Nuclear

The first nuclear reactor was developed in Tennessee at the Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960's. It was a molten salt reactor using thorium as a fuel source. The thorium which is not fissile was activated by Uranium 233. It ran for 13,000 hours at full power at 7.4 MW. It operated at 1,200 degree F and used hot air to drive the turbine. The experiment was consider a success and recently small nuclear reactors are making a come back in the attempt to become carbon free. Later thorium was abandoned and replaced with uranium because the government needed plutonium for bombs and getting bomb material from thorium was too difficult. Experiments using small reactors are underway in several countries to move to carbon free energy.