By Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E., 2026-01-19, Reading time: 62 minutes Announcing the publication of 3 nuclear films from the 1980s-90s: one with 90’s kids explaining nuclear power, one with the famous rocket-powered trucks and trains hittin…
By Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E., 2025-08-07, Reading time: 2 minutes Reactor discussions are most productive when informed by a clear understanding of the reactors involved. Therefore, I propose we begin using standardized Nuclear Reactor C…
By Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E., 2025-06-28, Reading time: 12 minutes Much can be known about a nuclear reactor from relatively simple analysis tools. We made the Neutronics Scoping Tool to help build an intuition for the core performance o…
By Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E., 2025-06-26, Reading time: 2 minutes Here’s the Dunning-Kruger effect as envisioned by Rickover. Many variations of this curve exist and have been traversed. The UNGGs, Magnox’s, and RBMKs all made it to comm…
This is a beta version of our new Neutronics Scoping Tool. Dial in your core dimensions and enrichment and see how critical it is and how much the fuel costs and what the normal power would be at that volume (assuming typical power density)…
What Is Nuclear has, through the years, collected, funded, and/or coordinated the digitization of forgotten and unique nuclear reactor history artifacts in order to preserve them for educational and archival purposes. This page contains a l…
By Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E., 2024-06-01, Reading time: Less than 1 minute Here is a mid-1960s pamphlet regarding the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (unit 1). You may find it here, embedded, or as a lower resolution 3.4 MB PDF her…
By Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E., 2023-07-05, Reading time: 4 minutes We’re super excited to announce the recent digitization of a 1961 film detailing a major repair of the Homogeneous Reactor Experiment-2 (HRE-2), a fluid-fueled aqueous hom…
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By Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E., 2023-04-16, Reading time: 5 minutes The term advanced in nuclear is used loosely to mean “reactors that are better than ones you’re worried about”. Due to the fact that a huge number of somewhat exotic react…
By Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E., 2023-03-13, Reading time: 3 minutes We’re excited to announce the world “re-premier” of two historic videos about Nebraska’s pioneering nuclear power experience with the Hallam Nuclear Power Facility at the
By Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E., 2023-03-13, Reading time: 6 minutes In the 1950s, hordes of nuclear reactor designers were rushing to find out which combination of coolant, moderator, and fuel types would be the most economical for commerc…