Transatomic Power's Safer Reactor Eats Nuclear Waste

Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie had a little time on their hands in February 2010, so they decided to fix what’s wrong with nuclear reactors. They had just completed their Ph.D. qualifying exams in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and “we figured we were the smartest we would be for a while,” Dewan says. Their plan was to lower the cost of nuclear energy and tackle the meltdowns and radioactive waste that spook government officials and consumers.

Dewan and Massie turned to a technology developed but never commercialized in the 1950s that can burn spent nuclear fuel safely in a liquid salt reactor instead of a traditional light water reactor. After running computer simulations, they saw potential in the technique and, together with entrepreneur Russ Wilcox, founded Transatomic Power in 2011. Dewan came up with the name, a nod to the nuclear optimism of the 1950s and the transuranium elements that make nuclear power possible.