The fantasy of a better nuclear mousetrap: uranium metal fuel

An article in the MIT Technology Review, asserted that a new, improved reactor fuel (pictured) might be able to off-set the obvious expense of nuclear energy which is also too slow to address climate change. The author's lead -- "slowing climate change will most likely require a vast expansion of carbon-free nuclear power" -- caught our attention. Read the  Beyond Nuclear response. We drew upon our Advisory Board, and particularly upon input from Dr. M.V. Ramana of Princeton University, to set the record straight, including the observation that "the fuel proposed by the Lightbridge company, and cited in Talbot’s article, has potentially disastrous flaws in that it uses uranium metal (rather than uranium oxide), which could swell and cause fuel failure. There can also be very high temperatures at the center of the fuel."