Can Turtles Fly?
This post is not related to investments. What Nathan Myhrvold and his cohorts were attempting to perform was exciting sure, perhaps even the start of a fresh structure for science, invention, and technology. Some are critical of organizations that just invent or acquire patents without processing the product or providing the service but I’m not down on them. Given my diverse passions, I read a large number of stories on people attempting to perform certain things but I never quite came across anyone like Myhrvold. He is certainly someone special and I hope he succeeds. Well, it appears like Myhrvold and his team may be on the verge of commercializing their first, serious, idea-and it is a innovative idea sure!
The idea that Innovation Ventures, the ongoing company founded Myhrvold and his team, is attempting to commercialize is a fresh kind of a nuclear reactor. Innovation Ventures is support an organization called TerraPower, which is creating a Traveling-Wave Reactor. I know very little about nuclear technology and not sure how much of this is purely theoretical and hype, but why is this interesting is that it generally does not rely on enriched uranium.
It may use depleted uranium and run a very long time without re-fueling. Unlike today’s reactors, a traveling-wave reactor requires very little enriched uranium, reducing the chance of weaponry proliferation. The reactor uses depleted-uranium energy packed inside a huge selection of hexagonal pillars. In a “wave” that moves through the primary of them costing only a centimeter …
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