Niels Bohr was one of the world's most recognized physicists, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 and made Copenhagen a center for scientific research in physics in the 1930s. During World War II, he participated in the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during the period 1943-45, and with the development of the atomic bomb helped end World War II.
The development of nuclear power has created the potential for a large amount of energy that we need in a modern world. The fear of the bomb has, however, helped to hold back development - especially in Niels Bohr's homeland. But even if a knife can kill, you do not stop using it. In the new 4th gen. technological development of nuclear power can not melt down and most of the waste can be recycled and provide new energy. We can not override such a large form of energy.
As administrator of Oak Ridge came in 1945 a nuclear physicist Alvin M. Weinberg (1915-2006), who in a way followed in Niels Bohr's footsteps in the 1960s developing a reactor that went from using uranium to the less dangerous thorium. The later president (1961-63) John F. Kennedy visited Oak Ridge in 1959 and was positive, but in 1973 the later US president Richard Nixon slowed down the research of an almost complete reactor. Thorium could not be used as uranium for bombs. Alvin Weinberg left many handwritten notes in the laboratory at Oak Ridge, and a space rocket engineer Kirk Sorensen (1956-, NASA 2000-10) visited the Oak Ridge Lab. and borrowed the notes, which he rewrote on his computer. He became so preoccupied with the idea of the thorium reactor that he resigned to become acquainted with Weinberg's theory, attended thorium conferences and in 2011 set up his company Flibe Energy to continue Weinberg's dream of a reactor with an alternative nuclear fuel to produce energy that is safer, more efficient than the nuclear power of the time. Kirk Sorensen was of Danish descent, here a quote from the conferences (London 2010, New York 2011, Shanghai 2012 and Geneva 2013), where I took notes: Nuclear power is the safest way to produce energy. The most uncertain thing is not having enough energy. To me, thorium is a miracle!
At the thorium conference in Geneva in 2013, I was no longer the only Danish participant when a young Thomas Jam Pedersen, educated at DTU, showed up. He is co-founder of Copenhagen Atomics, which will soon have completed the development of an MSR thorium reactor and in fact has a collaboration with Flibe Energy and Kirk Sorensen. The ring has been connected from Oak Ridge to Copenhagen, where Copenhagen Atomics works, and where they expect to have the first test reactor ready before Christmas 2022.
