million page collection of publicly available documents that are currently accessible through the somewhat cumbersome Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). Trey...

Emmet Penney is an unlikely, but effective pronuclear advocate. He earned his degrees in fine arts and great books and worked for several years as a professional poet – along with working in a bookstore as a way to keep paying the bills. He gradually transitioned from poetry into writing thoughtful essays on a variety of topics. One of those pieces caught the attention of Michael Shellenberger and began the process of converting Emmet into a passionate, erudite pronuclear advocate who...

Doug Sandridge is a lifelong oil and gas guy whose father was a geological engineer. While he was growing up, Doug lived a significant portion of his life overseas as his father’s job took the family to several different locations. When it was time to go to college, Doug returned to the United State to attend the University of Oklahoma. He took a brief detour into architecture, but by his second year he shifted his focus to engineering and petroleum-related topics. During the past 40...

James Krellenstein is a physicist, consultant and nuclear energy historian. He is currently employed as a senior advisor to Global Health Strategies. He started up their decarbonization practice with an emphasis on nuclear energy along with renewables. He was the lead author on GEH’s report on ways to reduce global dependence on Russia for necessary supplies of enriched uranium. He had the unusual and fortunate experience of growing up with a father who was a nuclear engineer turned...

Stefano Buono is a physicist and the successful founder of Advanced Accelerator Applications, a multibillion dollar company that pioneered the use of several therapeutic medical isotopes. After making several people very rich, including himself, he sold the medical isotope business and returned to his early 1990s field of study – nuclear fission reactors using molten lead as a coolant. About two years ago, Stefano Buono and some of his colleagues and associates founded newcleo, a...

Zeno Power makes cost-effective radioisotope power systems (RPS) for some of the most challenging environments in the solar system. Its systems use a proprietary package that allows a wider variety of isotopes to perform functions previously reserved for Pu-238, a rare isotope that is slowly produced at great expense. What is the value of RPS? RPS’s produce power and/or heat by usefully capturing the energy released when radioactive materials decay. Diminishing quantities of...

Mary Jo Rogers is a trained clinical psychologist who developed her interest workforce safety cultures and leadership in the nuclear power sector while consulting and working for ComEd (later Exelon). At the time she began her work, ComEd was a perennially under-performing utility with new leaders that were committed to turning it into the best nuclear plant operator in the United States. That leadership team included Oliver Kingsley and Chris Crane at the operating level and John Rowe at the...

In the past few years, there has been a strong revival of interest in using nuclear fission energy to power space travel and planetary exploration. There have also been new developments in radioisotope thermal generators that will make them more widely available with greater energy density. Though there has been interest in using nuclear energy in space since the earliest days of the Atomic Age, financial support has waxed and waned with changing program priorities. George Bush was president...

Matt Huber is a professor of geography at Syracuse University. He writes about energy, economies and the way that energy sources have influenced modern societies and economies. One of his first books was Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (2013) which is very briefly described as follows: Looking beyond the usual culprits, “Lifeblood” finds a deeper and more complex explanation in everyday practices of oil consumption in American culture. Matthew Huber,...

Alyssa Hayes is a leader in the pro-nuclear movement. She is a PhD candidate in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee and she has been interested in policy making and politics since interning with her local representative when she was 14 years old. She was involved in the successful efforts to save four nuclear power stations (Clinton, Quad Cities, Byron and Dresden) in Illinois and she was recently named the Generation Atomic Volunteer of the Month. She visited the...

Mark Nelson has been traveling the world in an effort to help create a sustainable pronuclear movement. His focus includes both saving existing plants and encouraging the construction of new reactor in areas that have operating reactors, those that have shut down their nuclear plants and in countries that have never operated nuclear plants. We spoke in depth about the German nuclear exit, the French turn away from nuclear with a subsequent return, the potential for Belgium to keep at...

Westinghouse, one of the world’s first nuclear power plant vendors, recently announced a new small modular reactor (SMR) design called the AP300. It is described as a simplified version of the AP1000, four of which are currently operating in China and two of which are in the final stages of operational testing in Georgia, United States. Six additional AP1000s are under construction. In a May 4, 2023 press release, Westinghouse summarized the AP300 as follows: Westinghouse...

On Apr 28, the much anticipated film, Nuclear Now, will premier in selected theaters in New York, Sedona and Los Angeles. It will remain available in those venues for a week. On May 1, 2023, the film will be shown at 350 theaters across the US and Canada. The film is co-written by Oliver Stone and Joshua Goldstein. Here is a blurb about the film. Nuclear Now takes viewers on an educational and thought-provoking journey with legendary director Oliver Stone, as he explores the...

Dr. Leonard Rodberg spent most of his adult life being opposed to nuclear energy. A half a dozen years ago, he abruptly changed his mind. Ever since, he has been a strong and vocal advocate for the increased use of nuclear energy. On Atomic Show #304 Len and I discuss his education, career, his changing attitudes towards nuclear energy and the important role that nuclear will play in enabling a transition away from carbon dioxide-emitting power sources. Len is one of the founding...

Rendering of Last Energy's 20 MWe installations (Last Energy) Last Energy is an innovative new company governed by a philosophy of avoiding the invention of anything that has not been done before. They have created a business that is laser focused on building, owning and operating small (20 MWe), modular pressurized water reactors and selling the electricity they produce under long term power purchase agreements. On Atomic Show #303, Bret Kugelmass, the founder, president and...

Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association, visited the Atomic Show to provide an international perspective on the revival in interest in nuclear energy deployment. As the head of the organization that represents the global nuclear industry, provides education about all matters related to using nuclear technologies, and lobbies for recognition of the value that...

The nuclear energy policy landscape in the US has changed significantly during the past 5 years. Once seen as an issue with enormous differences between the political parties, it has become one of the few topics on which both parties can have a civil discussion and agree on many key provisions in supportive legislation. Matt Crozat: NEI, Executive Director for Strategy and Policy Matt Crozat is the Nuclear Energy Institute's Executive Director for Strategy and Policy...

Modeled waste volumes for selected reactor designs (From "Nuclear Waste from Small Modular Reactors") Dr. Lindsay Krall is a geochemist currently working on projects characterizing the behavior of radioactive isotopes that will eventually be stored in a deep geologic repository being designed in Sweden for construction within the next decade. During a three year post doctoral period she worked under a MacArthur Foundation grant program to study the projected production of waste from...