05-05-2008
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President
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Member Since: Jan 2007
Location: USA
Posts: 15,400
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Re: Massive Oil Deposit could Increase US reserves by 10x
Project Aims To Make Sodium-cooled Nuclear Reactors Safe, Efficient
Quote:
Project Aims To Make Sodium-cooled Nuclear Reactors Safe, Efficient
ScienceDaily (Jul. 2, 2007)
Proposals to reduce America's heavy dependence on foreign oil are helping to renew interest in nuclear energy.
And at Kansas State University, the goal is to help make that energy source as safe as possible.
The K-State department of mechanical and nuclear engineering has received a three-year, approximately $550,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Nuclear Energy Research Initiative for the project "Experimental Development and Demonstration of Ultrasonic Measurement Diagnostics for Sodium Fast Reactor Thermohydraulics." Principal investigator Akira Tokuhiro, associate professor, along with Bruce Babin, assistant professor, Terry Beck, professor, and Mohammad Hosni, professor and department head, will look at technology issues in sodium-cooled fast reactors.
In reactor design, creating the reactor core and then the cooling system are the most important aspects, Tokuhiro said.
"Liquid sodium works well for this task," he said of the cooling system. Sodium conducts heat better than water, which is the current coolant of choice. In addition, sodium's boiling point is higher than water's.
"Reactors produce a lot of heat and you want a coolant that has a high boiling point," Tokuhiro said.
Although sodium makes an excellent coolant for reactors, it is chemically reactive and optically opaque, which has implications for operations, maintenance and inspections. Using sodium, rather than water, as a coolant was the subject of much research in the '60s, '70s and '80s. However, waning support for nuclear energy in the post-Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl years led research and development to basically cease by the early '90s, Tokuhiro said.
The concept is well-known, but Tokuhiro and co-investigators plan to undertake research on how to actually make a sodium-cooled reactor work and work safely and economically.
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Nuclear energy is a great way to go. Even the French know this. 
French Nuclear Power: WNA
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French Nuclear Power Program
(April 2007)
• France derives over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy. This is due to a long-standing policy based on energy security.
• France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over EUR 3 billion per year from this.
• France has been very active in developing nuclear technology. Reactors and fuel products and services are a major export.
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In December 2006 the government's Atomic Energy Committee decided to proceed with a Generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor prototype whose design features are to be decided by 2012 and the start up aimed for 2020. A new generation of sodium-cooled fast reactor with innovations intended to improve the competitiveness and the safety of this reactor type is the reference approach for this prototype. A gas-cooled fast reactor design is to be developed in parallel as an alternative option. The prototype will also have the mission of demonstrating advanced recycling modes intended to improve the ultimate high-level and long-lived waste to be disposed of. The objective is to have one type of competitive fast reactor technology ready for industrial deployment in France and for export after 2035-2040. The prototype, possibly built near Phenix at Marcoule, will be 250 to 800 MWe and is expected to cost about EUR 1.5 to 2 billion. The project will be led by the CEA.
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