iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 26/09/2026

I'd certainly be interested!!

Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 20/09/2026

I believe this is the world's earliest nuclear fusion documentary, produced in 1958. Available now online! www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxqh...

youtube.com

Research into Controlled Fusion (1958)

YouTube video by What is Nuclear?

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 09/08/2026

Yes! Lots easier than running power or pipelines.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 09/08/2026

I used to think this but have to say that after more hands-on experience, it's undeniable that the good LLMs do know a lot and are definitely helpful in teaching things.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 09/08/2026

Fair. I'll say that if data centers are being built and you build nuclear-powered ones instead of gas-powered ones that would still be a good thing.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 09/08/2026

There are about 3 large-ish breeders operating: BN-800 in Russia, CFR-600 in China, PFBR in India. So far uranium abundance has prevented them from being needed. But we know 100% they work fine and this energy is available when needed. We also know nuclear reduces CO₂ regionally thanks to France.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 09/08/2026

Many powerful things have pros and cons. It's often worth working to maximize the pros and minimize the cons. AI can also be a world-class tutor to every kid on the planet. Our newfound ability to authomate substantial amounts of menial knowledge work isn't something we can just ignore or ban IMHO.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 09/08/2026

I just used AI last weekend to turn a cool live skychart thing I made years ago into my watch face and it's absolutely awesome. I refuse to buy the "all AI is slop" argument.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 09/08/2026

I'm interested in your opinions here. Care to elaborate?

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 09/08/2026

I don't think I follow. We have enough uranium to last for billions of years using breeder reactors, which we proved out in 1952. Shifting data centers to nuclear will zero out their carbon emissions. Heating from the sun is 10,000 EJ/day vs. 2 from all human activity combined.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 09/08/2026

Everyone I know uses LLMs for productive uses like reviewing writing, writing useful and awesome software (professional and fun like watch faces). Kids are using it as a tutor to learn all sorts of things. I don't think it's remotely clear that LLMs are inherently bad or nefarious.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 09/08/2026

Serious question to people who are protesting data centers: how would you feel if they were operated offshore? ⚛️Powered with sustainable nuclear ⛲Cooled with abundant seawater 🏠Not in anyone's backyard 🧑‍🔧Built in shipyards reindustrializing America 🇺🇸 Allows us to stay competitive internationally

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 24/07/2026

Great film: Research Reactors U.S.A (1958) Fun to see the University of Michigan Ford Nuclear Reactor in some detail at the beginning. Thanks to the IAEA for digitizing and DOE for letting me publish it. youtu.be/3BJyBohKeD4?...

youtu.be

Research Reactors U.S.A. (1958)

YouTube video by What is Nuclear?

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 01/07/2026

Great question. I don't think there even is any visible bremsstrahlung in a HTGR because the helium coolant isn't dense enough to cause notable braking.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 23/06/2026

I've been in the nuclear industry for 20 years as a nuclear engineer and had a very public fight with Isaiah about holding spent fuel. That said, I have to say that I've come around to what all the microreactor companies are pushing and believe it to be a strong net positive for the energy ecosystem

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 29/05/2026

I'm absolutely thrilled that multiple new reactors will be going low and high power critical in the coming ~month.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 29/05/2026

Of course, high-power critical for long periods of time is the hardest of all for these reasons. Powering a city of 1 million people requires splitting of about 100 quintillion atoms per second (100 billion billion).

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 29/05/2026

High-power critical is harder because you're splitting atoms faster. You must endure proportionally higher radiation fields, substantial thermal gradients, and you generate more radioactive byproducts, so the safety and decommissioning issues increase.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 29/05/2026

Low-power critical is a huge milestone, especially after decades of institutional morass.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 29/05/2026

You can run a reactor in a low-power critical state, with just a few billion fissions occurring per second, or you can pull the control rods for longer, go supercritical for a while, get the reaction rate way up, and then insert the rods again to go back to a higher-power critical steady state.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 29/05/2026

Once you do enough of this, you can remove your neutron source and the reactor will keep on splitting atoms in steady state. Huge congrats: it's now critical!

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 29/05/2026

You have to put fuel atoms close together (spatially and often with enrichment), remove impurities that gobble neutrons, and often include a special neutron moderator material that substantially improves the neutron economy.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 29/05/2026

What does "going critical" mean? If you shoot a neutron into some uranium ore, some atoms will split by fission, but you haven't made a nuclear reactor. Too many secondary neutrons leak out or get absorbed without splitting neighboring atoms. 1/n

Chain reaction pic from Duderstadt and Hamilton

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 27/05/2026

The Engineering Test Reactor (ETR) was constructed in 1957 at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho. It was a 175 MWt reactor that absolutely hammered fuels and materials with high flux neutrons, fine-tuning the high-performance nuclear technology we use today www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_b3...

youtube.com

Engineering Test Reactor (1958)

YouTube video by What is Nuclear?

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 25/05/2026

What's definitely significant is that we have institutional momentum to innovate in nuclear again. This covers the DOE, the NRC, and the nuclear companies. We know HTGRs like Valar's work fine. We built many around the world. The real test, as you say, is what the cost will be once they optimize.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 20/05/2026

This Combustion Engineering facility in Chattanooga, TN fabricated 57 reactor pressure vessels for US reactors, plus more overseas, and lots of other heavy equipment. As the nuclear industry ramps back up in the US, I hope we see lots more facilities like this soon.

Combustion Engineering facility in Chattanooga, TN showing lots of reactor pressure vessels

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 17/05/2026

This is a 1969 AEC film describing the material, commercial applications, and the production process. (Title: "Atomic Revolution in Wood", AVN0481, Digitized by the IAEA's Lise Meitner Library. AVN0481) 📽️⚛️

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 17/05/2026

If you pull a vacuum on wood, then impregnate it with a monomer, and then irradiate it with gamma rays, you get a wood-plastic composite that is extremely tough while looking great. If it gets scuffed, you just buff it out, the finish goes all the way through. www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9sQ...

youtube.com

Atomic Revolution in Wood (1969)

YouTube video by What is Nuclear?

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 02/05/2026

Industrial Applications of Nuclear Explosives (1958) That's one way to make a new harbor! www.youtube.com/watch?v=py9e...

youtube.com

Industrial Applications of Nuclear Explosives (1958)

YouTube video by What is Nuclear?

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 02/04/2026

For technical conferences where people are trying to discuss ongoing work, I've been saying it makes way more sense to send the papers and pre-recorded presentations in advance so we can watch them on the plane. Then just have the whole in-person thing be discussion and networking with a few events.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 02/03/2026

Highly flawed, dubious science: bsky.app/profile/what...

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 02/03/2026

The scientific methods used are dubious at best. Critique here: bsky.app/profile/what...

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 02/03/2026

The studies are quite weak: bsky.app/profile/what...

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 02/03/2026

Pretty good critique here: bsky.app/profile/what...

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 02/03/2026

Those studies are extremely weak. bsky.app/profile/what...

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 02/03/2026

Those new studies linking nuclear plant proximity to cancer use very weak scientific methods. No dose assessment, no control group. It's shameful that they passed peer review. Takedown here: www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/two-new-pa...

breakthroughjournal.org

Two New Papers Are Wrong About Cancer Risk from Nuclear Plants

Poor Research Design and Strong Claims Don’t Mesh Well

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 02/03/2026

These studies use very weak scientific methods. It's shameful that they passed peer review. Takedown here: www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/two-new-pa...

breakthroughjournal.org

Two New Papers Are Wrong About Cancer Risk from Nuclear Plants

Poor Research Design and Strong Claims Don’t Mesh Well

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 16/02/2026

Ha. I didn't want to rain on the parade. Most posts said it's the first time a reactor has been shipped on a C-17, which as far as I know is true. But yeah we've shipped many reactors in planes, even an operating one!

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 14/02/2026

Visiting the Nuclear Ship Savannah in person is worth traveling to Baltimore for, especially since they recently opened up the reactor vessel. Saturday, February 21st. www.ans.org/news/2026-02... @americannuclear.bsky.social

ans.org

NS Savannah soon open to the public

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Reposted by Nick Touran

Michael McLean @michaelmclean.me · 09/02/2026

ICYMI: @whatisnuclear.com digitized this 1967 film about the BONUS reactor, in Puerto Rico. Superheated steam from a boiling water reactor! whatisnuclear.com/news/2023-09...

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 06/02/2026

Because SpaceX is profitable and xAI needs lots of cash to win the AI race, so the AI-in-space thing is just a ruse to get access to the SpaceX funds. Data centers on nuclear-powered offshore platforms is the version of this that makes sense from energy, water, and land scarcity POV

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Reposted by Nick Touran

Jessica Lovering @lovering.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Have you ever wondered if small nuclear reactors could possibly beat out the economies of scale from large reactors? Check out my latest report @theniaorg.bsky.social “Right-Sizing Reactors: Balancing trade-offs between economies of scale and volume” tinyurl.com/bdhz27wt

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 03/02/2026

Good stuff. I would add that maritime environments offer another potentially unbounded opportunity for medium-sized reactors. These environments are conducive to reactor manufacturing (shipyard + float to site) and constrained in size by typical vessel structures.

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 27/01/2026

The classic mouse trap and ping pong ball demo, from Martin Marietta. Only problem is that the mouse traps flying around set off other mouse traps, dramatically increasing keff. They should have glued them to the bottom. (VHS quality because, well, it was on VHS)

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 24/01/2026

Micros are ideal for rapid iteration of advanced reactors, and may be the best pathway to find new starting points to scale up from. I have a slight scold in there for people who assert that their microreactors will compete in commodity power markets rather than novel ones. Did I miss any?

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 24/01/2026

I made a new 'microreactors' page. Benefits: 1. Novel power markets 2. Manufactured product 3. Within reach of VC 4. Fewer radionuclides Challenges: 1. Economies of scale 2. Tyranny of neutron diffusion 3. Shielding whatisnuclear.com/microreactor...

whatisnuclear.com

What are Microreactors?

Definition, history, opportunities, and challenges of micro nuclear reactors

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Nick Touran @whatisnuclear.com · 22/01/2026

Presenting: A 1980s film describing uranium enrichment using gaseous diffusion. www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5gN...

youtube.com

The Enrichment of Uranium (1980s)

YouTube video by What is Nuclear?

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