Thursday, March 10, 2011

Generating electricity from depleted uranium

Hello Future Engineer,

TerraPower claims to have come up with an idea to generate electricity from depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is a by product of enrichment process and is popularly known for its use in armor piercing shells.

According to TerraPower's website, the Traveling Wave Reactor (TWR) converts depleted uranium into usable fuel without need for further enrichment or reprocessing. Considering huge stockpiles of depleted uranium resulting from nuclear fuel enrichment, there is virtually an inexhaustible source of energy waiting to be used!

You can read more about it at TerraPower's website. You can also watch a video clip about it at the bottom of the aforementioned link.

Voyager 1: Alive & Kicking!

Hello Future Engineer,

It is with great joy that I would like to inform you that Voyager 1 is still functioning. Voyager 1 is now 33 years old and outside the solar system. You can read more about what Voyager 1 is doing here.

Perhaps, you may not be aware but the spacecraft Voyager's route was discovered (calculated) by Prof. Gary Flandro, when he was a graduate student at Caltech. Currently, he is an emeritus professor at UTSI.