NEI Nuclear Notes

Intellectual Ventures , an invention company, believes they've developed a "new reactor design [that] could make nuclear power safer and cheaper." Published by MIT's Technology Review magazine : a traveling-wave reactor requires very little enriched uranium, reducing the risk of weapons proliferation. ( Click here for a larger diagram). The reactor uses depleted-uranium fuel packed inside hundreds of hexagonal pillars (shown in black and green). In a “wave” that moves through the core at only a centimeter per year, this fuel is transformed (or bred) into plutonium, which then undergoes fission. The reaction requires a small amount of enriched uranium (not shown) to get started and could run for decades without refueling. The reactor uses liquid sodium as a coolant ; core temperatures are extremely hot--about 550 ºC, versus the 330 ºC typical of conventional reactors. ... As it runs, the core in a traveling-­wave reactor gradually converts nonfissile material into the...