Warning – this podcast is the longest Atomic Show yet at about 105 minutes.

He asked a lot of good, probing questions with an open attitude. Topics include Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., small nuclear power plants, the nuclear renaissance, French nuclear power experiences, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, nuclear waste, hazards of other energy sources, my thoughts on large scale renewable energy systems, and the importance of understanding commercial energy competition.

During the interview I mentioned a local natural gas explosion that injured 8 firefighters and one employee of the Washington Gas Company. Here is a link to more information about that accident – which had more serious effects on the public health than the far more widely publicized Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident.

Explosion a good reminder there are no ‘routine’ calls

This episode of The Atomic Show is my first attempt at an enhanced podcast using chapter markers and trying to add a slide presentation. The constraints of the file format truncates the edges of the slides, but I think you will get the gist of what they are trying to show. Here is a link to the presentation in PDF format (warning – it is a 12.4 MB file), just in case you are interested in seeing the full size slides.

As always, feedback and constructive criticism is welcome. Of course, if you have something nasty to say, feel free to add that as well – I can always used the delete button if necessary.

Promised link to Australia Broadcast Corporation (ABC) Catalyst program about China’s HTR-10

NUCLEAR CHINA (22/02/2007)

Rob McNealy of StartupStoryRadio.com and I had an interesting chat on Tuesday about Adams Atomic Engines, Inc. (AAE). We discussed the 15-year effort to build an independent, atomic energy focused company that can be self sustaining. (Aside – any any navy nuke will know, achieving a self-sustaining condition is a very important milestone.)

We – right now mostly “I”, but I have had a lot of help over the years – are now focusing on efforts to share energy information and market the potential that nuclear fission has to change the world’s energy market dynamics. Some may wonder how you make money by sharing, but there is incredible value in knowledge and information.

AAE has been a ‘C’ corporation since 1993, but we have been searching for a business model that works under the current legal and regulatory constraints that make it exceedingly costly – with substantial regulatory and financial risk to success – to set a course for building our simplified atomic generators.

After many meetings and discussions with investors, team members, and potential investors, we think we have a fuzzy plan that will work while retaining one of our most important assets – independence. As you continue listening to the Atomic Show and reading the Atomic Insights Blog, you will begin hearing from our sponsors. Please understand that any supporters are welcome, but they will choose to support because of what we are already doing and saying.

As I have told people many times, and hope that I have demonstrated to you over the years, my soul would be too expensive for anyone to purchase. If our message happens to attract an audience and that audience happens to be attractive enough so that commercial enterprises pay to talk to that audience, that’s good.

It will not change the message development process, which involves a serious effort to figure out the right path, not the path that will make the most money over a short period of time. My messages may not be popular, but I am okay with that.

That is a long way of saying that you will hear interesting sponsor messages on the Atomic Show, but you should not expect us to change our tune.

(MP3 – 21 MB – 1:00:46 M)

[audio:http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_atomic_20070626_063.mp3]

Listen to Atomic Show #063 Here!

As the host of The Atomic Show, I have occasionally shared some information about the Adams Engine(TM), my own design for an atomic power source that can be scaled to compete against large diesel engines and combustion gas turbines. Several listeners and recent guests have expressed an interest in learning more about the design, so I thought it might be more interesting and fun to have one of them interview me than to have me read from some of our sales and marketing literature.

NNadir, who recent appeared as a guest on The Atomic Show, kindly volunteered to ask me some unscripted questions about the engine, the history behind the project, and some of the design choices that we have made already and may make in the future. We talked about why the Adams Engine(TM) uses nitrogen as the coolant, the reactor conversion ration, our thoughts about future uses for used fuel materials, and some of the markets where we believe that the Adams Engine(TM) will be particularly competitive.

I hope you do not mind hearing about my “baby”. It has had a long gestation period and there is still a ways to go before it is time to apply for family leave after the birth. However, I think you will find some thoughts and ideas here that you may not have heard anywhere else, unless you happen to have engaged me in casual conversation during the past 17 years or so. If you have, you have probably had the experience of having me try to work in some of these thoughts – I am a little obsessed with the idea.

One small technical correction: I said that the turbine outlet temperature is about 600 C – I went back and checked the system process flow diagram – it is more like 360 C.