Nov
27
Happy Thoughts for Thanksgiving Day
November 27, 2014 | 5 Comments
Seven years in for this energy and fuel webblog lends a certain appreciation for what has happened. Looking back to 2007 can be instructive on our progress. Out in front, to no particular surprise, is the oil and gas industry. Especially the free world’s private energy companies. Back in ’07, “Oil and gas looked to […]
Jul
30
A Path to Safer Longer Running Nuclear Power
July 30, 2013 | 1 Comment
A team of researchers at MIT is developing an alternative nuclear fuel rod cladding that could provide similar protection for nuclear fuel, while reducing the risk of hydrogen production by roughly a thousandfold. For many people the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster marked another reason nuclear fuel should be discarded as a power source. The […]
Jul
25
CERN (The French acronym for the European Center for Nuclear Research) scientists have reinforced the theory of how one particularly rare subatomic particle decays into something else. It’s a discovery of evidence that adds certainty to our thinking about how the universe began and keeps running. For getting the energy out of E=MC2, the standard […]
Mar
13
The Nuke The Anti Nuke Crowd Should Love
March 13, 2013 | 2 Comments
Transatomic, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff is developing a nuclear reactor designed to overcome the major barriers to nuclear power. For the anti nuclear folks the design offers to burn up the existing spent fuel from the world’s fleet of nuclear reactors in a design that doesn’t offer a chance for a meltdown. That […]
Jan
17
Nuclear Reactors to Produce Oil
January 17, 2013 | 6 Comments
Al Fin found news in Japan at The Daily Yomiuri that an as yet unnamed Canadian oil sands production firm is working with the huge firm Toshiba’s nuclear reactor section to build, get approvals for and install reactors to produce steam to heat the underground oil sand’s bitumen for extraction and oil production. The plan, […]