By: Gary Ambrosino

Gary Ambrosino — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:57:04 +0000

I think Ray is, unfortunately, right to some degree with his analysis. The unfortunate outcome of the Japan nuclear incident is that it showcases the weaknesses of 40 year old reactor technology. I look at that era of nuclear energy the same way we looked at early computer operating systems – - single threaded, non-redundant, fragile, and hard to operate. People like NuScale are taking an approach more akin to our current redundant and distributed computing platforms that are pervasive now, but weren’t back when people complained about using computers for anything mission critical like fly-by-wire flight controls systems. Companies like Areva make recent generation plants much safer, especially with the post-processing of fuel where Areva builds spent fuel processing facilities that significantly reduce the half-life of the spent material, reprocess it so it cannot be used in any way to make weapons, and reduce the physical mass to make it easier and safer to transport. Wouldn’t it be great if there were as many blogs, websites, industry pundits & gurus, and enthusiastic educators about these aspects of nuclear power, as there are blogs talking about the latest features if the iPad2. Then we would have a better head start on shutting down the import addiction to oil.

Comments on: Next-Gen Nuclear Tech Could Face Delays in Wake of Japan Incident

By: Gary Ambrosino