Can We Make A Nuclear Reactor That Won't Melt Down?

[OnlinePoker]

Yes we can. It’s called a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) and NuScale Power is the company that will build the first one in America. Last year, they submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission the first design certification application (DCA) for any SMR in the United States.

Just two months later, NRC accepted their design certification application. By accepting the DCA for review, the NRC staff confirmed that NuScale’s submission addresses all of NRC’s initial concerns and requirements.

Now, less than a year later, the NRC approved NuScale’s walk-away-safe concept. That means just what it sounds like - the reactor doesn’t need the complex back-up power systems that traditional reactors require and which traditionally add a lot of cost as well as some uncertainty.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/24/can-we-make-a-nuclear-reactor-that-wont-melt-down/#1f0629625b7e

[ExciteBike66]

1. Interesting read, thanks!

[defacto7]

2. I read about the idea a couple years ago.

It sounds promising. There was some context of having smaller localized plants. My only drwawback is whether it can be terror proof.

[NNadir]

3. All reactors are currently "terror proof." The terror at "nuclear terror" is just more...

...nonsensical selective attention by people who don't understand anything at all about nuclear materials.

Which was easier for Timothy McVeigh to get, diesel fuel and fertilizer or plutonium?

The 9/11 attackers? Jet fuel and jet planes or plutonium?

While under going fission, or while in the presence of fission products, very, very, very, very, very sophisticated technology is required to make either the big bad "dirty bomb" that people mindlessly quiver and quake about, or to make even more difficultly, a nuclear bomb by isolating plutonium.

I'll be interested in "nuclear terrorism" when the same people who complain about it show some interest in "oil terrorism," or "gasoline terrorism."

Terrorist want three things, to work cheaply, to work fast, and to be able to transport their weapons to population centers.

None of these criteria can be met by nuclear materials, none.

This is actually identical to the case where people complain about so called "nuclear waste," which as killed no one despite all the prattling, while ignoring dangerous fossil fuel waste which, coupled with dangerous biomass waste, kills seven million people per year, every year, without stop.

University research reactors, by the way, have been intrinsically safe since the 1950's, because of the hydride fuel developed by Simard and Dyson. The reason they are so is because of the laws of heat transfer.

The Nuscale reactor is simply a small "breed and burn" reactor. It's an OK one, but certainly not the best one possible. My guess is that the Terrapower is a better reactor, but personally I believe that better reactors than either are very possible.

[hunter]

6. To save others from having to look it up...

The TRIGA reactor uses uranium zirconium hydride (UZrH) fuel, which has a large, prompt negative fuel temperature coefficient of reactivity, meaning that as the temperature of the core increases, the reactivity rapidly decreases. Because of this unique feature, it can be safely pulsed at a power of 22,000 megawatts...

---more---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA

http://www.ga.com/triga

The UZrH fuel expands as it heats up, decreasing its overall density, which limits the nuclear reaction without any operator intervention.

There's no Chernobyl style explode-and-catch-fire mode.

[Massacure]

4. Of course we can make a nuclear reactor that won't melt down.

To name a few: Connecticut Yankee operated for 36 years without melting down, Crystal River operated for 36 years without melting down, Big Rock Point operated for 34 years without melting down and Fort Calhoun operator for 43 years without melting down. And in the coming decades, there will likely be another 99 reactors we can add to this marvelous list.

[OnlinePoker]

5. They should have titled the article "can't melt down". n/t

[NNadir]

7. Um, well, yeah. Good point. It would be interesting if we could make a coal plant that...

...didn't kill people, but that's not generating much attention, that we have never, not once, built a coal plant that didn't kill people.