History
Traveling-wave reactors were first proposed in the 1950s and have been studied intermittently since that time. The concept of a reactor that could breed its own fuel inside the reactor core was initially proposed and studied in 1958 by Saveli Feinberg, who called it a "breed-and-burn" reactor. Michael Driscoll published further research on the concept in 1979, as did Lev Feoktistov in 1988, Edward Teller/Lowell Wood in 1995, Hugo van Dam in 2000, and Hiroshi Sekimoto in 2001.
No TWR has yet been constructed, but in 2006, Intellectual Ventures launched a subsidiary named TerraPower, LLC to model and commercialize a working design of such a reactor, which has since come to be called a "traveling-wave reactor". TerraPower has developed TWR designs for low- to medium- (300 MWe) as well as high-power (~1000 MWe) generation facilities. Bill Gates featured TerraPower in his 2010 TED talk.
Read more about this topic: Traveling Wave Reactor
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)
“When the history of this period is written, [William Jennings] Bryan will stand out as one of the most remarkable men of his generation and one of the biggest political men of our country.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The principle office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–117)