Nuclear Reactor Concepts: Safety and Sustainability

In course

Description

This lecture by the instructor covers the physics of nuclear reactors, focusing on new concepts for improved safety and sustainability, from Generation-III to Generation-IV and beyond. Topics include the fundamentals of nuclear power generation, nuclear fuel cycle and sustainability, safety systems of Generation-III/III+ reactors, high temperature reactor (HTR), molten salt reactor (MSR), and the national context of nuclear power in Switzerland. The lecture also discusses the challenges faced by the industry in maintaining nuclear competences and the need for research in Gen-IV technologies.

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https://mediaspace.epfl.ch/media/0_4w8q8cgk

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Related concepts (81)

Nuclear reactor

A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid (water or gas), which in turn runs through steam turbines. These either drive a ship's propellers or turn electrical generators' shafts. Nuclear generated steam in principle can be used for industrial process heat or for district heating.

Nuclear fission

Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay. Nuclear fission was discovered on 19 December 1938 in Berlin by German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. Physicists Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch explained it theoretically in January 1939. Frisch named the process "fission" by analogy with biological fission of living cells.

Nuclear fission product

Nuclear fission products are the atomic fragments left after a large atomic nucleus undergoes nuclear fission. Typically, a large nucleus like that of uranium fissions by splitting into two smaller nuclei, along with a few neutrons, the release of heat energy (kinetic energy of the nuclei), and gamma rays. The two smaller nuclei are the fission products. (See also Fission products (by element)). About 0.2% to 0.4% of fissions are ternary fissions, producing a third light nucleus such as helium-4 (90%) or tritium (7%).

Generation IV reactor

Generation IV reactors (Gen IV) are nuclear reactor design technologies that are envisioned as successors of generation III reactors. The Generation IV International Forum (GIF) - an international organization that coordinates the development of generation IV reactors - specifically selected six reactor technologies as candidates for generation IV reactors. The designs target improved safety, sustainability, efficiency, and cost.

Breeder reactor

A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes. These reactors can be fuelled with more commonly available isotopes of uranium and thorium, such as uranium-238 or thorium-232, as opposed to the rare uranium-235 which is used in conventional reactors. These materials are called fertile materials since they can be bred into fuel by these breeder reactors. Breeder reactors achieve this because their neutron economy is high enough to create more fissile fuel than they use.