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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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  1. 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).

  2. Exclusion of the need to build and operate a special enterprises for preparing nuclear fuel, and its transportation to the place of consumption.

  3. 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.

  4. 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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