Carbon Chemist

Tag: Nuclear Energy

  • STEP is the Apollo of fusion energy

    STEP is the Apollo of fusion energy

    [ad_1]

    Paul Methven, the inaugural CEO of UK Industrial Fusion Solutions Ltd (UKIFS), details the road ahead for the development of the UK’s prototype fusion energy plant.

    Clearly, we must make significant changes to address the effects of climate change and provide our uncertain world with energy security. Fusion energy offers enormous potential for both. We must deploy renewable and traditional nuclear (fission) energy to the maximum extent. We know they work, but even with those, the scale of the global challenge means we need much more.

    Energy demand will continue to rise well beyond 2050 as we strive for equity in access to energy, as the world population rises significantly and as we seek continued economic growth. We simply do not have enough low-carbon energy sources to meet this long-run demand, but we just might with fusion.

    The energy transition must not be a zero-sum game, and few really appreciate how monumental this needs to be. We cannot wreck economies to get there because if that is the path, then the reality is that we will not follow it, and then it will be too late. We need to find ways of making the energy transition an industrial transition and one that provides equitable benefits. We can do that in fusion.

    The UK is at the forefront of fusion science, engineering, and operations today. The UK also has the opportunity to be at the forefront of the commercial delivery of fusion, a global and strategic technology, for decades to come. The Government’s Fusion Strategy recognises that and aims to drive an industrial sector that can serve fusion programmes across the world.

    Andrew Bowie MP, Minister for Nuclear and Networks, took to the stage at London’s Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre during the opening of the IAEA Fusion Energy Conference last October to launch the update to that strategy with an audience of over 1,300 representing the international fusion community from 81 countries. Minister Bowie revealed more fusion news, detailing the UK’s Fusion Futures Programme – a £650m fusion energy package.

    The following week, the Energy Bill received Royal Assent, setting out a new approach for regulating fusion energy to enable its rapid development. Regulation of fusion energy in the UK will be different from that of fission in recognition of fusion’s intrinsically lower hazards – fusion cannot result in a runaway reaction. All this is part of the UK’s drive to commercialise a transformational new energy source, aiming to ensure the UK remains at the forefront of innovative strategic technology and an emerging global industry.

    Fusion regulation has also been on the international agenda with an event organised to share experiences on the safety and regulation of fusion facilities. Hosted by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), the event was attended by more than 100 representatives from 23 countries and three international organisations.

    The Head of the IAEA, Kirsi Alm-Lytz, explained in her opening remarks how recent scientific breakthroughs in fusion science has led to both public and private sector ventures looking to move away from experimental fusion devices and towards prototype and commercial fusion powerplants. As the scale and nature of fusion facilities evolve, regulations and safety approaches must evolve with them.

    The technical meeting was attended by the UKAEA, who support the IAEA as being central to capturing and consolidating knowledge into fusion standards, with the aim of achieving a degree of standardisation in design safety internationally whilst supporting innovation and reflecting the lower intrinsic hazards of fusion. Seeking high-level harmonisation of regulatory frameworks for fusion energy will aid the development and deployment of fusion energy systems globally in the future.

    STEP

    At the heart of the Government’s Fusion Strategy is STEP, the UK’s flagship fusion programme. STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) aims to deliver a prototype fusion energy plant, targeting 2040, and a path to the commercial viability of fusion. By demonstrating net energy from fusion, we pave the way for the potential development of a fleet of future fusion power plants around the world. Most importantly, through the endeavour of designing and delivering that plant, STEP will focus and develop the essential industrial capability that will place and keep the UK at the forefront of global fusion energy.

    From later in 2024, STEP will be led by UKIFS, a wholly owned subsidiary of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), with Professor Sir Ian Chapman remaining as the Group CEO.  The breadth of UKAEA’s world-leading fusion research, which covers the full lifecycle of future fusion energy plants, is integral to STEP’s success.

    I first joined UKAEA in 2020 to be part of the STEP programme because it really matters. It matters for the planet, for the UK’s economy, and its standing within the global community. It is also very challenging and exciting!

    It has been an enormous privilege to lead the STEP programme over the last three years and I am genuinely honoured and humbled to have been given the opportunity to help take this amazing endeavour into its next stage as CEO of UKIFS.  We are striving for something that has never been done before; very few opportunities like this come around and I am excited to continue to be part of helping unite a national endeavour to deliver fusion.

    Fossil to fusion energy

    One of the most important parts of what we will do is benefit the region around our site in West Burton. Minister Bowie joined Professor Sir Ian Chapman and I for a tour of West Burton, where he met with local representatives who are helping transform the former coal-fired power station, quite literally, from fossil to fusion energy, and spoke of his excitement to help make fusion power a reality.

    The communities along the river Trent, known as Megawatt Valley, have been powering the UK for 60 years, and are rightly proud of that heritage. They want to keep powering the UK, and STEP provides an enormous opportunity for new growth and regeneration in that region, showing how the energy transition can make a real difference to individuals as well as the global climate challenge. The response of the West Burton community has been outstanding. STEP has been welcomed with open arms, and we look forward to working with local communities to shape the way we deliver.

    Fusion power has the potential to transform the landscape of renewable energy, if done right

    Agility in action

    There’s a huge amount to do, but we’ve come a long way already. The programme is divided into three phases. In the first phase, to 2024, we’ve focused on a number of key activities.

    These include the concept design, development of the organisation to enable us to deliver a major technology and infrastructure programme, selection of a site, and getting the right regulatory framework in place.

    Already, STEP’s technical team have:

    • Explored over 66 integrated concepts with over 150 iterations;
    • Been to 66 technical decision boards that have taken over 165 decisions;
    • Delivered five Concept Maturity Level reviews; and
    • Undertaken two Independent Fusion Technical Advisory Group reviews.

    We have selected a home, West Burton, following a high-quality and competitive process that saw 15 self-nominated sites shortlisted to five, and a final decision by the Secretary of State announced in October 2022. The UKIFS announcement followed shortly after, alongside the commitment to develop a skills centre at West Burton to provide high-value jobs for future generations.

    Site characterisation works are underway and, in conjunction with the local community, we are developing a Masterplan that considers transport infrastructure and the social and economic impact of the programme. This is levelling up in action!

    You can hear the thoughts of local residents by watching a video from our recent community engagement event held in Retford.

    We have been working hard on our industrial model, which will combine the best of the public and private sectors in an integrated delivery team. We will soon go formally to market for our Engineering Partner and Construction Partner, who will work alongside UKAEA as the Fusion Partner in an Integrated Delivery Team.

    From the appointment of these strategic partners will flow a vast range of other opportunities for the broader supply chain – details of this will unfold in due course. Our approach is to create a true rainbow team that enables the best of each organisation and the best of every individual to be brought together.

    It is a rather nice analogy that what we seek to achieve technically, fusing high-energy particles so we release more energy than they hold individually, is also what we aim to do as a public-private integrated delivery team. Each person is vital when alone, but when fused together, they are so much more.

    For further information about STEP and future opportunities, visit: step.ukaea.uk

    Meet Paul Methven CB

    Paul joined the STEP programme in September 2020 from the Ministry of Defence, where he was Director of Submarine Acquisition at the Submarine Delivery Agency. In this role, he was Programme Director for Dreadnought, the UK’s second-largest major programme after HS2, and has previously led a number of other major and complex programmes across the MoD.

    Paul joined the Royal Navy in 1988 as a submariner, having a long and distinguished career, achieving the rank of Rear Admiral and being awarded a CB (Companion of The Order of the Bath).  He is also a graduate of the Government’s Major Projects Leadership Academy.

    Paul is married and has two grown-up children. He lives in Devon and enjoys sailing whenever he can, skiing and playing the bagpipes (but not all at the same time).

    (Image description: Plasma from the UKAEA’s spherical tokamak at Culham Campus, MAST-U) Regulation of fusion in the UK will differ from fission in recognition of fusion’s intrinsically lower hazards

    What is fusion energy?

    Fusion energy has the potential to provide ‘baseload’ power, complementing renewable and other low carbon energy sources as a share of many countries’ energy portfolios. Achieving this involves working at the forefront of science, engineering, and technology.

    Based on the same process that powers the stars and the Sun, a mix of two forms of hydrogen are heated to extreme temperatures – ten times hotter than the core of the Sun – they fuse together to create helium and release huge amounts of energy.

    There is more than one approach of achieving fusion. Examples include magnetic confinement and inertial confinement. At UKAEA, we hold this hot plasma using strong magnets in a ring-shaped machine called a ‘tokamak’. Another way is to use lasers to compress a small pellet.

    The energy created from fusion can be used to generate electricity in the same way as existing power stations.

    Please note, this article will also appear in the seventeenth edition of our quarterly publication.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Sustainable Nuclear Energy Research in Sweden

    Sustainable Nuclear Energy Research in Sweden

    [ad_1]

    The SUNRISE centre (Sustainable Nuclear Energy Research in Sweden) is the first step towards building a lead-cooled research and demonstration reactor in Sweden.

    The UN Agenda 2030 calls for solutions to the global climate challenge. The partners of the SUNRISE centre (Sustainable Nuclear Energy Research In Sweden) argue that this is best met by developing and deploying a combination of low-carbon power producing technologies, where nuclear power is ideal for providing reliable CO2-free base-load capacity.

    In Sweden, nuclear power currently provides nearly 40% of electricity. The ongoing expansion of wind-power ties up an increasing fraction of the national hydro-power capacity in order to compensate for the intermittency of wind and solar and is therefore not as available for base-load supply.

    Significant electrification and hydrogenation initiatives and strategies have been launched in Sweden in order to de-carbonise society. The current projections point to a doubling of the electricity consumption in Sweden over the coming decades.

    Development of sustainable nuclear energy has the potential for game-changing positive effects on a global scale, especially with regards to clean and affordable energy for the development of sustainable climate-neutral societies. For the projected transition from fossil fuel-based transportation to electric transportation, we need to provide adequate amount of base-load electricity.

    The SUNRISE centre’s work

    The SUNRISE centre aims to prepare for the construction and operation of a Swedish lead-cooled research reactor with a target start date in 2030. The work in SUNRISE will not in itself be sufficient to lead to licensing and construction of a reactor, and thus it is part of a greater research and development programme with a high profile and significant commercial impact potential.

    The centre gathers three universities: The centre host KTH Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Luleå University of Technology (LTU), and Uppsala University (UU), with a wide range of industrial and societal stakeholders in five work packages. Together, these stake out the path towards advancing lead-cooled fast reactor technology in Sweden. The centre started its operations on 1 January 2021, and has since then rather closely followed the plan set out in the application to SSF.

    A broad four-stage R&D programme is established by the SUNRISE centre partners which will enable Sweden to commence commercialisation of lead-cooled reactor technology within the coming ten years:
    •    Stage 1: Development of R&D platform for materials and components’ testing in support of design and safety analysis of a Swedish lead-cooled research reactor and an electrical mock-up prototype. (SUNRISE centre);
    •    Stage 2: Construction and operation of an electrically heated mock-up reactor, along with licensing of the research reactor design developed in Stage 1. (Solstice project);
    •    Stage 3: Irradiation testing of advanced steel composites and qualification of uranium nitride fuel (multiple projects); and
    •    Stage 4: Construction and operation of a lead-cooled research, demonstration, and training reactor (SUNRISE-LFR).

    The research advances have so far resulted in eight peer reviewed publications and have a broad range of exciting results in the pipeline for further dissemination.

    So far, 50 people have joined the centre in different capacities; 19 seniors and 26 juniors, with a mix of MSc students, PhD students, and postdocs among the juniors and a mix of professors, associate professors, researchers, and industry affiliates among the seniors.

    The centre partners have already succeeded in securing funding for the second stage of the greater programme through the Solstice project application which was funded by the Energy Agency by 99 MSEK in 2022.

    The SUNRISE centre has also secured the planned three-year programme access to neutron beam facilities at ANSTO in Australia in late 2022.

    Fig. 1: The SUNRISE organisation

    Additional funding has been secured for the building of local research infrastructure via cash and materials contributions from Blykalla and Alleima. KTH has provided central co-financing to the centre and Luleå University of Technology has provided co-financing for one PhD project.

    Meanwhile, stages three and four are under initiating discussions with financing bodies and the Swedish regulator (SSM, The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority), as well as with industry stakeholders and government representatives. The centre is thus operating with a significantly higher budget than what was awarded by The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) initially.

    The SUNRISE partners

    The parties in SUNRISE are KTH, LTU, and UU academic partners, with Blykalla, Westinghouse and Alleima as strongly contributing industry partners. There is also an advisory body formed of other industrial, societal, and academic stakeholders. These are Uniper, Outokumpu, Safetech, Vattenfall, Jernkontoret, Vysus group, Studsvik, Promation (CA), Oskarshamns kommun, The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, MIT (US), UNSW (AU) and Bangor university (UK). The three international partner universities are contributing in-kind to the research activities in the centre.

    The SUNRISE centre and the centre staff have had a truly significant impact on the media and society. SUNRISE has been discussed in a very large number of invited popular scientific appearances, some of which are recorded and available: television and radio interviews, news articles, podcasts, a museum exhibition, panel discussions and debates, and last but not least, a highly successful YouTube channel operated by one of the SUNRISE PhD students Elina Charatsidou: ‘Elina Charatsidou – Your Friendly Nuclear Physicist’, talking to and educating the public on nuclear energy matters.

    The videos related to the SUNRISE centre have over 430,000 views, and the overall channel has a reach of over 5.5 million views with nearly 80,000 subscribers after having been started in the summer of 2022. In short, SUNRISE is very visible in society.

    The SUNRISE centre is led by the director, Prof Pär Olsson at KTH, together with the core group of PIs that lead the different work packages. The centre is organised according to the following organigram. To ensure a successful and efficient development of the programme, the SUNRISE centre is divided into five work packages (WP). Each WP focuses on a specific research field.

    Work Package 1 (WP1): Design and safety analysis of a Swedish lead-cooled research reactor

    In WP1, the concept design of, and preliminary safety analysis report for a lead-cooled research and demonstration reactor (SUNRISE-LFR) to be built in Sweden must be developed and delivered. In SUNRISE WP1, the following major objectives for the research reactor, here named SUNRISE LFR, are defined as:
    •    Demonstrate reliable LFR operation;
    •    Demonstrate LFR performance under transients;
    •    Qualify LFR fuels (oxides and nitrides);
    •    Provide high-temperature steam for commercial services;
    •    Provide training and education of nuclear engineers;
    •    Provide fuel irradiation services; and
    •    Provide irradiation of structural materials.

    The reactor is designed in such a way that any incident or accident, also known as a transient, will generate a safe and automatic response from the reactor. This is achieved using a passive safety approach, based on phenomena such as gravity, buoyancy, temperature, and radiation. Protection of the public is ensured without the need to rely on the availability of external power.

    To this end, the reactor is designed with the ability to remove residual heat from the core using natural convection of the primary lead coolant, and eventually to remove heat from the primary system to the atmosphere using natural convection of air. The integrity of the barriers for the release of radionuclides, such as fuel cladding tubes and the primary reactor vessel, shall not be challenged during such transients.

    Fig. 2: The core map of the research reactor SUNRISE-LFR

    Work Package 2 (WP2): Development of advanced steels and radiation damage studies

    The main work in WP2 has initially focused on investigating the issue of liquid metal embrittlement (LME) on the steels developed prior to, and in SUNRISE, and the differences between liquid Pb and Pb-Bi eutectic. WP2 is focused on steel development and degradation studies – in collaboration with WP3 and WP5 – as well as experiments and modelling of radiation damage.

    The goal is to qualify structural steels for use in the research reactor and, by extension, for use in a fleet of commercial reactors. Most materials developed and studied here will act as overlay welded corrosion and erosion protective materials, that will be fused to already qualified fast reactor materials, such as 316L and 15-15Ti. WP2 works on material selection, fabrication, and procurement, in co-operation with Alleima.

    A range of experimental test matrices have been defined and are continuously refined through discussions. New steels are developed and delivered for different applications in the reactor. Exposure and mechanical stress experiments have been planned and conducted and have resulted in several publications. Selected complex components will be fabricated for testing in the experimental facilities that are constructed in WP5.

    Irradiation of alumina-forming steels and subsequent characterisation and mechanical testing will be performed. Ion beam irradiation is extensively used to investigate radiation damage effects (from the Uppsala Tandem facility), exemplified by the award winning MSc diploma thesis of Gabriela Lapinska, and we are targeting access to neutron sources in terms of research reactors as well. We will work on modelling of different aspects of the steel degradation, and compare with the experiments carried out.

    Work Package 3 (WP3): Characterisation, advanced manufacturing, and lab-scale testing of coatings and novel materials

    WP3 is the largest work package in terms of manpower, lead by researchers from LTU. An extensive list of tasks and goals regarding materials and process development is undertaken. We will continuously work with selection of materials and components for all studies, often in centre-wide discussions at the technical workshops.

    New materials are developed for different application areas in the reactor. Of critical importance is development of pump impeller materials, including hard and dense cemented carbides produced in an innovative way, coatings, and protective cladding. The processing development that is needed to fuse or clad qualified reactor materials with protective self-healing steels, will be developed here.

    The main focus for such work is advanced and programmable laser welding, so that once qualified, industrial scale processing can be enabled. Local facilities at Luleå University of Technology (LTU) for wear and fretting experiments have now been adapted for use in a liquid metal environment, and testing of prototypic as well as state-of-the-art materials is underway.

    All materials, compound components, weldments, and coatings are characterised with a wide range of techniques. Post-test analysis is conducted on all exposed materials and components. Selected materials and components will be prepared for testing in the larger scale facilities to be designed and constructed in WP5. Post-exposure characterisation will be mainly handled by WP2 and WP3.

    Work Package 4 (WP4): Nuclear fuel development and safety

    WP4 is dedicated to assessing the fuel/cladding/coolant interaction and fuel properties in operational and accident conditions. Uranium nitride is the reference long-term fuel for the SUNRISE reactor, although the initial plan is to start the reactor with oxide fuel in order to enable nitride fuel licensing in the first years of reactor operation.

    By coupling experimental and modelling techniques, it will be possible to obtain a full description of this system and build a model to support the operational safety in a lead-cooled fast reactor. To achieve this, uranium nitride fuel powder and pellets will be fabricated at KTH.

    nuclear energy research
    Fig. 3: Laser cladded FeCrAl single track on 316L flat substrate

    With the help of additives from Uppsala University, we are making inactive simulated burn-up fuel, that chemically mimics fuel that has undergone irradiation. In order to build reliable models for fuel performance, we need to close the knowledge gaps regarding certain parameters of safety interest.

    We are investigating fuel/clad/coolant interactions at different conditions including room temperature, operation temperatures, and transient temperatures. We are working on studies of how the build-up of fission products cause properties such as the thermal conductivity to evolve, how the fuel operates under irradiation, and on diffusion and release of gases into the clad.

    We have prepared and sent simulated burn-up fuel samples for high-temperature neutron diffraction experiments in ANSTO, Australia. We work on ion irradiation studies of UN and simulated burn-up fuel and are developing advanced methods to measure the evolution of thermal properties under irradiation.

    We work on thermodynamic modelling of the important phases that appear in the fuel/clad system and have joined the TAF-ID project. We investigate whether there is any relevant chemical fuel/clad/coolant interaction that should be modelled from the point of view of reactor safety. We will refine fuel fabrication parameters with spark plasma sintering to perfect impurities, microstructure, and porosity control.

    Fig. 4: A UN pellet fabricated using SPS, fingertips included for scale

    We will perform mechanical testing and irradiation exposure of fuel materials. We will work with detailed state of the art microstructural characterisation tools in all of these aspects.

    Work Package 5 (WP5): Development of experimental and modelling approaches for testing of LFR component performance in high temperature HLM flow

    In WP5, the goal is to develop a combination of modelling tools and an experimental platform that can be used for simulation and testing of Flow Accelerated Corrosion/Erosion (FACE) at high temperatures for materials and components that will be used for the reactor design and the licensing process. The aim is to provide test environments suitable for model development and validation data from FACE tests of selected reactor design components in flowing heavy liquid metal at high linear flow velocities and high temperatures.

    The work will progress according to a similar materials selection procedure as in the other WPs. The detailed conditions for the test facilities are converging in the centre-wide workshops. Two testing facilities are designed, modelled and about to be constructed: a Separate Effect FACE (SEFACE) facility and a Component Test Facility (CTF). The former to focus on materials’ tolerance to FACE and the second to test reactor-relevant scale components over relevant time scales and flow and temperature conditions.

    The plan is to also construct model-validating minor facilities which will work with scale-prototypic fluids, and which can be well instrumented, in order to build detailed and validated models of the conditions in the actual test facilities.

    Experiments will be planned and carried out and post-test examinations of different kinds will be performed, together with WP2, WP3 and WP4. All the high-temperature Pb exposure facilities are being consolidated into the central SUNRISE laboratory that is under construction at KTH.

    Please note, this article will also appear in the seventeenth edition of our quarterly publication.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Nuclear fusion reaction releases almost twice the energy put in

    Nuclear fusion reaction releases almost twice the energy put in

    [ad_1]

    Rendering of 192 laser beams as they reach the target in the center of the National Ignition Facility’s Target Chamber

    Fusion experiments at the US National Ignition Facility have achieved a significant milestone

    Philip Saltonstall

    Scientists have confirmed that a fusion reaction in 2022 reached a historic milestone by unleashing more energy than was put into it – and subsequent trials have produced even better results, they say. The findings, now published in a series of papers, give encouragement that fusion reactors will one day create clean, plentiful energy.

    Today’s nuclear power plants rely on fission reactions, where atoms are smashed apart to release energy and smaller particles. Fusion works in reverse, squeezing smaller particles together into larger atoms; the same process powers our sun.

    Fusion can create more energy with none of the radioactive waste involved in fission, but finding a way to contain and control this process, let alone extract energy from it, has eluded scientists and engineers for decades.

    Experiments to do this using capsules of deuterium and tritium fuel bombarded with lasers – a process called inertial confinement fusion (ICF) – began at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California in 2011. The energy released was initially only a tiny fraction of the laser energy put in, but it gradually increased until an experiment on 5 December 2022 finally passed the crucial milestone of breaking even. That reaction put out 1.5 times the laser energy required to kickstart it.

    In one paper, the lab’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) claims that trial runs since then have yielded even greater ratios, peaking at 1.9 times the energy input on 4 September 2023.

    Richard Town at LLNL says the team’s checks and double-checks since the 2022 result have proved that it “wasn’t a flash in the pan”, and he believes there is still room for improvement.

    Even with the hardware currently installed at NIF, Town says it is likely that yields could be improved, but if the lasers can be upgraded – which would take years – things could be pushed even further. “A bigger hammer always helps,” he says. “If we can get a bigger hammer, I think we could get to target gains of about roughly 10.”

    But Town points out that NIF was never built to be a prototype reactor and isn’t optimised for boosting yields. Its main job is to provide critical research for the US nuclear weapons programme.

    Part of this work involves exposing electronics and payloads from nuclear bombs to the neutron bombardment that takes place when ICF reactions occur, to check that they will function in the event of all-out nuclear war. The danger of an electronics failure was highlighted during a test in 2021 when NIF fired and wiped out all lights across the site, plunging researchers into darkness. “Those lights were not hardened, but you can sort of imagine a military component that has to survive a much higher dosage,” says Town.

    This mission means some research from the project remains classified; even the concept of ICF was a classified secret into the 1990s, says Town.

    The announcement that ICF had reached the break-even point in 2022 provided hope that fusion power was drawing closer, and this will be bolstered by news that further progress has been made. But there are caveats.

    Firstly, the energy output falls far short of what would be needed for a commercial reactor, barely creating enough to heat a bath. Worse than that, the ratio is calculated using the lasers’ output, but to create that 2.1 megajoules of energy, the lasers draw 500 trillion watts, which is more power than the output of the entire US national grid. So these experiments break even in a very narrow sense of the term.

    Martin Freer at the University of Birmingham, UK, says these results are certainly not an indication that practical fusion reactors can now be built. “There’s still science to be done,” he says. “It’s not like we know the answers to all of this and we don’t need researchers any more.”

    Freer says that as scientific experiments progress, they throw up engineering challenges to create better materials and processes, which will allow better experiments and more progress. “There is a chance that we will have fusion,” he says. “But the challenges that we have are pretty steep, scientifically.”

    Aneeqa Khan at the University of Manchester, UK, agrees that recent progress in fusion research is positive, but stresses that it will be decades before commercial power plants are operational – and even that will hinge on global collaboration and a concerted effort to train more people in the field. She warns against interpreting progress in fusion research as a possible solution to tackle our reliance on energy from fossil fuels.

    “Fusion is already too late to deal with the climate crisis. We are already facing the devastation from climate change on a global scale,” says Khan. “In the short term, we need to use existing low-carbon technologies such as fission and renewables, while investing in fusion for the long term, to be part of a diverse low-carbon energy mix. We need to be throwing everything we have at the climate crisis.”

    Topics:

    • nuclear energy/
    • fusion power

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Novel Technique Extracts Uranium From Seawater for Nuclear Energy

    Novel Technique Extracts Uranium From Seawater for Nuclear Energy

    [ad_1]

    Nuclear Fusion Energy Reactor Plasma Art Illustration

    A new study reveals an efficient method for extracting uranium ions from seawater using a specially designed electrode material. This approach offers a sustainable alternative to traditional uranium mining, potentially turning the oceans into vast sources of nuclear fuel.

    Most of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans, which are teeming with a wide variety of life. Interestingly, these vast bodies of water also contain a dilute distribution of uranium ions. Extracting these ions could potentially offer a renewable source of fuel for nuclear power generation. A recent study in ACS Central Science introduces a new material designed for electrochemical extraction. This innovation is more effective at capturing the elusive uranium ions from seawater compared to previous techniques.

    Nuclear power reactors release the energy naturally stored inside of an atom and turn it into heat and electricity by literally breaking the atom apart — a process known as fission. Uranium has become the favored element for this process as all its forms are unstable and radioactive, making it easy to split.

    Currently, this metal is extracted from rocks, but uranium ore deposits are finite. Yet, the Nuclear Energy Agency estimates that 4.5 billion tons of uranium are floating around in our oceans as dissolved uranyl ions. This reserve is over 1,000 times more than what’s on land. Extracting these ions has proven to be challenging, though, as the materials for doing so don’t have enough surface area to trap ions effectively. So, Rui Zhao, Guangshan Zhu, and colleagues wanted to develop an electrode material with lots of microscopic nooks and crannies that could be used in the electrochemical capture of uranium ions from seawater.

    Extracting Uranium From Seawater As Another Source of Nuclear Fuel

    This new coated cloth effectively accumulated uranium (in yellow) on its surface from uranium-spiked seawater. Credit: Adapted from ACS Central Science, 2023, DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.3c01291

    Innovative Electrode Material Development

    To create their electrodes, the team began with flexible cloth woven from carbon fibers. They coated the cloth with two specialized monomers that were then polymerized. Next, they treated the cloth with hydroxylamine hydrochloride to add amidoxime groups to the polymers. The natural, porous structure of the cloth created many tiny pockets for the amidoxime to nestle in and easily trap the uranyl ions.

    In experiments, the researchers placed the coated cloth as a cathode in either naturally sourced or uranium-spiked seawater, added a graphite anode, and ran a cyclic current between the electrodes. Over time, bright yellow, uranium-based precipitates accumulated on the cathode cloth.

    In the tests using seawater collected from the Bohai Sea, the electrodes extracted 12.6 milligrams of uranium per gram of coated, active material over 24 days. The coated material’s capacity was higher than most of the other uranium-extracting materials tested by the team. Additionally, using electrochemistry to trap the ions was around three times faster than simply allowing them to naturally accumulate on the cloths. The researchers say that this work offers an effective method to capture uranium from seawater, which could open up the oceans as new suppliers of nuclear fuel.

    Reference: “Self-Standing Porous Aromatic Framework Electrodes for Efficient Electrochemical Uranium Extraction” by Dingyang Chen, Yue Li, Xinyue Zhao, Minsi Shi, Xiaoyuan Shi, Rui Zhao and Guangshan Zhu, 13 December 2023, ACS Central Science.
    DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.3c01291

    The authors acknowledge funding from the National Key R&D Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Project of Education Department of Jilin Province, the Natural Science Foundation of Department of Science and Technology of Jilin Province, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the “111” project.



    [ad_2]

    Source link