Professor Gérard Mourou says he may be able to show results in 10–15 years that will transform the future of nuclear power.
Category: nuclear energy – Page 133
Scientists Turn Nuclear Waste into Diamond Batteries That’ll Last for Thousands of Years
This technology may someday power spacecraft, satellites, high-flying drones, and pacemakers.
Commonwealth Fusion stronger magnet tokomak gets billionaire funding
Commonwealth Fusion Systems will use new superconducting materials to make far stronger magnets for a smaller Tokamak fusion system. The planned fusion experiment, called Sparc, is set to be far smaller – about 1/65th of the volume – than that of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, an international collaboration.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures’ portfolio company @CFS_energy is building on decades of government-funded research to accelerate the path toward clean, limitless commercial fusion energy. #cleanenergy https://www.cfs.energy/
A nuclear startup will fold after failing to deliver reactors that run on spent fuel
Transatomic Power, an MIT spinout that drew wide attention and millions in funding, is shutting down almost two years after the firm backtracked on bold claims for its design of a molten-salt reactor.
High hopes: The company, founded in 2011, plans to announce later today that it’s winding down.
Transatomic had claimed its technology could generate electricity 75 times more efficiently than conventional light-water reactors, and run on their spent nuclear fuel. But in a white paper published in late 2016, it backed off the latter claim entirely and revised the 75 times figure to “more than twice,” a development first reported by MIT Technology Review.
Nuclear Thermal Propulsion: Game Changing Technology
Today’s advances in materials, testing capabilities, and reactor development are providing impetus for NASA to appraise Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) as an attractive 21st century option to propel human exploration missions to Mars and other deep space destinations.
Utilizing nuclear technology as an ingredient of NASA’s exploration prowess is not new. NTP research is part of the space agency’s storied history. In 1961, NASA and the former Atomic Energy Commission jointly embarked on the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA) program – an effort that over several years led to the design, building, and testing of reactors and rocket engines.
Those programmatic high points spurred then-NASA Marshall Space Flight Center director and rocket pioneer, Wernher von Braun, to advocate for a proposed mission, dispatching a dozen crew members to Mars aboard two rockets. Each rocket would be propelled by three NERVA engines. As detailed by von Braun, that expeditionary crew would launch to the Red Planet in November 1981 and land on that distant world in August 1982. In presenting his visionary plan in August 1969 to a Space Task Group, von Braun explained that “although the undertaking of this mission will be a great national challenge, it represents no greater challenge than the commitment made in 1961 to land a man on the moon.”
China and Russia looking at 27 floating nuclear reactors but ThorCon and Indonesia could scale to 100 per year
What could possibly go wrong? Does anyone remember Fukushima?
Floating nuclear power plants offer several economic advantages.
A large percentage of the cost of a nuclear power plant is the construction and installation of the plant itself. This cost can vary and increase if the site has challenging weather and other conditions. Also, cold and harsh environments may not have a highly trained local workforce to build each plant.
Building floating nuclear reactors means that the factory or shipyard can be at the most productive and efficient location.