December 18, 2004: Nuclear Reactors - Dr. Charles Till
Podcast: The Art Bell ArchivePublished On: Sun Oct 12 2025
Description: Art Bell welcomes Dr. Charles Till, a physicist who helped start up Canada's first power reactor and later led the Integral Fast Reactor program at Argonne National Laboratory for nearly twenty years. Till explains that current light water reactors use less than one percent of mined uranium, creating massive amounts of long-lived waste requiring storage for hundreds of thousands of years. His IFR design addressed this by efficiently burning fuel, producing only short-lived fission products that would decay to safe levels within a few hundred years.Till describes how the IFR demonstrated inherent safety by surviving the exact same accident that destroyed Chernobyl. When coolant pumps were deliberately shut off with no human intervention or control rod insertion, the reactor simply powered itself down. The same test was repeated for a Three Mile Island scenario that afternoon with identical safe results. Despite these achievements, the Clinton administration abruptly canceled the program in 1994, and the facilities and expertise have since been scattered.The show opens with Ann Strieber describing her near-death experience following a brain aneurysm rupture, during which she encountered her deceased cat Coe in the world of the dead rather than her late mother. She recalls hearing a voice offering her the choice to continue on or return, and credits Coe with guiding her back. Art and Ann discuss whether animals possess souls, the power of prayer in healing, and the series of coincidences that saved her life.
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