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Technology Database Ecology ENVIRONMENTALLY-CLEAN AND SAFE NUCLEAR POWER COMPLEX
Environmentally-
Clean and Safe Nuclear Power Complex
Effectiveness of nuclear
technologies is often limited by low speed of nuclear neutrons - substance
interaction reactions. Traditionally this effectiveness is increased by making
neutron flow more dense; however, such an approach does not lead to its
substantial change.
It
has been proposed that a fundamental change in the effectiveness of nuclear
technologies be made through a newly developed principle of arranging
interaction of neutrons with substance. The principle was called dynamic
interaction of neutrons with substance (DINS) and consists in irradiating
quickly moving substance with slowly moving thermal neutrons. The DINS effect
ensures the increase of speed of nuclear reactions by a factor of dozens -
hundreds of thousands of times, and a combined application of the DINS effect
and thermonuclear neutrons in a thermonuclear chain fission reaction would lead
to reduction of the critical mass of fissionable substance to
hundredth-thousandth fractions of a gram.
On the basis of this approach a
fundamentally new direction for developing nuclear technologies and
installations may be created, allowing for the satisfaction of practically all
power requirements of both individual countries and their communities, improving
the environmental situation in the process by sharply reducing the volume of gas,
coal and oil consumption in power production.
One of the most urgent problems
to be resolved on this basis is the destruction of radioactive wastes. DINS use
allows, sequentially, one after another, for the transformation of long-living
radionuclides, which are a part of the mixture of radioactive wastes, into
stable or short-living ones. The most effective type of a neutron nuclear
reaction is chosen for each nuclide destroyed by directing the medium movement
speed. In this case no accompanying formation of other long- living
radionuclides occurs, as is the case with traditional transmutation ways, and
the irradiation time is reduced to hours instead of months and years.
On the basis of DINS a nuclear
reactor may be developed with a loading of fuel into the active zone in a
quantity not exceeding one gram of fissionable material, thus ensuring a high
degree of safety of the power-producing installation. The fuel for this nuclear
complex may be received from radiation-safe Uranium-238 or Thorium-232 by using
an installation for nuclides transmutation. It thus seems possible to create an
environmentally-clean power- producing complex operating in a closed cycle:
production of the nuclear fuel, its combustion to produce power, and
annihilation of radioactive wastes.
A concept of the new nuclear
power complex (NPC) has been developed for practical implementation of this
approach. The NPC has the following advantages as compared with existing APS:
-
Increased power both of a
single power unit from 3 GWt to 10...50 GWt and the whole complex up to 200
GWt and more, the nuclear energy being directly transformed into light,
electricity and heat.
-
A wide range of capacities,
allowing to use NPC to satisfy needs of countries, cities and towns, in
water, ground and air transport, including its use as a jet engine for
interplanetary flights.
-
Use of the closed fuel cycle,
presupposing a target-oriented transmutation of nuclides, designed for:
-
production of nuclear fuel (NF)
from cheap non-radioactive raw materials;
-
annihilation of highly active
and long-living wastes, forming in NPC;
-
annihilation of radioactive
wastes (RAW) accumulated in the process of operation of other APSs.
-
Practically full
environmental safety, since at any moment of time the NPC active zone
contains not more than one gram of the nuclear fuel, and radioactive
nuclides which appear are rendered harmless (compare: fuel elements of
modern APSs contain hundreds of tons of nuclear fuel and RAW).
-
Exclusion of the need to
build and operate a special enterprises for preparing nuclear fuel, and its
transportation to the place of consumption.
-
Possibility for using weapons
Plutonium as a nuclear fuel for NPC, allowing for the production of power
and simultaneously a solution to the problem of utilizing accumulated
reserves of this material.
-
Possibility for carrying out
highly effective target-oriented transmutation of nuclides, which would
allow for the production of practically any highly pure isotopes, including
trans-Uranium nuclides.
A highly promising application of
the proposed method is substantial production of trans-uranium elements,
including I 04 and other stable (according to forecasts) nuclides with higher
atomic numbers, as well as obtaining alpha, beta and gamma sources of ionizing
irradiation which are extremely important to medicine, industry, power
production, agriculture, and scientific research. The list of meaningful
practical examples of DINS application can be expanded.
An international association will
have to be set up to develop the project to deal with investment problems and
the procedure for performing the work.
Source: SciTecLibrary.ru
Publishing date: September 19, 2000
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