Terrestrial flame fired thermionics took a great leap forward in the earlier 1980’s with the development of reliable long‐lived hot shells. These results were presented by Goodale (1981). The hot shell protects the fractory emitter from oxidizing in the combustion environment. In earlier efforts with supralloys emitters it was found that superalloys were poor thermionic emitters since they operated at too low a temperature for practical and economical use as discussed by Huffman (1978). With the development of Chemical Vapor Deposited (CVD) silicon carbide and CVD tungsten, it became possible to fabricate long‐lived thermionic converters. These results were shown by Goodale (1980). Further improvements were achieved with the use of oxygen additives on the electrodes. These developments made thermionics attractive for topping a power plant or as the energy conversion part of a cogeneration plant as described by Miskolczy (1982) and Goodale (1983). The feasibility of a thermonic steam boiler and a thermionic topped gas turbine plant become a possibility, as shown by Miskolczy (1980). © 1995American Institute of Physics