Sentences with phrase «in fast reactors»

Thus, liquid sodium is the coolant of choice in fast reactors because it can effectively transfer heat away from the nuclear fuel, while at the same time maximizing the number of fast neutrons.

Also, one of the only ways to really destroy nuclear waste is to burn it in fast reactors.

It can be larger than 1 in fast reactors.

The number of neutrons per fission changes in fast reactors as well.

Water can not be employed in a fast reactor to carry the heat from the core — it would slow the fast neutrons.

Also, recycling nuclear fuel (as is often but not always called for in fast reactor fuel cycles) brings up proliferation concerns that inspired the Jimmy Carter administration to cancel a large US effort to develop a fast - reactor system.

The government said it would «thoroughly utilise» the technology, knowledge and human resources Japan has already built up in fast reactor development.

Not exact matches

In its efforts to develop safer, cheaper, and more efficient nuclear reactors, the Idaho National Laboratory has researched half a dozen next - generation reactor designs; these two (the sodium - cooled fast reactor and the very - high - temperature reactor) are the most promising.

Briefly, fissioning atoms in the nuclear reactor's fuel emit neutrons that are traveling too fast to efficiently cause other atoms to fission.

The new study led by Satoshi Chiba at Tokyo Tech shows that effective transmutation of LLFPs can be achieved in fast spectrum reactors without the need for isotope separation.

«Yeah, there's less concrete and, yeah, there's less steel in the reactor vessel,» says nuclear engineer Eric Loewen, chief consulting engineer at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, which is proposing a modular fast reactor to help the U.K. with its plutonium problem.

A test facility near Lynchburg, Va. is up and running to ensure that what looks good on paper will also work in practice and B&W already has one potential customer in the U.S. — the TVA — expressing an interest in building as many as six of the small modular reactors at its Clinch River site, former home of a failed effort to build a fast breeder reactor in the 1970s.

Fission of uranium and plutonium is not the only reaction that takes place in the core of a fast - breeder reactor.

Strauss - Kahn was talking in Paris at a public hearing on Superphenix, the world's first commercial scale, fast - breeder reactor.

High energy neutrons, needed for transmuting elements, are not only created in fast - breeder reactors.

If we were to begin today, the first of the fast reactors might come online in about 15 years.

The annual waste output from a fast reactor with the same electrical capacity, in contrast, is a little more than a single ton of fission products, plus trace amounts of transuranics.

In the 1980s this research was directed toward a fast reactor (dubbed the advanced liquidmetal reactor, or ALMR), with metallic fuel cooled by a liquid metal, that was to be integrated with a high - temperature pyrometallurgical processing unit for recycling and replenishing the fuel.

Because the fast - reactor waste would contain no significant quantity of long - lived transuranics, its radiation would decay to the level of the ore from which it came in several hundred years, rather than tens of thousands.

An Outdated Strategy Early nuclear engineers expected that the plutonium in the spent fuel of thermal reactors would be removed and then used in fast - neutron reactors, called fast breeders because they were designed to produce more plutonium than they consume.

One sodium fire began in 1995 at the Monju fast reactor in Japan.

Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory began developing fast - reactor technology in the 1950s.

In addition to its unique fuel cycle, the TerraPower design employs a high - temperature, liquid metal core cooling technology suited to a breeder reactor with «fast» neutron activity, rather than today's predominant reactors whose water cooling systems slow neutrons.

«I believe there is a desire there [in China] to use fast reactor technology to extend their energy base and enhance their energy security position.

The Tennessee Valley Authority hopes to catalyze development of such reactors by installing one at its Clinch River site in Tennessee, former home of the U.S.'s failed attempt to build its own commercial fast reactor.

Conceived in the 1970s, Monju was once at the leading edge of research into fast fission reactors, which have always been controversial because they burn plutonium, an ingredient in bombs.

But experimental fast reactors in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France have all been shut down because of high costs and concerns over handling plutonium.

Thierry Dujardin, an official with the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, told Science for a 27 February 2009 article that fast reactors could help reduce nuclear waste and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

All this, he said, was done in the face of the advice of the nuclear and energy supply industries that fast breeder reactors should be backed and that they would be prepared to make a contribution to the funds, given the government's commitment.

The reactor was to have been a successor to Monju, Japan's pilot fast - breeder, which will start operating in April to test the technology.

Superphenix the French fast - breeder reactor shut down in 1990 because air leaked into its liquid sodium coolant, can not start up again until a public inquiry has been held, Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy announced this week.

The radioactive material was reprocessed by the French company Cogema in La Hague and will be used in Japan's fast - breeder nuclear reactor programme.

The real message, though, must be for those in the nuclear industry who still believe that it makes sense to press ahead with a European demonstration fast reactor.

Fast reactors with an elegant ability to «breed» more fissile materials than they consumed in fuel, seemed destined to play a major part in helping the world to solve its energy needs.

Japan has pursued fast - breeder technology, through which a reactor can produce more plutonium than it burns in hopes of cutting or eliminating imports of nuclear fuel.

Rather than the pellets of uranium oxide used in other fast reactors and conventional reactors as fuel, GE would fabricate metal alloy fuels, with the plutonium or uranium mixed with zirconium metal.

The U.K. is considering a plan to build two of General Electric's PRISM fast reactors, the latest in a series of fast - reactor designs that for several decades have attempted with mixed success to handle plutonium and other radioactive waste from nuclear power.

«The possibility of cooperative work with Japan in the area of fast reactors is something that is attractive to us precisely because they have Monju,» Daniel Poneman, the U.S. deputy secretary of energy, said at a press conference today.

One solution under consideration is to recycle the plutonium yet further — by using it as fuel in a pair of new, so - called «fast» reactors.

Poneman said Monju came up in the discussions because of the possibility of using fast reactors to burn plutonium and the long - lived isotopes of elements such as neptunium and americium that account for much of the radiotoxicity of nuclear waste.

More than 76 percent of French reactors were built in less than seven years, while less than 35 percent of American reactors were built that fast.

Nuclear power experts from Japan and the United States met in Tokyo today, and one surprising topic of conversation was the host country's Monju experimental fast reactor.

The idea remains that fast reactors, which get their name because the neutrons that initiate fission in the reactor are zipping about faster than those in a conventional reactor, could offer a speedy solution to cleaning some nasty nuclear waste, which fissions better with fast neutrons, while also providing electricity as a by - product.

Plus, the U.K. has a poor record in the past with its own experimental fast reactor designs — the Dounreay Fast Reactor and the Prototype Fast Reactor — including multiple sodium lefast reactor designs — the Dounreay Fast Reactor and the Prototype Fast Reactor — including multiple sodium leFast Reactor and the Prototype Fast Reactor — including multiple sodium leFast Reactor — including multiple sodium leaks.

Such fast reactors are more expensive than even traditional reactors, such as Westinghouse's new AP - 1000 under construction in China and the U.S., which are estimated to cost roughly $ 7 billion apiece.

One attractive feature of fast reactors is that they can produce more fuel than they consume, avoiding the issue of the limited supplies of the uranium used in conventional nuclear reactors.

«At one time or another, [fast reactors] were a priority program in the U.S., Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Russia,» notes physicist Thomas Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

Novel design The trouble with fast reactors has largely been related to what's used to cool them — liquid sodium in the case of GE's PRISM and many others.

The Department of Atomic Energy will grow by a healthy 21 %, to $ 2.5 billion, with $ 61 million for the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam, possibly for development of a new fuel for the fast breeder reactor.

The European fast reactor programme — led by Britain, France and Germany — had hoped to carry out important research at the fast reactor research centre at Dounreay in Scotland, which is operated by AEA Technology.