Bill Gates Goes Nuclear with The TerraPower Traveling Wave Reactor–The Next Big Thing–Innovation and Technology Making A Difference
James Burke : Connections, Episode 10, “Yesterday, Tomorrow and You”, 3 of 5 (CC)
James Burke : Connections, Episode 10, “Yesterday, Tomorrow and You”, 4 of 5 (CC)
James Burke : Connections, Episode 10, “Yesterday, Tomorrow and You”, 4 of 5 (CC)
Rockwell Testimony on “100 Nukes in 20 years” 6/22/09 – Part 1
Rockwell Testimony on bill to build 100 new nuclear power plants in 20 years – Part 2
A. Coolant pumps
B. Expansion area for fission gases
C. Fuel (depleted uranium) inside the hexagonal pillars; green represents unused fuel, black spent fuel
D. Fission wave (red)
E. Breeding wave (yellow)
F. Liquid sodium coolant
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22114/page3/
Bill Gates thinks big on energy and climate
“…Nuclear energy is worth pursuing, wind and solar are good but have limitations, and the government is putting minuscule amounts of money into energy R&D dollars.
So says software tycoon turned philanthropist Bill Gates, who launched his Gates Notes Web site on Wednesday to share his big-picture ideas on big topics. High on his list is energy and environment, an area where he’s already taken lots of notes.
In a series of podcasts, Gates sketches out what technologies and policies are likely to lead to the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to zero.
In a response to a question, he acknowledges that energy and climate change are not well suited for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on finding cures to diseases in poor countries. But he does see energy as a terrific area for marketplace innovation.
“The world really needs cheap energy, particularly the poor need cheap energy. And the world needs to not run the experiment of seeing how much heating and what feedback effects of lots of heating generates. That means you want to try every path,” he said.
When it comes to what energy technologies make most sense in the years ahead, Gates says he has a conflict of interest. He and former Microsoft chief technology officer, Nathan Myhrvold invested in TerraPower, a Seattle-area nuclear power company that is working on a reactor design that could use the spent fuel from existing nuclear reactors to make electricity for decades. …”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10438720-54.html
Bill Gates at TED: We Need an Energy Miracle [VIDEO]
BY Ariel Schwartz
“…Avid followers of the TED Conference have almost certainly heard rumblings about Bill Gates’ speech on why we need energy miracles to solve the climate crisis. And the blogosphere has already reacted both positively and negatively to Gates’s theory that we can only reach zero emissions by reducing either our population, services, energy, or carbon output to zero. I decided to wait on passing judgment until the video of Gates’s speech was released, and now that it has been, I can say that I agree with his assessment that we need to get to net zero CO2, and fast–though we should make sure not to ignore other environmental concerns in the process.
In his speech, Bill Gates touts TerraPower reactors that can be fueled by nuclear waste as one possible solution. Is nuclear power the answer? I don’t know, but at the very least Gates should be applauded for highlighting the need for immediate innovation in the energy sector. The value of having someone of Gates’s stature talk about getting to net zero CO2 can’t be overstated. What do you think? …”
http://www.fastcompany.com/1553683/bill-gates-at-ted-we-need-an-energy-miracle-video
TerraPower, LLC Nuclear Initiative
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/files/TerraPowerGilleland.pdf
Terrapower: traveling wave reactor design
“…And it is very encouraging to see that the Terrapower CEO is willing to speak “truth to power” by revealing what every serious student of energy policy knows – that the consequence of the environmental activists focus on renewables is more and more coal generation. When American president Obama starts exhorting exactly this truth from his bully pulpit then I would have some confidence that serious solutions are again on the table.
The above quotation is from an interview with Terrapower CEO John Gilleland in the April 2008 Nuclear News. From the interview we gain a few more small insights into the reactor design. Excerpts:
How does the traveling-wave reactor work? The basic concept is to use depleted ura- nium as a fuel and to need no more than a small amount of enriched uranium to start a reactor. The reactor would be able to operate for decades without refueling and without chemical separations. In a certain sense, the way the reactor works is well known. It’s the typical breeding concept and standard physics—U-238 going to 239, to neptunium, and finally to plutonium-239—but with a twist, which is the traveling wave. In a sense, the wave can be visualized as two waves—a breeding wave moving just ahead of a burn- ing wave that consumes the bred material. Visualize a cylinder a few meters long that contains U-238 or depleted uranium. A nugget of uranium enriched to 10 percent is put at one end of the cylinder and a wave 40 centimeters wide is built up that breeds and burns plutonium and produces a gigawatt of electricity as it propagates from one end to the other. It would take 50 to 60 years for the wave to go from one end to the other for a reasonable-sized core. …”
http://seekerblog.com/archives/20091022/terrapower-traveling-wave-reactor-design/
Traveling–Wave Reactors
Introducing
http://www.intellectualventures.com/docs/terrappower/IV_Introducing%20TWR_3_6_09.pdf
TR10: Traveling-Wave Reactor
A new reactor design could make nuclear power safer and cheaper, says John Gilleland.
By Matt Wald
“…Enriching the uranium for reactor fuel and opening the reactor periodically to refuel it are among the most cumbersome and expensive steps in running a nuclear plant. And after spent fuel is removed from the reactor, reprocessing it to recover usable materials has the same drawbacks, plus two more: the risks of nuclear-weapons proliferation and environmental pollution.
These problems are mostly accepted as a given, but not by a group of researchers at Intellectual Ventures, an invention and investment company in Bellevue, WA. The scientists there have come up with a preliminary design for a reactor that requires only a small amount of enriched fuel–that is, the kind whose atoms can easily be split in a chain reaction. It’s called a traveling-wave reactor. And while government researchers intermittently bring out new reactor designs, the traveling-wave reactor is noteworthy for having come from something that barely exists in the nuclear industry: a privately funded research company.
As it runs, the core in a traveling-wave reactor gradually converts nonfissile material into the fuel it needs. Nuclear reactors based on such designs “theoretically could run for a couple of hundred years” without refueling, says John Gilleland, manager of nuclear programs at Intellectual Ventures. …”
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22114/
John Gilleland , Intellectual Ventures, Seattle, WA
Advanced Traveling Wave Reactors
A traveling-wave reactor can sustain fission in a nonfissile fuel such as depleted uranium because it sets up a slow-moving wave in which neutrons produced by fission reactions in one small part of the core convert adjacent fuel pellets from fertile isotopes (such as U238) into fissile isotopes (such as Pu239). In other words, a TWR breeds its own nuclear fuel, where it needs it, when it needs it. Exhausted fuel can be left in the core. So unlike conventional nuclear plants that take in new fuel and expel high-level waste every 18 months or so, a TWR can in principle be fueled once, sealed up, and run without refueling for 60 years or more. …”
http://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2010/webprogram/Paper1140.html
Under The Hood With Duncan Williams – Searete’s Traveling Wave Reactor
Searete’s Traveling Wave Reactor
- By Duncan Williams -
“…One of the more revolutionary reactor designs in the nuclear industry today is Searete LLC’s traveling wave fast breeder reactor.
Instead of using highly enriched uranium or plutonium as nuclear fuel, the traveling wave reactor uses natural uranium (U-238), or depleted uranium from used fuel rods from other reactors. Since 99% of all naturally occurring uranium is U-238, the traveling wave reactor would eliminate the need for uranium processing plants. Even though little is known about the operational details of the traveling wave reactor, recently published patent applications fill in some of the details.
The patent applications discuss a class of nuclear reactors known as fast breeder reactors. Fast breeder reactors utilize high-energy fast neutrons to sustain the fission process. Fast breeder reactors create (or breed) a large amount of fissionable material as it is operating, and often creates more fuel than it consumes. During the fast fission process, uranium-238 absorbs a fast neutron and becomes uranium-239. The uranium-239 then decays into neptunium-239, which then decays into plutonium-239. The plutonium-239 created during the fast fission process can be either immediately used in the nuclear reactor for further fissioning, or it can be removed from the reactor and enriched for use in weapons.
Traveling Wave Reactor Technology
A recently published patent application, Pub. No. 20090252273, describes a fast breeder reactor that can operate for 50-100 years without refueling or removing any used fuel from the reactor. It utilizes a process disclosed as a “nuclear fission deflagration wave” to harness energy from nuclear fuel. The application describes an energy wave moving at a “glacial” pace from one side of the nuclear fuel to the other, releasing energy and creating new fissionable material along the way.
The deflagration wave propagates across nuclear fuel much like a cigarette burns from the tip towards the filter. The glowing red embers in the cigarette represent the deflagration wavefront traveling across the nuclear fuel. However, unlike a cigarette, a significant amount of fissionable material is being created at the wavefront which can be immediately used to continue the nuclear fission process. In other words, the traveling wave reactor creates Pu-239 which it then immediately uses as fuel to further propogate the deflagration wave. …”
Inexpensive energy to produce electrical power is needed for economic growth and industralization.
Nuclear reactors are one solution for cheap and clean electrical power generation.
Nuclear Power – How it Works
In the United States approximately 20% of the electricity is generated in 103 nuclear power plants.
This constrast with France where approximately 80% of the electricity is generated by 58 nuclear power plants.
France Offers Lesson on Nuclear 101
A promising new type of nuclear reactor is the traveling wave reactor or TWR .
Over the next forty years the United States could build 400 nuclear power plants that could produce approximately 80% of the United States’ electrical power needs.
The remaining 20% of the U.S. electricity needs would be produced by coal, natural gas, water, wind and solar power.
Bill Gates sees the need for inexpensive and clean energy around the world and the potential of the travelling wave reactor to supply this need.
The sooner the United States goes nuclear for electrical power generation, the sooner the United States will no longer be dependent upon oil from abroad.
Over time automobiles would be powered by electricity and truck fleets by natural gas.
Let’s Do It Like France Does It: Nuclear Power
THE BOTTOMLESS WELL: Are We Running out of Energy?
The Free-Market Case for Green
Listen to Bill Gates thoughts on energy, electrical generation and climate change
What’s been on my mind lately
Podcast Series: Energy and Climate Change
Posted 01/20/2010
“…Finding carbon-free energy sources that will provide affordable power for people around the globe is a complex and difficult issue. Bill shares his thoughts on the challenges of developing alternatives to fossil fuels.
In this series of podcasts, Bill talks about why we need to develop new sources of energy that provide power without generating CO2. Among the topics he covers are the challenges with potential solutions such as carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear, wind, and solar; and why he believes the U.S. government should increase its funding for basic research in energy.
To download the podcast as a .wma file for Windows Media Player, click below. …”
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Thinking/article.aspx?ID=104
Background Articles and Videos
Traveling wave reactor
“…A traveling-wave reactor, or TWR, is a kind of nuclear reactor that can convert fertile material into fissile fuel as it runs using the process of nuclear transmutation. TWRs differ from other kinds of fast-neutron and breeder reactors in their ability to use little or no enriched uranium, instead burning fuel made from depleted uranium, natural uranium, thorium, spent fuel removed from light-water reactors, or some combination of these materials. …”
“…Traveling-wave reactors were first proposed in the 1950s and have been studied intermittently since. The concept of a reactor that could breed its own fuel inside the reactor core was initially proposed and studied in 1958 by Saveli Feinberg, who called it a “breed-and-burn” reactor[1]. Michael Driscoll published further research on the concept in 1979[2], as did Lev Feoktistov in 1988[3], Edward Teller/Lowell Wood in 1995[4], Hugo van Dam in 2000[5] and Hiroshi Sekimoto in 2001[6].
No TWR has yet been constructed, but in 2006, Intellectual Ventures launched a subsidiary named TerraPower, LLC to model and commercialize a practical engineering embodiment of such a reactor, which has since come to be called a traveling-wave reactor. TerraPower has developed TWR designs for low- to medium-power (300-MWe) and large power (~1000-MWe) application.[7]
…”
“…Fuel
Unlike light-water reactors (LWRs), TWRs can be fueled at the time of construction with enough depleted uranium to produce full power for 60 years or more[11]. TWRs consume substantially less uranium than a LWR per unit of electricity generated due to TWRs higher fuel burnup, higher thermal efficiency and higher fuel density. A TWR also accomplishes reprocessing on the fly, without the need for chemical separation that is typical of other kinds of breeder reactors. These features greatly reduce fuel and waste volumes while enhancing proliferation resistance[12].
Depleted uranium is widely available as a feedstock. Stockpiles in the United States currently contain approximately 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium, which is produced as a waste byproduct of the enrichment process[13]. TerraPower has estimated that these stockpiles represent an energy resource equivalent to $100 trillion worth of electricity[14]. Company scientists have also estimated that wide deployment of TWRs could enable projected global stockpiles of depleted uranium to sustain 80% of the world’s population at U.S. per capita electricity usages for over a millennium[15].
In principle, TWRs are capable of burning spent fuel from LWRs. This is possible because spent LWR fuel is mostly depleted uranium and, in a TWR fast neutron spectrum, the neutron absorption cross section of fission products are several orders of magnitude smaller than in a LWR thermal neutron spectrum. Additional technical development would be required to realize this capability, however.
TWRs are also capable, in principle, of reusing their own fuel. The used metal fuel from TWRs will still contain a high fissile content. Recast and reclad into new driver pellets without separations, this recycled fuel could be used to start fission in additional TWRs, thus displacing the need to enrich uranium altogether. …”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor
Nuclear’s next generation
Inside story: A group of six new blueprints for nuclear power stations promise advances in safety and efficiency. How do they differ from existing designs?
Dec 10th 2009 |
“…
Today those priorities have been reversed. America and Russia are taking steps to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and the international community is trying to prevent their acquisition by new states. Under America’s “Megatons to Megawatts” programme, weapons-grade material from retired warheads is being broken down to provide fuel for civilian nuclear power stations. With 53 new reactors under construction around the world and dozens more planned, the main difficulties facing nuclear scientists now are to reduce the threat of proliferation, improve efficiency and do something about the growing stock of nuclear waste in indefinite temporary storage.
These new priorities favour new sorts of reactor. Taking the lead in the development of the next generation of reactors is an international programme called the Generation IV International Forum (GIF), a collaboration between the governments of America, Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and Switzerland, plus Euratom, the EU’s nuclear body. Established in 2001, the GIF has drawn up a shortlist of six of the most promising designs, which range from updated versions of existing reactors to radically different approaches.
All nuclear reactors rely on nuclear fission, a process discovered in the 1930s. When certain heavy atoms are struck by a neutron, they absorb it, become unstable and split apart. This results in two lighter atoms, and two or three neutrons are ejected. The process releases large amounts of energy, much of it in the form of the kinetic energy of the fast-moving fission products. This energy is converted to heat as the fission products slow down. If the ejected neutrons hit other atoms nearby, those too can break apart, releasing further neutrons in a chain reaction. When enough neutrons produce further fissions—rather than escaping, bouncing off or being absorbed by atoms that do not split—the process becomes self-sustaining.
The technology underpinning civilian nuclear power-generation has not progressed much since the 1950s when a small number of prototype commercial reactors were first brought online. Based on the military reactors developed for weapons programmes and naval propulsion, these “generation I” systems pioneered the pressurised water reactor (PWR) design, which is the basis for most of the “generation II” nuclear reactors now in operation. In a PWR ordinary water, kept at a high pressure to prevent it from boiling, is used both to cool the reactor core and to “moderate” the nuclear reaction by reducing the speed of the neutrons in order to maximise their ability to cause further fissions. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), of the 436 nuclear reactors in operation today, 356 are either PWRs or boiling-water reactors—a simplified version of the same design.
The vast majority of current reactors use a “once through” fuel cycle, in which each batch of fuel spends a single term in the reactor core, and the leftovers are then removed and placed in storage. This spent fuel presents a storage problem, but it also offers an opportunity. According to the World Nuclear Association, an industry body, the spent fuel recovered from a reactor still contains around 96% of the original uranium, as well as plutonium that has been formed in the core. If the nuclear renaissance takes off at the rate that many are predicting, this inefficient use of the uranium fuel is likely to prove unsustainable, says Bill Stacey, a professor of nuclear engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. …”
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15048703
Eric Schmidt on policy priorities for 2009
