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A new reactor design could make nuclear power safer and cheaper, says John Gilleland.
Enriching the uranium for reactor fuel and opening the reactor periodically to refuel it are among the most cumbersome and expensive steps in running a nuclear plant. And after spent fuel is removed from the reactor, reprocessing it to recover usable materials has the same drawbacks, plus two more: the risks of nuclear-weapons proliferation and environmental pollution.

These problems are mostly accepted as a given, but not by a group of researcher­s at Intellectual Ventures, an invention and investment company in Bellevue, WA. The scientists there have come up with a preliminary design for a reactor that requires only a small amount of enriched fuel–that is, the kind whose atoms can easily be split in a chain reaction. It’s called a traveling­-wave reactor. And while government researchers intermittently bring out new reactor designs, the traveling-wave reactor is noteworthy for having come from something that barely exists in the nuclear industry: a privately funded research company.

As it runs, the core in a traveling-­wave reactor gradually converts nonfissile material into the fuel it needs. Nuclear reactors based on such designs “theoretically could run for a couple of hundred years” without refueling, says John G­illeland, manager of nuclear programs at Intellectual Ventures.
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Analyst Opinion – On the surface, the cooperation between Intel and TSMC seems like a routine cooperative partnership announcement. Yet with this one action, if managed effectively, Intel has almost assured Atom’s success as a major player in the growing world of consumer electronics.

Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), one of the world’s largest chip foundries, just announced a marketing collaboration involving Intel’s Atom processor. Atom is Intel’s effort to downsize its processor chips to fit into the realm of emerging smart devices below the Personal Computer space. TSMC will work closely with Intel to port some of the Atom processors to its own process and design flows. TSMC will also have the ability to do engineering on the chip to build customized versions for the large number of existing TSMC customers. However, Intel will have ownership of the final device and the customer, as Intel will be selling the custom designed chips that TSMC designs and builds in its foundry.

As PC sales wane, and their chip revenues along with them, Intel looks to additional sources for revenues. Consumer products represent a massive potential market, though at clearly lower margins and price points. But, Intel’s cost of operations makes it a supplier at too high a price to go after the cut-throat and highly price sensitive consumer market. And Intel is not set up for customized, System On Chip (SOC) solutions the market demands. Enter a partner that can bring all of this capability to Intel – TSMC.
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The brain may play a key role in some 40 percent of women who experience sexual dysfunction with lack of sexual interest, researchers said.

Such women, ages 18-59, experience sexual dysfunction with lack of sexual interest called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, known as HSDD.

Bruce Arnow and Dr. Leah Millheiser of Stanford Hospital & Clinics said the trial involved 16 women diagnosed with HSDD, along with 20 normal control subjects, who took part in the study involving brain scans. All subjects identified themselves as heterosexual.
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