Posted on 02/11/2012 7:59:11 AM PST by Wonder Warthog
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Though most of today's nuclear reactors are cooled by water, we've long known that there are alternatives; in fact, the world's first nuclear-powered electricity in 1951 came from a reactor cooled by sodium. Reactors cooled by liquid metals such as sodium or lead have a unique set of abilities that may again make them significant players in the nuclear industry.
At the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, a team led by senior nuclear engineer James Sienicki has designed a new small reactor cooled by lead—the Sustainable Proliferation-resistance Enhanced Refined Secure Transportable Autonomous Reactor, or SUPERSTAR for short.
Small modular reactors, or SMRs, are small-scale nuclear plants that are designed to be factory-manufactured and shipped as modules to be assembled at a site. They can be designed to operate without refueling for 15 to 30 years. The concept offers promising answers to many questions about nuclear power—including proliferation, waste, safety, and start-up costs.
SUPERSTAR is an example of a so-called "fast reactor," a type fundamentally different from the light-water reactors common today. Light-water reactors use water both as a coolant and as a moderator to slow down neutrons created in the fuel as it fissions. Instead, fast reactors use materials that don't slow down neutrons—often a liquid metal, such as sodium or lead.
Like all new generations of reactors, SUPERSTAR has "passive" safety systems—backup safety measures that kick in automatically, without human intervention, in case of accidents. For example, all reactors have control rods incorporating substances that absorb neutrons and stop nuclear chain reactions. SUPERSTAR's rods can be suspended above the reactor core held in place by electricity. If the plant loses power, the control rods will automatically drop into the core and stop the reaction.
In addition, SUPERSTAR's lead coolant is circulated around the core by a process called natural circulation. While existing plants use electrically-driven pumps to keep the water moving, SUPERSTAR exploits a law of physics to move the coolant.
"In any closed loop, with heat at the bottom and cooling on top, a flow will develop, with the heated stream rising to the top and cooled stream going down," explained Anton Moisseytsev, an Argonne nuclear engineer also working on the reactor design. "SUPERSTAR design takes advantage of this feature its lead coolant is circulated solely by natural circulation, with no pumps needed. And of course, having no pumps means no pump failures."
This means that if the plant loses power, as happened at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, the reactor does not need electricity to cool the core after shutdown.
Although the SMR concept has been around for decades, the idea has gained greater traction in recent years. Both President Obama and U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu have extolled the virtues of SMRs; Secretary Chu said their development could give American manufacturers a "key competitive edge."
For example, the smaller size of SMRs gives them greater flexibility. "A small grid in a developing nation or a rural area may not need the 1,000 megawatts that a full-size reactor produces," Sienicki said. "In addition, SUPERSTAR can adjust its own power output according to demand from the grid."
Sienicki and his colleagues designed the reactor so that it could be shipped, disassembled, on a train. SMRs have been pinpointed for use in developing nations or outlying areas; these plants could be dropped off at a site and easily installed.
Because the plant runs for decades on a single installment of fuel—and operators need never directly interact with the fuel, which is sealed in the core—SMRs also address proliferation concerns. Reducing access to the fuel lowers all the risks associated with creating and changing fuel, such as uranium enrichment technology.
Finally, SMRs could also offer cost benefits. After major cost overruns on plants in the 1980s, investors have been wary of financing new nuclear plants. Small modular reactors reduce the risk in investing in new plants; the start-up cost would be less than those for full-size reactors. In addition, the parts for the reactors could be manufactured in assembly lines at factories, further diminishing the cost
The article doesn’t make clear whether this is a homogenous reactor, or keeps the coolant separated from the fuel.
Nor does the original source of the research:
http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/News/2012/news120209.html
The future of nuclear is cold fusion.
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Science Daily ^ | Mar. 23, 2009 | American Chemical Society
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Wait a minute . . we have a nuclear industry? I remember we used to have one!
I certainly hope that it is, but I'll take any good energy source that works.
Right. We could pour untold billions of taxpayer dollars into the cold fusion fantasy......or we could build this little suckers by the thousands for a fraction of the cost without a dime of taxpayer money.
What to do......what to do......
We’ve poured untold billions of taxpayer dollars into the hot fusion fantasy and got nothin.
A Finnish engineer told me there will be unlimited fusion power by 2020.
If so, solar and wind subsidies are money down the toilet.
Nothing new...just ask our Soviet/Russian friends. Seems this nimrod is not that concerned about what happens when liquid sodium-cooled reactors fail, particularly in proximity to good old water. He doesn’t talk much about how technologies have advanced to make such reactors safe, particularly when contrasted with the issues Fukushima is having right now (and it being a more modern water-cooled reactor).
If we’re going to build a nuclear reactor, which I think we should be doing, there are several new technologies put forth in the past 20 years or so that are worth exploring. Case in point is the pebble-bed reactor; it’s less dependent upon cooling loops and contains the fissile material in such a manner so as to minimize the chance for runaway reactions.
Precisely. With this little beauty we have proven fission technology in a safe, modular, portable unit. Let GE and Mitsubishi beat the crap out of each other on price and sell them by the thousands.
Some how this concept makes no sense to me considering that this reactor is small portable and designed to operate 15 to 30 years without refueling.
This long life core necessitates highly enriched Uranium or Plutonium fuel.
I checked out this analysis of the design and it shows that the core is between 78 and 83 percent enriched Uranium.
That means that this fuel is pretty close to bomb grade fuel. Some creative engineer could probably make it go boom. It would be dirty but what does a terrorist care.
You ship this to a third world country and it would be an open invitation to terrorist to high jack the reactor and put the fuel to their purpose; be it holding it hostage or breaking it open and making a bomb.
Fukishima is modern? I thought they didn’t even have a heat exchanger, which means water from the reactor drives the turbine directly.
You can love whatever variation of nuclear power that you want. And, you can point out all of the technical articles you want on your favorite. In the end, none but the conventional PWR and BWR will be built until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its regulations are re-structured to allow a licensing process. The NRC barely has the resources to keep up with regulating the 100 plus running plants in this country and applications for 30 plus more. Demands for the federal government to subsidize this that and the other because they already waste/wasted money on something else is ridiculous logic. Note that the current licensees pay fees designed to fund the NRC completely; effectively the NRC is self-funded.
Rossi is a fraud and a convict.
It hasn't been cold fusion that has gotten "untold billions of taxpayer dollars". That would be the "hot fusion" (and particularly the Tokamak) guys. VERY little taxpayer money has gone to CF. It could probably have been funded out of the petty cash account of the hot fusion efforts.
Ah, but this reactor's coolant is not sodium, but lead. Much more inert.
"Case in point is the pebble-bed reactor; it’s less dependent upon cooling loops and contains the fissile material in such a manner so as to minimize the chance for runaway reactions."
The PBR has not lived up to its hype. It turns out that examination of test reactors has revealed unexpected major instability in the fuel elements (pebbles). There was serious discussion of this problem on an earlier post some months back.
Nope. Not nearly enough enrichment for "boom-making". That was why I was wondering if it was a homogeneous reactor. With the lead coolant, the fuel would be intermixed with the lead (including radioactive lead isotopes from the fission process) and be virtually impossible to proliferate. Having separate fuel elements increases the likelihood of proliferation.
Good info....thanks for adding it to the thread.
Day late, dollar short. That particular subject has been beaten to death already. Give it a rest.
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