Science - NRC Approves Gen IV Nuclear Reactor Design

I just wish I understood half of what I read. . Maybe I should retitle thread science for dummies with a repeated request for someone to explain it to me..

 

if this works, charge your EV faster than you can fill a car with gas.

Tech breakthrough leads to a new battery that charges in 3 minutes and lasts 20 years (msn.com)


Astartup has reportedly developed an ultra-fast charging battery that could change the EV game completely. The battery was developed by Adden Energy, a spin-off of Harvard University. The company claims that the battery can fully charge in just three minutes and that it will last for 20 years.

The Independent reports that the company has already demonstrated a coin-cell prototype with charge rates of three minutes and over 10,000 cycles within its lifetime. Now, it’s looking to commercialize that effort and put ultra-fast charging batteries with similar configurations in the hands of the public. The idea, the company says, is to help make electric vehicles more approachable.

 

it would seem that they are refining the options. this option to create a temperature barrier across the plasm allowed them to sustain a stable reaction for 30 seconds at 200M degree before they shut it down. not sure I understand it all but it seems that injecting the different feed particles at different rates/and/or locations in the plasma core can create temperature barriers that help to contain the core needed to sustain the reaction. Sounds a lot like the mythical warp drive from Star Trek, contained by a gravitational field, gives great energy. maybe time travelers wrote that show...things that make you go hmmmm

so if they contain it and sustain it, how the heck do you harvest that kind of heat to make electricity out of it?

Korean nuclear fusion reactor achieves 100 million°C for 30 seconds | New Scientist

A nuclear fusion reaction has lasted for 30 seconds at temperatures in excess of 100 million°C. While the duration and temperature alone aren’t records, the simultaneous achievement of heat and stability brings us a step closer to a viable fusion reactor – as long as the technique used can be scaled up.

Most scientists agree that viable fusion power is still decades away, but the incremental advances in understanding and results keep coming. An experiment conducted in 2021 created a reaction energetic enough to be self-sustaining, conceptual designs for a commercial reactor are being drawn up, while work continues on the large ITER experimental fusion reactor in France. Now Yong-Su Na at Seoul National University in South Korea and his colleagues have succeeded in running a reaction at the extremely high temperatures that will be required for a viable reactor, and keeping the hot, ionised state of matter that is created within the device stable for 30 seconds.
..............................................
Na’s team used a modified ITB technique at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device, achieving a much lower plasma density. Their approach seems to boost temperatures at the core of the plasma and lower them at the edge, which will probably extend the lifespan of reactor components.
.........
Na says that low density was key, and that “fast” or more energetic ions at the core of the plasma – so-called fast-ion-regulated enhancement (FIRE) – are integral to stability. But the team doesn’t yet fully understand the mechanisms involved. The reaction was stopped after 30 seconds only because of limitations with hardware, and longer periods should be possible in future. KSTAR has now shut down for upgrades, with carbon components on the wall of the reactor being replaced with tungsten, which Na says will improve the reproducibility of experiments.

Lee Margetts at the University of Manchester, UK, says that the physics of fusion reactors is becoming well understood, but that there are technical hurdles to overcome before a working power plant can be built. Part of that will be developing methods to withdraw heat from the reactor and use it to generate electrical current.

 

If this scales, it will be huge impact. Increase the solar efficiency from 20 to 30% on same size panel by using newly discovered material.. I'll reiterate my beleif that advances in materials will be the next revolution alongside genetically created drug advances in treating diseases

Solar power world record broken with ‘miracle material’ (msn.com)

The researchers said that achieving greater than 30 per cent efficiency with the four-terminal tandem device marked “a big step in accelerating the energy transition” and would improve energy security by reducing fossil fuel dependency.

“This type of solar cell features a highly transparent back contact that allows over 93 per cent of the near infrared light to reach the bottom device,” said Dr Mehrdad Najafi from the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).

“This performance was achieved by optimizing all layers of the semi-transparent perovskite solar cells using advanced optical and electrical simulations as a guide for the experimental work in the lab.”

Perovskite has been hailed for its potential to transform an array of industries, ranging from ultra-high-speed communications to renewable energy production.

 

this is way past due, hopefully it is true and not theoretical only

Micro molten salt reactor can fit on a truck, power 1k homes. When it's built (msn.com)

As the US Department of Energy (DoE) continues to look for ways to improve molten salt nuclear reactors (MSRs), a team from Brigham Young University in Utah has designed one it says can fit safely in the bed of a 40-foot truck. The molten salt micro-nuclear reactor, which will be built by Professor Matthew Memmott and his team, has a chamber that measures just four by seven feet (1.2 x 2.1 metres), has no risk of a meltdown, and can produce enough energy to power 1,000 homes, the university said. Prof Memmott separately told The Register the reactor's output should be around 10MWe.

"For the last 60 years, people have had the gut reaction that nuclear is bad, it's big, it's dangerous," the professor said. "Those perceptions are based on potential issues for generation one, but having the molten salt reactor is the equivalent of having a silicon chip. We can have smaller, safer, cheaper reactors and get rid of those problems."

Unlike traditional light-water reactors, which typically store uranium fuel in solid rods that have to be kept cool with liquid water to avoid a meltdown, MSRs instead dissolve fissile material into a molten salt that also acts as the reactor's primary coolant. Treating the fuel and primary coolant as one, and not relying on keeping water coolant flowing and below boiling point, is seen as one safety advantage, among others, for MSRs. In a typical MSR, the primary fuel salt, with its high melting point of 1022°F (550°C), moves through the reactor and transfers its heat to non-radioactive secondary coolant salt, which can pass on its heat to other things, such as traditional steam-turbine-driven electricity generators.

According to Prof Memmott, nuclear power, and molten salt in particular, is an ideal solution to the world's current energy conundrum because it is safe and stable, the core reaction doesn't produce carbon emissions, and it generates valuable elements accessible for reprocessing after the reaction is complete. According to his university, the waste generated by an MSR reactor would allow companies to extract Molybdenum-99, an expensive element used in medical imaging; Cobalt-60; gold; platinum; neodymium; and other elements that could be sold for other applications. Additionally, Prof Memmott said his team were able to pull oxygen and hydrogen from the salts as well. "Through this process, we can make the salt fully clean again and reuse it. We can recycle the salt indefinitely," he said.

 

that sounds like a great thing to augment solar

 

I have no idea how this will help anything but it sounds amazing

Chip can transmit all of the internet's traffic every second (msn.com)

A single computer chip has transmitted a record 1.84 petabits of data per second via a fibre-optic cable – enough bandwidth to download 230 million photographs in that time, and more traffic than travels through the entire internet's backbone network per second.

Asbjørn Arvad Jørgensen at the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen and his colleagues have used a photonic chip – a technology that allows optical components to be built onto computer chips – to divide a stream of data into thousands of separate channels and transmit them all at once over 7.9 kilometres.

First, the team split the data stream into 37 sections, each of which was sent down a separate core of the fibre-optic cable. Then each of these channels was split into 223 data chunks that existed in individual slices of the electromagnetic spectrum. This "frequency comb" of equidistant spikes of light across the spectrum allowed data to be transmitted in different colours at the same time without interfering with each other, massively increasing the capacity of each core.

Read more: Ordinary copper telephone wire could carry gigabit broadband speeds

Although data transfer rates of up to 10.66 petabits per second have been achieved before using bulky equipment, this research sets a record for transmission using a single computer chip as a light source. The technology could enable the creation of simple, single chips that can send vastly more data than existing models, slashing energy costs and increasing bandwidth.

 

another material breakthrough. clear material able to be manufactured with existing tech and generating a 28% + energy return. Imagine the energy that a high rise glass structure could create. With local generation, it reduces demand on the grid and possibly ability for workers to charge cars during the day

Record-breaking transparent solar panels pave way for electricity-generating windows (msn.com)

Scientists have achieved a new efficiency record for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs), opening up new commercial possibilities for transparent solar panels. A team from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland made the breakthrough using specially designed photosensitizer dye molecules that when combined are capable of harvesting light from across the entire visible light spectrum.

The transparent properties of DSCs make them suitable for use in windows, greenhouses and glass facades, the researchers said, as well as in the screens of portable electronic devices. They are also flexible, relatively low-cost and can be made using conventional roll-printing techniques. Theoretically, the price/performance ratio is also good enough to allow them to compete with fossil fuel electrical generation.
..................................
The latest development pushes the power conversion efficiency to between 28.4-30.2 per cent, while still maintaining long-term operational stability over 500 hours of testing.

“Our findings pave the way for facile access to high performance DSCs and offer promising prospects for applications as power supply and battery replacement for low-power electronic devices that use ambient light as their energy source,” wrote the authors of a study detailing the technology.

 

Gates Terrapower is scouting locations with plans to build 5 nexgen reactors

Bill Gates-backed TerraPower announces feasibility study to explore sites for 5 new nuclear reactors – GeekWire

Bill Gates-backed TerraPower announced on Thursday that it’s going to conduct a feasibility study to explore locations for up to five of its next-generation nuclear power reactors. The study will be done in partnership with PacifiCorp, a Portland-based utility with business units operating in Oregon, southern Washington, northern California, southeastern Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. The fission reactors could be deployed by 2035 within the PacifiCorp service area, according to the companies.

“This joint study is a significant step toward building the energy grid of the future for PacifiCorp’s customers and a tangible example of the promise advanced nuclear brings to utilities serious about leading the nation’s energy transition,” said TerraPower President and CEO Chris Levesque in a statement. TerraPower and PacifCorp are currently working together to build TerraPower’s first demonstration plant in Kemmerer, Wyo., on the site of one of the state’s retiring coal plants. That project is a $4 billion public-private venture with $1 billion in support from the U.S. Department of Energy.

TerraPower plans to submit its application for a construction permit for the Wyoming reactor to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in mid-2023. The two remaining coal generation units at the site are set to be retired in 2025. The demonstration reactor is supposed to start splitting atoms by 2028 under a schedule set by Congress.

 

materials, one of the next great revolutionary opportunities

Scientists create entirely new material with plastic and metal properties that ‘can’t be explained’ (msn.com)

Scientists have created an entirely new material that can’t be explained, they say. The material can be made like plastic, but conducts electricity like a metal. The discovery goes against what scientists would expect to see, and could lead to new kinds of breakthroughs, researchers say.

“In principle, this opens up the design of a whole new class of materials that conduct electricity, are easy to shape, and are very robust in everyday conditions,” said John Anderson, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago and the senior author on the study, in a statement. Scientists have created conductive materials of all kinds, and the differences between them are what have allowed us to create a variety of electronic devices that work across conditions.

But across all of those differences, the conductive materials share similarities. They are made up of atoms or molecules that run in straight, densely packed lines, which scientists thought was required to make sure they could effectively conduct electricity.