Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie had a little time on their hands in February 2010, so they decided to fix what’s wrong with nuclear reactors. They had just completed their Ph.D. qualifying exams in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and “we figured we were the smartest we would be for a while,” Dewan says. Their plan was to lower the cost of nuclear energy and tackle the meltdowns and radioactive waste that spook government officials and consumers.
Dewan and Massie turned to a technology developed but never commercialized in the 1950s that can burn spent nuclear fuel safely in a liquid salt reactor instead of a traditional light water reactor. After running computer simulations, they saw potential in the technique and, together with entrepreneur Russ Wilcox, founded Transatomic Power in 2011. Dewan came up with the name, a nod to the nuclear optimism of the 1950s and the transuranium elements that make nuclear power possible.
Their timing is good. Many nations are looking for ways to build power plants that don’t produce a lot of climate-warming carbon emissions. In the U.S., power plant rules proposed by President Obama may create opportunities forno- and low-carbon technologies, such as solar, wind, and nuclear. Conventional nuclear technology faces greater scrutiny over costs and concern about accidents such as the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, Japan.
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Read the full article at Bloomberg Business Week