Atom scientist and Oak Ridge National Laboratory director Alvin Weinberg in 1957. Photograph by Stan Wayman — The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
The Department of Energy is dusting off one of the old betamaxes of nuclear technology: The molten salt reactor. But with political will lacking at home, it will rise in China.
In 1973, the Nixon administration made a momentous decision that altered the course of civilian nuclear power: It fired the director of the renowned Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scuppering development of a reactor widely regarded as safer and superior to the complicated, inferior behemoths that define the global industry to this day.
Nixon banished a reactor that was virtually meltdown-proof, left comparatively little long-lived waste, made it more difficult to fashion a bomb from the waste, ran at friendlier atmospheric pressure instead of the potentially explosive pressurized environments of conventional reactors, and ran at much higher temperatures, making it more cost-effective as an electricity generator.
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The information I presented a year ago is now main stream.
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