Celebrating a Life: Evgeny Velikhov
by Tom Blees
Shortly after the publication of Prescription for the Planet in 2008, I got a call from a scientist in Russia named Evgeny Velikhov. He’d read my book and wanted to know if I would be interested in being a member of an international committee of energy experts who determine the winners of the Global Energy Prize. I’d never heard of it, only discovering then that it’s analogous to a Nobel Prize, but for energy research, and awarded by Russia every year. Velikhov had always encouraged international scientific cooperation even at the height of the Cold War.
As a close advisor and friend to Mikhail Gorbachev, Velikhov conceived and initiated ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project. As a plasma physicist whose first scientific love was fusion research, he understood how much energy, brainpower, and money it would take to even hope to harness fusion power. He concluded that it would make more sense for nations to work on it together than to attempt those scientific hurdles individually. He convinced Gorbachev to propose ITER to Reagan at a summit in Geneva and then spearheaded the ITER project, which is ongoing today, with its building project in France.
ITER was but one of many important projects and ideas that Velikhov pursued throughout a long career as a scientist and political participant in the turbulent world of Russian politics. Over the last fifteen years, we became fast friends. He joined us in Las Vegas in 2010 when a host of scientists and other collaborators met for a “Summit in the Sand” in the early days of SCGI. In 2012 he was a special guest at SCGI’s international conference on fast reactor technology at U.C. Berkeley. In those years before the Russian invasion of Ukraine—which troubled him deeply—Velikhov was instrumental in encouraging cooperation between our countries.
His intention behind the ITER project was clear: To provide unlimited clean energy for humankind. He connected with SCGI because he realized that our goals in that regard were synonymous and that the fast-neutron reactors that SCGI was championing could achieve that goal, most probably more readily and realistically than fusion. In our last meetings in Moscow in 2019, before the pandemic terminated our in-person visits, he was very excited about the Thorcon project that SCGI’s been involved with in recent years. Velikhov had figured out a way to produce abundant fuel for such molten salt reactors and was hoping that Thorcon could provide the ship-borne power plants and Russia could provide the fuel. Alas, that notion of global cooperation came to naught when Russia invaded Ukraine.
On December 5, Evgeny Velikhov passed away, just two months shy of his 90th birthday. He led an extraordinary full life. On one of our visits when he came to Washington, D.C. several years ago, I suggested to him that he write his autobiography. He replied that he’d already started it, and showed me a draft of it on his laptop. Once it had been published, I found a Russian physicist (who happened to live across the street from me in California) who was “honored” to translate it into English. The resulting book, Strawberries from Chernobyl, can be downloaded here if you’d care to have a window into the life of an exceptional character.
Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has cast a pall on Russia and colored perceptions of Russians in general in a negative light. Yet most Russians, like people elsewhere, are decent people with aspirations and desires similar to most of ours. Thanks to Dr. Velikhov, I’ve had the opportunity to develop lasting friendships with some wonderful Russian citizens. It is with a heavy heart that I bid him farewell. It has been my honor and privilege to be his friend.
This startup is getting closer to bringing next-generation nuclear to the grid
Kairos Power signed a big deal with a tech giant and got approval to build its next test facility.
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter.
This is a busy time of year for all of us, and that’s certainly true in the advanced nuclear industry.
MIT Technology Review released our list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch less than two months ago. Since then, awardee Kairos Power has had three big announcements about its progress toward building next-generation nuclear reactors.
Last week, the company (Kairos) announced it received a construction permit for the next iteration of its system, Hermes 2. This plant will share a location with Hermes, and it will include the infrastructure to transform heat to electricity. That makes it the first electricity-producing next-generation nuclear plant to get this approval in the US.
Click here to read the entire article at MIT Technology Review
We've recently added two dynamic individuals to our SCGI advisory group: Van Snyder and Robert Hargraves. Both of them have been producing thought-provoking articles on energy systems—particularly nuclear power—for years. And both have recently published books on the subject.
A world of good
By Dr. Robert Hargraves
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft just committed billions of dollars to power their data centers with ample, reliable electricity from nuclear power. These competitors realize they must provide more energy-intensive computing for artificial intelligence and information search services. Each, with over $100 billion cash on hand, can afford whatever it costs in this competition. Will this make nuclear power globally affordable?
Beyond such services industries, energy is an essential component of the $40 trillion global production sector — agriculture, industry and manufacturing. These activities have achieved low costs through decades of improvements in uses and costs of energy from burning fossil fuels. People in rich nations benefit from the inexpensive food, affordable transportation, and powerful smartphones.
Only LOW COST nuclear power will impact our future.
Spent fuel isn't nuclear waste
By Van Snyder
I received a "Nuclear News Bulletin" from nuclearmatters.com, in which they celebrated the re-opening of Three Mile Island and Palisades.
In response, I sent them this note:
Thanks for advocating for nuclear power, but….
A critical part of the nuclear power system is spent fuel processing. Spent fuel isn't nuclear waste. It's valuable 5%-used fuel. The unused-fuel part needs custody for 300,000 years. It's daft to pretend it can be hidden that long. The pyramids were plundered before 500 years! A far better idea is to turn it into electricity and fission products. Fission products are produced at the rate of about one tonne (1,000 kg) per GWe-year. 9.26% of fission products -- caesium and strontium -- need custody for 300 years. Half the rest are innocuous before thirty years, and the remainder aren't even radioactive. A 1,700 GWe all-electric all-nuclear American economy would produce less than 160 tonnes of caesium and strontium per year -- about the weight of one dime per American household -- which wouldn't quite fill nine cement-mixer trucks. We can handle that quite easily -- much more easily than trying to hide 34,000 tonnes of valuable 5%-used fuel every year.
Amazon signs agreements for innovative nuclear energy projects to address growing energy demands
New Small Modular Reactor agreements are part of Amazon’s
plan to transition to carbon-free energy.
- Google Bets Big on Nuclear: Inks Deal with Kairos Power for 500-MW SMR Fleet to Power Data Centers
- Nuclear Resurgence
- 14 Major Global Banks and Financial Institutions Express Their Support for Effort to Triple Nuclear Energy by 2050
- Why we need Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant
- Desperate for power, AI hosts turn to nuclear industry
- Federal push to add nuclear power begins
- Bill Gates says nuclear power is the only way to fully decarbonize grids
- How a nuclear bill became this Congress’ first big energy win
- 5 Reasons Nuclear Is a Good Neighbor
- ...the next nuclear breakthrough