I thought I'd start a thread for interesting industrial technology: manufacturing, power generation, chemicals. I'll start:
Advanced Reactor Gets Closer to Reality* - Technology Review
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Advanced Reactor Gets Closer to Reality
Terrapower is pushing ahead with a reactor design that uses a nearly inexhaustible fuel source.
By Kevin Bullis
Terrapower, a startup funded in part by Nathan Myhrvold and Bill Gates, is moving closer to building a new type of nuclear reactor called a traveling wave reactor that runs on an abundant form of uranium. The company sees it as a possible alternative to fusion reactors, which are also valued for their potential to produce power from a nearly inexhaustible source of fuel.
Work on Terrapower's reactor design began in 2006. Since then, the company has changed its original design to make the reactor look more like a conventional one. The changes would make the reactor easier to engineer and build. The company has also calculated precise dimensions and performance parameters for the reactor. Terrapower expects to begin construction of a 100-megawatt demonstration plant in 2016 and start it up in 2020. It's working with a consortium of national labs, universities, and corporations to overcome the primary technical challenge of the new reactor: developing new materials that can withstand use in the reactor core for decades at a time. It has yet to secure a site for an experimental plant—or the funding to build it.
The reactor is designed to be safer than conventional nuclear reactors because it doesn't require electricity to run cooling systems to prevent a meltdown. But the new reactor doesn't solve what is probably the biggest problem facing nuclear power today: the high cost of building them. John Gilleland, Terrapower's CEO, says the company expects the reactors to cost about as much to build as conventional ones, "but the jury is still not in on that."
Conventional reactors generate heat and electricity as a result of the fission of a rare form of uranium—uranium 235. In a traveling wave reactor, a small amount of uranium 235 is used to start up the reactor. The neutrons the reactor produces then convert the far more abundant uranium 238 into plutonium 239, a fissile material that can generate the heat needed for nuclear power. Uranium 238 is readily available in part because it's a waste product of the enrichment processes used to make conventional nuclear fuel. It may also be affordable in the future to extract uranium 238 from seawater if demand for nuclear fuel is high. Terrapower says there's enough of this fuel to supply the world with power for a million years, even if everyone were to use as much power as people in the United States do.
In the original Terrapower design, the reactor core was filled with a large collection of uranium 238. The process of converting it starts at one end, producing plutonium that's immediately split to generate heat and convert more uranium to plutonium. The reaction moves from one end to the other—in a "traveling wave"—until no more reactions can occur.
In the new design, the reactions all take place near the reactor's center instead of starting at one end and moving to the other. To start, uranium 235 fuel rods are arranged in the center of the reactor. Surrounding these rods are ones made up of uranium 238. As the nuclear reactions proceed, the uranium 238 rods closest to the core are the first to be converted into plutonium, which is then used up in fission reactions that produce yet more plutonium in nearby fuel rods. As the innermost fuel rods are used up, they're taken out of the center using a remote-controlled mechanical device and moved to the periphery of the reactor. The remaining uranium 238 rods—including those that were close enough to the center that some of the uranium has been converted to plutonium—are then shuffled toward the center to take the place of the spent fuel.
In this system, the heat is always generated in about the same area within the reactor core—near the center. As a result, it's easier to engineer the systems to extract and use the heat to generate electricity.
One challenge with this design is ensuring that the steel cladding that contains the fuel in the fuel rods can survive exposure to decades of radiation. Current materials aren't good enough: for one thing, they start to swell, which would close off the spaces between the fuel rods through which coolant is supposed to flow. To last 40 years, the materials would need to be made two to three times more durable, Terrapower says.
The company is using computer models to anticipate how currently available materials would change over time, and is developing reactor designs that anticipate these changes. For example, if it's known that a material would swell in the conditions inside the reactor, the spaces between the fuel rods would be designed to accommodate this swelling, says Doug Adkisson, director of operations at Terrapower.
Terrapower has also developed designs for a passive cooling system. Like many other advanced reactor designs, Terrapower's uses molten sodium metal as the coolant. Sodium takes much longer to boil than water, which gives plant operators more time to respond to accidents. It would also be possible to use natural convection and air cooling in the event of a power outage—coolant wouldn't have to be continuously pumped into the reactor, as was the case at Fukushima. One danger of using sodium, however, is that it reacts violently when it's exposed to air or water.
Terrapower's next steps include finalizing the design and finding partners to build the plants. It's been in talks with organizations in China, Russia, and India. Gilleland says the company expects to have an announcement about partners within the next few months.
Copyright Technology Review 2011.
Good idea - but I'm afraid the public attitude after Fukishima may delay this. The public is afraid - properly maintained reactors are safe - but the average person wants to react globally to exceptions. I saw a gas cooled version too - sodium is troublesome.Originally Posted by citanon
Last edited by USSWisconsin; 28 Jul 11, at 06:20.
"If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees.
If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children." -- Confucius
very cool
If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children." -- Confucius
So, basically, a breeder reactor that doesn't need fuel reprocessing. Nice.
I enjoy being wrong too much to change my mind.
Yes, exactly. The initial design was actually for a block of material where the active portion would move in a thin front across the block over the course of decades, hence the name traveling wave reactor.
I really hope that they succeed, but the end of the article isn't encouraging:
American company, American innovation, American expertise and then the first big test will get built somewhere else.Terrapower's next steps include finalizing the design and finding partners to build the plants. It's been in talks with organizations in China, Russia, and India. Gilleland says the company expects to have an announcement about partners within the next few months.
Seems all right to me. If it turns out to have an unfortunate tendency to explode, we don't get the fallout.And if it works, yay, we'll build a bunch. Hopefully.
I enjoy being wrong too much to change my mind.
That's just the thing. Will it be US built, or imported? If reactors in the US are US built, what about export orders? Surely the international partners will want something for shouldering the risk. I gets it's better that it gets built somewhere then being bogged down endlessly in red tape here at home.Seems all right to me. If it turns out to have an unfortunate tendency to explode, we don't get the fallout.
This is probably the most important technology development of the year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/sc...h/21laser.html
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
updated 2 hours 37 minutes ago
Scientists have long sought easier ways to make the costly material known as enriched uranium — the fuel of nuclear reactors and bombs, now produced only in giant industrial plants.
One idea, a half-century old, has been to do it with nothing more substantial than lasers and their rays of concentrated light. This futuristic approach has always proved too expensive and difficult for anything but laboratory experimentation.
Until now.
In a little-known effort, General Electric has successfully tested laser enrichment for two years and is seeking federal permission to build a $1 billion plant that would make reactor fuel by the ton.
Interactive: Enrichment on a smaller scale
That might be good news for the nuclear industry. But critics fear that if the work succeeds and the secret gets out, rogue states and terrorists could make bomb fuel in much smaller plants that are difficult to detect.
Iran has already succeeded with laser enrichment in the lab, and nuclear experts worry that G.E.’s accomplishment might inspire Tehran to build a plant easily hidden from the world’s eyes.
Backers of the laser plan call those fears unwarranted and praise the technology as a windfall for a world increasingly leery of fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases.
But critics want a detailed risk assessment. Recently, they petitioned Washington for a formal evaluation of whether the laser initiative could backfire and speed the global spread of nuclear arms.
“We’re on the verge of a new route to the bomb,” said Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist who advised President Bill Clinton and now teaches at Princeton. “We should have learned enough by now to do an assessment before we let this kind of thing out.”
New varieties of enrichment are considered potentially dangerous because they can simplify the hardest part of building a bomb — obtaining the fuel.
General Electric, an atomic pioneer and one of the world’s largest companies, says its initial success began in July 2009 at a facility just north of Wilmington, N.C., that is jointly owned with Hitachi. It is impossible to independently verify that claim because the federal government has classified the laser technology as top secret. But G.E. officials say that the achievement is genuine and that they are accelerating plans for a larger complex at the Wilmington site.
Worst-case scenario: US to 'snatch' Pakistan nukes?
“We are currently optimizing the design,” Christopher J. Monetta, president of Global Laser Enrichment, a subsidiary of G.E. and Hitachi, said in an interview.
The company foresees “substantial demand for nuclear fuel,” he added, while conceding that global jitters from the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan “do create some uncertainty.” G.E. made those reactors.
Donald M. Kerr, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons lab who was recently briefed on G.E.’s advance, said in an interview that it looked like a breakthrough after decades of exaggerated claims.
Laser enrichment, he said, has gone from “an oversold, overpromised set of technologies” to what “appears to be close to a real industrial process.”
For now, the big uncertainty centers on whether federal regulators will grant the planned complex a commercial license. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is weighing that issue and has promised G.E. to make a decision by next year.
The Obama administration has taken no public stance on plans for the Wilmington plant. But President Obama has a record of supporting nuclear power as well as aggressive efforts to curtail the bomb’s spread. The question is whether those goals now conflict.
The aim of enrichment is to extract the rare form of uranium from the ore that miners routinely dig out of the ground. The process is a little like picking through multicolored candies to find the blue ones.
The scarce isotope, known as uranium 235, amounts to just 0.7 percent of mined uranium. Yet it is treasured because it splits easily in two in bursts of atomic energy. If concentrations are raised (or enriched) to about 4 percent, the material can fuel nuclear reactors; to 90 percent, atom bombs.
Enrichment is so difficult that successful production is quite valuable. A pound of reactor fuel costs more than $1,000 — less expensive than gold but more than silver.
The laser race
The first laser flashed to life in 1960. Soon after, scientists talked excitedly about using the innovation to shrink the size of enrichment plants, making them far cheaper to build and run.
“It was in the air,” recalled Leonard R. Solon, a physicist who worked for a New York company that in early 1963 suggested the idea to the federal government.
The plan was to exploit the extraordinary purity of laser light to selectively excite uranium’s rare form. In theory, the resulting agitation would ease identification of the precious isotope and aid its extraction.
At least 20 countries and many companies raced to investigate the idea. Scientists built hundreds of lasers.
Ray E. Kidder, a laser pioneer at the Livermore nuclear arms lab, estimated that the overall number of scientists involved globally ran to several thousand.
“It was a big deal,” he said in an interview. “If you could enrich with lasers, you could cut the cost by a factor of 10.”
The fervor cooled by the 1990s as laser separation turned out to be extremely hard to make economically feasible.
Not everyone gave up. Twenty miles southwest of Sydney, in a wooded region, Horst Struve and Michael Goldsworthy kept tinkering with the idea at a government institute. Finally, around 1994, the two men judged that they had a major advance.
The inventors called their idea Silex, for separation of isotopes by laser excitation. “Our approach is completely different,” Dr. Goldsworthy, a physicist, told a Parliamentary hearing.
An old black-and-white photograph of the sensitive technology — perhaps the only image of its kind in existence publicly — shows an array of pipes and low cabinets about the size of a small truck.
‘Game changing’ technique
In May 2006, G.E. bought the rights to Silex. Andrew C. White, the president of the company’s nuclear business, hailed the technology as “game-changing.”
Mr. Monetta of Global Laser Enrichment, the G.E.-Hitachi subsidiary, said the envisioned plant would enrich enough uranium annually to fuel up to 60 large reactors. In theory, that could power more than 42 million homes — about a third of all housing units in the United States.
The laser advance, he added, will promote energy security “since it is a domestic source.”
In late 2009, as G.E. experimented with its trial laser, supporters of arms control wrote Congress and the regulatory commission. The technology, they warned, posed a danger of quickening the spread of nuclear weapons because of the likely difficulty of detecting clandestine plants.
North Korean nukes: Big fears, few facts
Experts called for a federal review of the risks. In early 2010, the commission resisted.
Late last year, the American Physical Society — the nation’s largest group of physicists, with headquarters in Washington — submitted a formal petition to the commission for a rule change that would compel such risk assessments as a condition of licensing.
“The issue is too big” to leave to the federal status quo, Francis Slakey, a physicist at Georgetown University and the society official who drafted the petition, said in an interview. He added that Mr. Obama or Congress might eventually have to get involved.
This year, thousands of citizens, supporters of arms control, nuclear experts and members of Congress wrote the commission to back the society’s effort. Many of them cited well-known failures in safeguarding secrets and detecting atomic plants.
But the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group in Washington, objected. It said new precautions were unnecessary because of voluntary plans for “additional measures” to safeguard secrets.
A commission spokesman said the petition would be considered next year. In theory, the risk-assessment plan, if adopted, could slow or stop the granting of a commercial license for the proposed laser plant or could result in design improvements.
A positive assessment
G.E., seizing the initiative, did an assessment of its own. It hired Dr. Kerr, the former director of Los Alamos and a former senior federal intelligence official, to lead the evaluation. He and two other former government officials concluded that the laser secrets had a low chance of leaking and that a clandestine laser plant stood a high chance of being detected.
“It’s a major industrial facility,” Dr. Kerr said of the planned Wilmington complex in an interview. “Our observation was this was not something that would sit in a garage or be easily hidden.”
Global Laser Enrichment declined a request by The New York Times for a copy of the Kerr report. It said the document ran to seven pages.
Story: Pakistan expanding its nuclear capability
In the interview, Mr. Monetta, the company’s president, said the Kerr review had confirmed that the laser complex would “not result in the proliferation of enrichment technology.” His position seemed to go beyond Dr. Kerr’s citing of likelihoods.
Mr. Monetta added that the technical complexity and “significant size” of the laser plant were major barriers to its covert adoption abroad.
Global Laser Enrichment plans to build its complex on more than 100 acres at the Wilmington industrial park, with the main building covering nearly 14 acres. That, like Iran’s main enrichment plant, is roughly half the size of the Pentagon.
But critics say a clandestine bomb maker would need only a tiny fraction of that vast industrial ability — and thus could build a much smaller laser, perhaps like the modest apparatus in the old photograph. Each year, they note, the enrichment powers of the Wilmington plant would be great enough to produce fuel for more than 1,000 nuclear weapons.
Iran began its laser program in the 1970s during the global rush. But it kept the results secret. The silence violated Iran’s agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, an arm of the United Nations that is based in Vienna and acts as the world’s nuclear police.
The cover-up ended in early 2003. Soon, the I.A.E.A. learned of contracts, enrichment runs and even a prototype plant. Iran insisted that it dismantled the facility in May 2003 and dropped laser enrichment.
But then, out of the blue, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in February 2010 praised Iranian scientists for their “relentless efforts” to build lasers for uranium enrichment. Ever since, the I.A.E.A. has sought unsuccessfully to learn more.
Story: Doomsday detectives battle nuclear terrorism
When experts cite possible harm from the commercialization of laser enrichment, they often point to Iran. The danger, they say, lies not only in pilfered secrets, but also in the public revelation that a half-century of laser failure seems to be ending.
Their concern goes to the nature of invention. The demonstration of a new technology often begets a burst of emulation because the advance opens a new window on what is possible.
Arms controllers fear that laser enrichment is now poised for that kind of activity. News of its feasibility could spur wide reinvestigation.
Dr. Slakey of the American Physical Society noted that the State Department a dozen years ago warned that the success of Silex could “renew interest” in laser enrichment for good or ill — to light cities or destroy them.
That moment, he said, now seems close at hand.
This article, "Laser Advances in Nuclear Fuel Stir Terror Fear," first appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright © 2011 The New York Times
Last edited by citanon; 21 Aug 11, at 07:31.
Cat's already out of the bag, seems to me. Or at least half out. No matter how well kept the secret, just knowing it is possible will increase the number of people trying to figure it out. I suspect someone, somewhere will match this technology within 5 years, with or without knowledge of the specifics.
I enjoy being wrong too much to change my mind.
Took the words right out of my mouth AG.
Foro Energy is drilling through hard rocks for oil using LASERS. Freaking awesome.
TR35: Joel Moxley, 31 - Technology Review
Power drill: High-energy laser light is sent through a fiber-optic cable to this drill head, allowing it to bore through solid rock (inset).
Courtesy of Foro Energy
Vast quantities of oil and natural gas are trapped under rock that's too hard to drill though economically with existing technology. Joel Moxley's startup, Foro Energy, wants to use high-powered lasers to carve through rock that stymies conventional drill bits, making these resources cheaper to extract.
Lasers powerful enough to blast through rock are already available, and recent advances have made them more transportable. But they are too big and fragile to be sent down the borehole, and conventional fiber optics can't transport high-energy laser beams over long distances. That was the problem Moxley aimed to solve when he founded Foro, in 2009. As CEO, he gathered some of the world's best experts on high-powered lasers, established joint development partnerships with major energy companies, and raised over $20 million in venture capital and government grants. The result: Foro has designed a system that can direct laser beams along more than 3,500 meters of fiber-optic cable while retaining enough power to cut through hard rock two to four times as fast as conventional bits, lowering drilling costs by two-thirds. The technology caught the attention of the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, which gave Foro one of the largest awards it has granted. "Laser-based drilling was considered crazy even five years ago," says David Danielson, a program manager at ARPA-E. Now, Moxley says, commercial drilling could begin in two to three years. —Kevin Bullis
Foro Energy is drilling through hard rocks for oil using LASERS. Freaking awesome.
TR35: Joel Moxley, 31 - Technology Review
Laaaaassseerrrsss... Yes, I do have an immoderate love of lasers. You gotta problem with that? Talk to the LASERINYOURFACE
I believe it is the right of every scientist to use a laser at least once in his career, regardless of the field. And I don't mean dinky little microscope lasers or what have you. I mean lasers for cutting stuff. Or blowing stuff up. Or otherwise causing mayhem with precision and pretty lights.
I enjoy being wrong too much to change my mind.
Directly printing metal parts using electron beams. This is like technology straight out of science fiction.
Be sure to check out the link with a video and slide show.
Printing Parts - Technology Review
September/October 2011
Printing Parts
Systems that print mechanical components with metal *powder could be used to build lighter, more efficient airplanes.
By Stuart Nathan
Chris Turner, an engineer at EADS Innovation Works near Bristol, England, twists a lever on a boxy black machine, and a porthole opens to reveal a dark cavity with a floor covered in gray powder. An invisible beam sweeps across the powder, and sparks fly. The box is an additive-layer manufacturing machine, sometimes known as a 3-D printer, and it is making a small part for an Airbus A380 airliner. EADS, which owns Airbus, hopes the device can transform manufacturing. Among other things, it could produce parts that make airplanes lighter, so they use less fuel.
3-D printers can make complex shapes that can't be manufactured with conventional techniques. Until recently, however, they couldn't print strong, durable objects. The machine Turner is using can make intricate forms out of high-grade metal, an advance that has allowed researchers to apply the design possibilities of 3-D printing to mechanical parts. The printers use software that works out where the parts need to bear loads and places material just in those areas, halving the weight of the complete part without sacrificing strength. That saves energy, metal, and money. The complex, curving forms that result couldn't be cast in a mold or carved out of a larger block even with the most advanced computer-controlled tools, but they can be printed in a succession of layers tens of micrometers thick.
Turner is testing whether printed parts can stand up to use in airliners, helicopters, and spacecraft. "Once we know that, we can scale up," he says. "We could adapt this to make large aircraft components." The possibilities include wing spars, the long beams that support wings.
Copyright Technology Review 2011.
A similar technology is direct metal deposition:
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