Nuclear power plants produce 8000 times more electricity than fossil fuels and are environmentally friendly, but when accidents occur, they can have a significant impact, such as the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. In the following years, nearly 100 people died in accidents or due to radiation illness.
(Brigham Young University) professor and nuclear engineering expert Matthew Memmott and colleagues have designed a safer new system for nuclear energy production: a molten salt micronuclear reactor that can solve all these problems and more.
standard nuclear reactor used in the United States is light water reactor . Uranium atoms are split to generate energy, and the remaining products will radiate a lot of heat. They are stored in solid fuel rods, and water flows through the rods to keep everything cool enough. Without sufficient cooling water flow, the rods may overheat and the entire facility is at risk of nuclear meltdown. Memmott's solution is to store these radioactive elements in molten salt , instead of fuel rod .
"If it is done in the right way, the nuclear energy can be very safe and very affordable," Memmott said. "This is a very good solution for the energy situation we are in because it has no emissions or pollution.
In the new reactor in Memott, all radioactive by-products dissolve into molten salts during and after the nuclear reaction occurs. Nuclear elements can release hundreds of thousands of years of heat or radioactivity while slowly cooling, which is why nuclear waste is so dangerous (and why in the past, it was so difficult to find a place to deal with it). However, the salt has extremely high melting temperatures - 550°C - And the temperature of these elements in the salt will soon be below the melting point. Once the salt crystallizes, the heat from the radiation will be absorbed into the salt (not remelted), eliminating the danger of nuclear melting in the power plant. Another benefit of the design of the
Molten salt nuclear reactor is that it has the potential to eliminate dangerous nuclear waste. The reaction products are safely contained in the salt without storing it elsewhere. More importantly, many of these products are valuable and can be taken out of the salt and sold.
For example, molybdenum-99 is a very expensive element used in medical imaging procedures and scans that can be extracted. USA Currently all Molybdenum-99 is purchased from Netherlands , but with this reactor , it can be easily made in the United States, making it easier to obtain and affordable. cobalt-60, gold, platinum, neodymium and many other elements can also be removed from the salt, which may be free of nuclear waste.
"When we extract valuable elements, we found that we can also remove oxygen and hydrogen ," Memmott said. "Through this process, we can make the salt completely clean and re-use again. We can recycle salt indefinitely.
A typical nuclear power plant is built in a multi-square-mile operation to reduce radiation risk, the core itself is 30 feet x 30 feet. Memmott's molten salt nuclear reactor is 4 feet x 7 feet, and since there is no risk of meltdown, there is no need to form similar large areas around it. This small reactor can generate enough energy to power 1,000 homes. Everything needed to run the reactor is designed to fit a 40-foot truck cabin; that means the reactor can even bring electricity into very remote places, the team said.
Other people who helped this project are Brigham Young professors Troy Munro, Stella Nicholson, John Hab, Yuri Howanski, Ben Flanderson and Andrew Larson, a graduate student at Brigham Young University.
Memmott uses a silicon chip analogy to compare the capabilities of this new reactor with the old reactor. When the computer was first invented, a huge vacuum tube was needed to control the flow of electrons so that the entire room could run a very limited, very simple computer.We no longer use this technology because someone has invented a silicon chip, which allows the technology to evolve to the tiny and efficient devices we have today. Silicon chips solved the problems of early computers, and this molten salt reactor could solve the problems of current nuclear reactors.
Memott said that over the past 60 years, people have had an intuitive reaction to the idea that the nuclear is bad, that it is big and dangerous, and these views are based on potential problems in the first generation. But having a molten salt reactor is equivalent to having a silicon chip, and people can have smaller, safer, cheaper reactors and get rid of these problems.
melted salt micronuclear reactor is small enough to be placed in the back of the truck
