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Scientists at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory have devised an unconventional plan for accelerating the development of a small, safe, cheap nuclear reactor: they want to build a prototype that piggybacks on their existing facility.
Since the planned one-megawatt demonstration reactor would be incapable of sustaining a fission reaction on its own, the researchers believe they could avoid building a standalone experimental prototype, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission generally requires. That site selection and licensing process can take a decade or longer, so the hope is that this approach could cost hundreds of millions of dollars less and take half as much time to build.
[...] The researchers specifically want to test designs for a small, transportable molten-salt-cooled reactor, intended for off-grid purposes such as generating electricity for remote villages or worksites. Molten-salt reactors, first researched in the 1950s, are a subject of growing interest in the field because of the potential they offer for greater safety and lower costs compared with traditional nuclear power plants.
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/03/mit-wants-to-build-add-on-1-mw-sub.html
(Score: 2) by riT-k0MA on Monday April 03 2017, @12:16PM (6 children)
Subcritical? Requires neutrons to activate? Sounds like a thorium reactor. I don't see the word "thorium" in either article though. I wonder why that was excluded?
(Score: 1) by Chrontius on Monday April 03 2017, @12:19PM
"Fuel-agnostic" is another possibility…
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Aiwendil on Monday April 03 2017, @01:01PM (2 children)
Subcritical is the fancy way of saying "can't sustain a chain reaction".
'Requires [externally sourced] neutrons to activate' just means it is subcritical.
No need for it to be thoruim - it can simply be kept below critical mass (ie, neutron absorbtion and leakage is too high), unmoderated (will make most neutrons miss), without reflector (standard hack to nudge to critical), too low enrichment (increased critical mass needed), no reprocessing/removing bred fuel (too few new neutrons internally), subcritical configuration (ie - neutrons miss due to fuel alignment)...
I actually see this as a great way to test a burner (keep it at .99% or critical), reprocessing, fueltesting, material testing, testing moderators - in short, as a highly flexible research reactor to validate molten-salt technologies
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @06:30PM (1 child)
"keep at 99% of critical"
seems risky if it makes them think they don't need control measures.
everything has error bars
What if something changes in the configuration and it gains 2%?
I'd be more happy with 80+-5%, or moving to someplace less populated, even if it is a blue state.
So, if you have a working reactor radiating neutrons to activate a nearby sub-critical reactor,
does the now activated reactor radiate neutrons back to the first reactor?
Is this a one-way sort of thing, or does the additional reactor affect the controlling of the first?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Monday April 03 2017, @08:50PM
Then you'd get a system that heats up, and it will cause the fuel to become less dense and thereby increase the requirement for critical mass, this kinda is how molten-salt (and AHR) self-regulates. Also, you could pump in more of a known low-reactivity salt, or get a nobel prize for discovering how to make the neutron poisons (unwanted absorbers) vanish, the problem actually is to reach criticality.
The normal way to irradiate an external target is to simply have an unshielded part that allows the neutrons to escape the source to reach the target, in this case the target will be a circulating fluid and also one with less excess. And any feedback will be kept below what the source can deal with (ie - should be less of an issue than fresh fuel in the source reactor)
(Score: 2) by BananaPhone on Monday April 03 2017, @02:21PM
Probably on purpose.
The industry would not want to have anything happen to their 25+ year contract to build custom fuel pellets for their reactors.
Meanwhile the government doesn't want to upset armchair environmentalists over new reactors being built.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday April 03 2017, @07:31PM
Not a direct answer, but you reminded me of a pet peeve:
Hollywood nuclear scientist: "The reactor is reaching critical! OMGOMGWTFBBQ!!!11!! [ominous music, Red Countdown Clock set to Hero Saving The Day]"
Realistic nuclear engineer: "The reactor is reaching critical state, pumps working, backup pumps ready, turbine room ready, maintenance over on schedule, good job, people"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @02:51PM (3 children)
wow. there's soo much wrong with this.
first off the "arm-chair" MIT scientists should get off their butts and go dig out the freaking
uranium or thorium themselves instead of relying on sub-human work force in some red-mud village in africa, got it?
the "remote village" which will profit from this cheap and safe radiation .. errr ... energy source, is probably totally worth investing this tech into, because
remote and village, e.g. it has like a huge population that wants to be there because, it is like totally important because
some reason or another.
the the project starts off on the "avoid red tape" foot. awesome. what other red tape might be circumvented later, you know, because verification takes time?
the only good thing is that they'll nuke themselves and then nobody has to go to MIT (and invent "red tape avoiding" projects) anymore :)
on a side note: i "like" MIT. there are smart people there that can do what they dream of and i do hope this new air of nuclear renaissance emanating from MIT in the last few years is just for show to please some totally pro-nuclear donor and not meant in honesty.
anyways, should this be the case, maybe MIT could strap the nuclear reactor into the cargo bay of the private donor jet and convert it to a (one way) nuclear-electrical powered vanity jet?
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Monday April 03 2017, @03:31PM
I am not sure what came to your mind when you hear "remote village" but to me I thought "north slope drilling operations" , "native alaskan villages" , and "remote mining operations" . A small scale nuke reactor would replace the baseline need for coal and diesel generators when working on commercial projects. Would BP/Connaco Philips/etc rather have wasteful diesel generators as a baseline or a one-and-done nuke they can move project to project.
I was also unsure if you were talking about thorium mining operations, there is a crap ton of thorium in Alaskan topsoil up in the NW of the state.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @05:08PM
I'm wondering if you're a LaTeX user, but some of your lines are a bit wide for that. Most of my text editors are set at 100 columns even though I understand some people will get irritated at anything over 70 columns.
Here's a random idea. Do we need a pseudo-LaTeX mode that collapses single newlines but turns multiple newlines into paragraph breaks? I suppose one could use HTML formatted, but that would require typing annoying angle brackets to get a paragraph break.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday April 03 2017, @09:09PM
WTF? Since when is Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ausrtalia in africa? (together those four provide more than half of the world's uranium)
But yeah, I guess the scientists in Massachusetts should visit the world's largest uranium mine, with that being the Canadian (Saskatchewan) Macarthur River Mine (provides 13% of world supplies). They deserve a vacation
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @04:23PM
So MIT thinks they can rules-lawyer around regulation. Is that a good thing? Regulations are created for a reason.
Imagine the article instead said:
Since the toxic waste has no special color, the researchers believe they could avoid building a waste treatment plant prior to dumping it into the river, which the Environmental Protection Agency generally requires.
I'm sure we would all lambast and rightly fear what they were doing. So the question I have is what rules are they bypassing and why. If it is legal-red-tape for no good reason just to stop all nuclear work, then good on them for bypassing it. If it is a legitimate security risk and we wonder how we could have let a rogue nuclear installation happen when a meltdown/whatever happens in a few year, then shame on them.
Can anybody who knows more comment?