I just read today that Selenian Boondocks coblogger, Kirk Sorensen, just stepped down as Chief Nuclear Technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering to start his own company, Flibe Energy, focused on commercializing his LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) technology. Way to go Kirk!
I like the angle he’s taking. While this reactor is nominally a power-generator, he’s looking at the medical isotope and RTG plutonium production markets as additional niches that LFTRs can fill much better than the competitors. I think that’s pretty clever (in some ways like what we lucked into at Altius with Sticky Boom): focus first on markets that your competitors are at a distinct relative disadvantage, use that to get a toehold, and then jump back in to the real fray.
And I thought I had my work cut out for me starting an aerospace company! Good luck Kirk! Here’s to hoping that 20 years from now people look back on Boiling Water Reactors in the same way the look at using leaches for curing diseases in the Middle Ages. 🙂
Jonathan Goff
Latest posts by Jonathan Goff (see all)
- An Updated Propellant Depot Taxonomy Part VI: Roving Depots - February 22, 2021
- An Updated Propellant Depot Taxonomy Part V: Human Spaceflight Fixed Depots (Low-Orbit) - February 16, 2021
- An Updated Propellant Depot Taxonomy Part IV: Smallsat Launcher Refueling Depots - November 14, 2020
That’s cool.
I guess Kirk Sorensen will have less time on his hands in coming years.
Congrats, Kirk!!
Awesome! I may apply for a job… 🙂
Thorium? Smart. The World will take a second look at this technology, in the wake of the Japanese triple meltdown. The Chinese already are.
> Here’s to hoping that 20 years from now people look back on Boiling Water Reactors in the same way the look at using leaches for curing diseases…
Was it really necessary to offend the entire political profession?
sounds exciting,
hopefully Kirk might take the idea of merging Mr Landis’s idea of molten fluoride salt ISRU Lunar smelters powered by LFTR to NASA for a Grant to study it.The lunar molten salt ISRU would be the heat sink for the LFTR so call this combined power and heat co generation to get our selfs through the long lunar night! 🙂
learning how to do one might assist in learning how to do the other.
I have submitted the idea already to NASA but I do not have grant writing or the technical skills to bring the idea to life 🙂
http://brc.gov/e-mails/March%2011/Synergy_steven%20rappolee.pdf