Intellectual Ventures is talking up a new type of breeder reactor of its own invention.

The "traveling wave" reactor would run on a raw mineral (uranium, or possibly thorium) rather than on processed fuel.

Significance: Traveling wave reactors, if they work, could be fueled without making the same enriched radioactive materials used to make atomic bombs -- the very source of proliferation fears -- and could even use the waste byproducts of fuel processing for other, conventional reactors.

Downsides: This type of reactor would still produce tons of radioactive waste. (It would not run on nuclear plant waste.) Proven technologies are having a hard time getting approved almost anywhere in the Western world. A new technology will face hurdles that are orders of magnitude higher in countries that can afford the high initial costs of experimenting with it.

Target markets: Outside the US. -- Proponents say emerging countries could possibly fuel their economic growth with CO2-emissions-free nuclear energy, without worsening the nuclear weapons-proliferation problem.

The Big Question: Will now-nuclear nations help poorer ones dispose of the radioactive waste (and how), or will that be the developing country's problem?

Timeframe: Decades away.

Observation: Two months before an election is interesting timing for a publicity blitz by a company that is notoriously silent about its vast patent portfolio. The industries of nukes, oil, gas and coal are pumping out the ads and contributions to keep their images out of the toilet, while getting supportive politicians into office.

Background: The traveling wave reactor was first suggested in the 1990s by Edward Teller, a scientist credited with inventing the hydrogen bomb. The broader category of breeder reactors, an older idea, all operate on the principle of using the atomic reaction to convert raw radioactive material into "fissile" material whose atoms are then more easily split in the reactor. In a traveling wave breeder reactor, the conversion process travels through a store of raw fuel, converting it and using it as it goes.

Intellectual Ventures is a collector of IP, founded in 2000 by former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. The company acquires patents and applies for patents on its own inventions.

Eric Engleman wrote about IV's nuke invention in "A brain reaction" in the Puget Sound Business Journal August 15, 2008, and provided the data for this post.