[js1138]

Considering how many bright people would have to have missed this opportunity, I'd say it sounds as likely as perpetual motion. But to a government, 2 mil is a lotto ticket. Could lead to something useful.

[bagman]

This article is gibberish. Any reactor with U-238 in it in any appreciable amount will produce Pu-239. I have no idea what the reference to graphite rods in a "conventional" reactor means.

I cannot run a reactor using natural uranium as the fuel and steam as the moderator / coolant.

I note that roughly 40% of the reactors in the USA are General Electric Boiling Water Reactors, which produce steam directly in the reactor core. They do require enriched uranium as the fuel.

There is a reactor concept called "spectral shift" in which the moderation (slowing down of the neutrons) is intentionally varied to improve the fuel utilization. I suspect that the reactor discussed in this article is a spectrail shift reactor; the author of the article simply doesn't understand the underlying physics and technology and so has badly botched the description and explanation of it.