Advanced nuclear reactor

This looks very interesting and useful going forward. French design and good for them.

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I would need to read up more on the so-called ā€œeternalā€ exchange between U and Pu. Even if buried deep in concrete, I’m not yet certain the public would be willing to accept the presence of a mini-Pu reactor in the back yard, and those molten salts are pretty corrosive. The whole cheap energy blurb is obviously a narrative to convince someone (idiots?), but it is in theory at least an interesting technology. As usual, I guess it will take someone to front up the money and close their eyes to the implications if anything goes wrong before this gets off the ground.

They are building one in France in 2030.

Reactor Designed to Destroy More Waste Than It Makes | RealClearScience https://share.google/yF4FpkAH5QUXOPakA

I thought France had already invested in Fusion reactors so I suppose this is evidence of a more widespread set of research. I’ve always been interested in the research into Thorium reactors, which were considered in the very early days of fusion research but rejected, apparently because the waste products can’t make bombs… I gather research there has been going on in other countries but not, I think, Europe.

Not quite, no. The ITER experimental nuclear fusion reactor is being built in Cadarache in France. It’s an international endeavour to try to make nuclear fusion possible. It’s many years late and isn’t intended to provide electricity to the grid although it is intended to be eventually a net generator of energy. It’s intended as a very large experiment to guide future generations of fusion reactors that may produce electricity commercially.

I think the key thing is if the new reactor works, it’s USP is not filling the caves of France with long lived nuclear waste, something that’s always put me off. Better than also throwing radioactive tanks coated in concrete into the ocean.

ā€œIf successful, it would become the world’s first nuclear reactor to destroy more long-lived waste than it produces, something no commercial reactor has ever achieved.ā€

Yes nuclear fusion will be brilliant if it can be done on a commercial scale, but the hard bit they are struggling with is keeping the glowing ball of plasma inside its magnetic bottle and not spilling out and setting fire to the carpet.

Meanwhile I think our best bet is to keep improving our capture of energy from the existing nuclear fusion reactor 93 million miles away in the sky.

That one’s not due to be decommissioned for another 5 billion years or so…

Looking at their website, it appears to be a molten salt reactor. This type of reactor can burn Thorium or other fuels. They have a very chequered history and several companies are investing in them. If it can really be made to work then it may be useful, although I see their website states that it can burn ā€˜some waste products’ within the reactor and just how much ā€˜some’ is isn’t stated. We’ll see.

Indeed, that is the stupidly hard bit, but that’s been getting dramatically better in the last 10 years or so, so who knows ?

No argument from me at all on that one :+1::grin:

France also has its own research going on

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I’d heard something about that but it’s definitely good news.

Next step - nuclear fusion powered EVs.

That’ll be fun when they go bang in a car park. :smiley:

With flux capacitors Doc?

Possibly, though I have never watched the ā€œBack to the Futureā€ documentaries so can’t say for sure…

There is a Delorean parked by a friend’s house in Grantham, do know about time travel but it hasn’t moved in years :joy:

Perhaps it does it so quickly you don’t notice. :slight_smile:

The page doesn’t seem to work for me. It gives a brief flash of the page and then it’s replaced by a blank screen apart from the header. Pity as I would have liked to have read the article.

Screen capture here >>

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It’s also at Cadarache and seems to be a test bed for components intended for ITER on the same site. It can generate long duration plasmas, but not hot enough to actually fuse.

Thanks Peter :+1:, I found the same article somewhere else.