Circa 2014
Scientists researching nuclear energy have made a breakthrough in nuclear fusion with an experiment that generated more fuel than was put in.
Category: nuclear energy – Page 85
It was a moment three years in the making, based on intensive research and design work: On Sept. 5 for the first time, a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet was ramped up to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth. That successful demonstration helps resolve the greatest uncertainty in the quest to build the world’s first fusion power plant that can produce more power than it consumes, according to the project’s leaders at MIT and startup company Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS).
That advance paves the way, they say, for the long-sought creation of practical, inexpensive, carbon-free power plants that could make a major contribution to limiting the effects of global climate change.
“Fusion in a lot of ways is the ultimate clean energy source,” says Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research and E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics. “The amount of power that is available is really game-changing.” The fuel used to create fusion energy comes from water, and “the Earth is full of water—it’s a nearly unlimited resource. We just have to figure out how to utilize it.”
Fusion reactors will use abundant sources of fuel, will not leak radiation above normal background levels, and will produce less radioactive waste than current fission reactors. Learn about this promising power source.
The chernobyl special industrial zone — ecosystem restoration, remediation, and the development of energy and chemical byproducts — mykola tolmachov, chernobyl-51 industrial cluster.
The Chernobyl disaster / nuclear accident, occurred on April 26th, 1,986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of Ukraine.
The initial emergency response, together with later decontamination of the environment, ultimately involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated US$68 billion, adjusted for inflation.
The current Chernobyl Exclusion Zone covers an area of approximately 2,600 km2 (1,000 sq mi) in Ukraine, immediately surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, where radioactive contamination is highest and public access and inhabitation are restricted.
The Exclusion Zone’s purpose is to restrict access to hazardous areas, reduce the further spread of radiological contamination, and conduct radiological and ecological monitoring activities.
NuScale Power, the startup specializing in the design of small modular nuclear reactors, has published new data concerning the production capacities of its NuScale Power Module (NPM). Thanks to the 25% increase in power output of an NPM, each NuScale module is now capable of producing 2,053 kg/hour of hydrogen, or nearly 50 metric tons per day.
Just one NuScale Power Module can produce 77 MWe of carbon-free electricity to power 60,000 homes in the U.S. NuScale’s flagship power plant design can house up to 12 modules for a total gross output of 924 MWe. The 924 MWe that a 12-module NuScale plant produces is enough to power nearly 700,000 homes with clean, reliable energy.
“The ability of our NPM to now produce even more clean hydrogen, in a smaller footprint, is yet another example of how NuScale’s technology can help decarbonize various sectors of the economy while providing additional revenue streams for customers,” said Dr. José Reyes, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder of NuScale Power. “Coupled with our proven design, unparalleled safety, and load-following capabilities, this analysis further demonstrates that NuScale’s design is the gold standard in helping meet the demand for innovative solutions to challenging global energy needs.”
Housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the US$3.5-billion facility wasn’t designed to serve as a power-plant prototype, however, but rather to probe fusion reactions at the heart of thermonuclear weapons. After the United States banned underground nuclear testing at the end of the cold war in 1,992 the energy department proposed the NIF as part of a larger science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program, designed to verify the reliability of the country’s nuclear weapons without detonating any of them.
With this month’s laser-fusion breakthrough, scientists are cautiously optimistic that the NIF might live up to its promise, helping physicists to better understand the initiation of nuclear fusion — and thus the detonation of nuclear weapons. “That’s really the scientific question for us at the moment,” says Mark Herrmann, Livermore’s deputy director for fundamental weapons physics. “Where can we go? How much further can we go?”
Here Nature looks at the NIF’s long journey, what the advance means for the energy department’s stewardship programme and what lies ahead.
A floating nuclear power plant is a site with one or more nuclear reactors, located on a platform at sea.
It is an autonomous site that can provide electricity and heat to areas with difficult access, such as the cold Northern territories. It can also provide drinking water to dry areas, via desalination techniques.
You may not want to live near areas like this in the country.
“The problem you have here is that the NRC is simply not doing its job as a regulator. So what it has done is allowed the industry to basically determine the conditions under which this material is stored on a temporary basis across the country,” echoed retired Rear Admiral Len Hering, who served more than 30 years in the US navy and was awarded a2005presidential award for leadership in federal energy management from President George W Bush.
The San Onofre reactors are among dozens across the United States phasing out, but experts say they best represent the uncertain future of nuclear energy.
“It’s a combination of failures, really,” said Gregory Jaczko, who chaired the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the top federal enforcer, between2009and 2,012 of the situation at San Onofre.
That waste is the byproduct of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (Songs), three nuclear reactors primarily owned by the utility Southern California Edison (SCE).
A Danish startup plans to fit small nuclear reactors onto ships that plug directly into the grid.
