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Category: nuclear energy

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4iRF6pilm3s

UK-based Moltex Energy will build a demonstration SSR-W (Stable Salt Reactor – Wasteburner) at the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant site in Canada under an agreement signed with the New Brunswick Energy Solutions Corporation and NB Power.

The agreement provides CAD5.0 million (USD3.8 million) of financial support to Moltex for its immediate development activities and Moltex will open its North American headquarters in Saint John and build its development team there. It also calls for Moltex to deploy its first SSR-W at the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant site before 2030.

Stable Salt Reactors build on the fundamental safety and simplicity breakthrough of molten salt fuel in essentially standard nuclear fuel tubes. Stable Salt Reactors are modular in construction. Their rectangular cores can be extended module by module to create reactors from 150MW to 1200MW power.

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It wasn’t that long ago that solar power and wind power were labeled as marginal, ‘green’ electricity, but in the last five years or so they have become much more affordable and economically more feasible than conventional sources like coal and nuclear.

What supported solar along the way partly was the emergence of energy storage in the form of battery systems. Electricity can now be made by solar power systems and the excess can be stored for usage at night or on less sunny days. At least, solar power has been paired successfully with energy storage, and it is catching up with solar power. The cost of this newish technology is dropping, “The overall estimated cost fell 32% in 2015 and 2016, according to the 2017 GTM Reseach utility-scale storage report. That will slow over the next five years, GTM reported. But battery storage is — in certain places and applications — on its way to cost-competitiveness.”

According to Lazard, it could drop another 36% between 2018 and 2022. The UC-Berkeley research study, “Energy Storage Deployment and Innovation for the Clean Energy Transition,” predicted lithium-ion batteries could hit the $100 per kilowatt-hour mark in 2018.

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Sawtooth swings—up-and-down ripples found in everything from stock prices on Wall Street to ocean waves—occur periodically in the temperature and density of the plasma that fuels fusion reactions in doughnut-shaped facilities called tokamaks. These swings can sometimes combine with other instabilities in the plasma to produce a perfect storm that halts the reactions. However, some plasmas are free of sawtooth gyrations thanks to a mechanism that has long puzzled physicists.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have recently produced complex simulations of the process that may show the physics behind this , which is called “ pumping.” Unraveling the process could advance the development of fusion energy.

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The nuclear power sector is seeing a resurgence in innovation, supported by new policies and emerging technologies. The general public and various governments are starting to grasp the value of nuclear power as an alternative, sustainable energy source. Unlike renewables, such as wind and solar power, nuclear energy is not dependent on weather conditions for power generation, having a capacity factor of over 90 percent. Nuclear power is also more eco-friendly than natural gas and coal and its “carbon-free” attributes are seen as critical in the fight against climate change.

For decades, advancements in the nuclear power sector have been incremental and focused largely on making systems “walk away safe.” Today, the industry is pushing the boundaries and exploring applications for nuclear power in ways that have never before been considered.

BWXT is at the forefront of this nuclear renaissance. This 6,000-employee company operates on the model of letting capital drive strategy. BWXT is constantly evaluating new ways to ensure workers, funding, and policies are utilized in the most effective way possible. The company also analyzes the needs of numerous other industries to determine how nuclear power could provide innovative solutions.

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Bucknell has led advanced engineering teams at Chrysler and General Motors for three production high performance engine families. Was Senior Propulsion Engineer for the Raptor full-flow staged combustion methalox rocket at Space Exploration Technologies then Senior Propulsion Scientist for Divergent3D developing vehicle technologies.

In 2017, he described how high temperature (820−1000 degree celsius) nuclear power plants can solve produce synthetic fuel to replace oil.

Molten Salt reactors are being developed in China, Canada and the USA. However, those plants will run at about 700 degree celsius.

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John Bucknell created the pre-conceptual design for the SpaceX Raptor engine. It will be the advanced full-flow staged combustion rocket engine for the SpaceX BFR. He designed and built the subscale Raptor rocket for proof of concept testing able to test eighty-one configurations of main injector.

John Bucknell says the nuclear turbo rocket technology and his designs are ready for development. The air-breathing nuclear thermal rocket will enable 7 times more payload fraction to be delivered to low-earth orbit and it will have 6 times the ISP (rocket fuel efficiency) as chemical rockets. The rocket will have two to three times the speed and performance of chemical rockets for missions outside of the atmosphere.

The fully reusable nuclear rocket will be a single stage to orbit system which will be able to make space-based solar power several times cheaper than coal power. Using the 11-meter diameter version of this rocket to build space-based solar power will enable solar power at less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour.

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