The global share of nuclear power is Approximately 10% of power generation. In some countries, such as France, this figure is closer to 70%.
Major technology companies such as Google Turning our attention to nuclear power meet Huge power demand of the data center.
The source of all nuclear energy is the bonding energy of atoms. Energy stored in atoms is released in two main ways: fission or fusion. Nuclear fission involves the splitting of large, heavy atoms into smaller, lighter atoms. Fusion involves combining smaller atoms to create larger atoms.
Both processes release large amounts of energy. For example, a single fission decay of U235, an isotope of uranium typically used as fuel in most power plants, produces more than 6 million times more energy per chemical reaction than the purest coal. Masu.
This means they are an excellent process for power generation.
What is nuclear fission?
Nuclear fission is the process behind all nuclear power plants currently in operation. This occurs when tiny subatomic particles called neutrons collide with uranium atoms, causing them to split.
This releases more neutrons, which continue to collide with other atoms, causing a nuclear chain reaction. This releases a huge amount of energy.
A heat exchanger is installed to convert this energy into electricity, which turns water into steam that drives a turbine and generates electricity.
Nuclear fission reactions can be controlled by suppressing the supply of neutrons. This is achieved by inserting “control rods” that absorb neutrons.
Historically, nuclear accidents like Chernobyl occurred when control rods tripped and failed to stop the supply of neutrons, or coolant circulation failed.
So-called “third generation” designs improve on earlier designs by incorporating passive or inherent safety features that do not require active controls or human intervention to avoid accidents during malfunctions. Masu. These functions may rely on pressure differences, gravity, natural convection, or the material’s natural response to high temperatures.
The first third generation nuclear reactors were Japan’s new boiling water reactor Kashiwazaki Units 6 and 7.
An unresolved problem with nuclear fission is that the byproducts of the reaction remain radioactive over long periods of time, on the order of thousands of years. Once reprocessed, the fuel source and waste can also be used to make nuclear weapons.
Nuclear fission power generation is a proven technology. It is also scalable from large-scale nuclear reactors (Japan’s largest is the 7.97 gigawatt Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant) to small to medium-sized reactors that produce about 150 megawatts of power used in ships and nuclear submarines.
These are the nuclear reactors that will power the eight nuclear submarines Australia has promised As part of the trilateral security partnership Britain and America.
What is fusion?
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun and stars. This is the opposite process to nuclear fission. It occurs when atoms fuse.
The simplest reaction to start in the laboratory is the fusion of isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium. Per unit mass, this reaction produces four times more energy than the fission of U235.
The fuel ion deuterium is incredibly abundant both on Earth and in space. Tritium is extremely rare on Earth as it is a radioactive substance and has a half-life of 12 years.
The universe is 13.8 billion years old. The only naturally occurring isotopes of light nuclei (hydrogen, helium, lithium) are stable on these time scales.
In fusion power plants, tritium is produced using a “lithium blanket.” This is a wall of solid lithium within which fusion neutrons slow down and eventually react to form tritium.
However, it is currently extremely difficult for scientists to generate fusion reactions outside of the laboratory. That’s because they require incredibly hot conditions to fuse. Optimal conditions are 150 million degrees Celsius.
At these temperatures, the fuel ions exist in a plasma state and the electrons and (nucleus) ions dissociate. The byproducts of this process are not radioactive. Rather, it is helium, an inert gas.
The most advanced technology for demonstrating sustained fusion is called “toroidal magnetic confinement.” This is when plasma is trapped at extreme temperatures inside a very large donut-shaped magnetic bottle.
Unlike nuclear fission, this technology path requires continuous external heating to reach fusion conditions and a strong confinement field. If either of them is terminated, the reaction will stop.
The challenge is to generate a reaction at all, rather than an uncontrollable meltdown.
A major unresolved challenge for toroidal magnetic confinement fusion, which has attracted most research interest, is the demonstration of combustible, self-heating plasmas. This is the case primarily due to the heating power generated by the reaction itself. This is the purpose of publicly funded multinational corporations ITER projectthe world’s largest nuclear fusion experiment, and a privately funded SPARC experiment at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
However, the consensus in much of the scientific community is that fusion is not commercially viable. At least until 2050.
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The solution to climate change?
I am often asked whether nuclear power can save the planet from climate change. I have a lot of colleagues in climate science, and in fact, my late wife was a prominent climate scientist.
The science is clear. It’s too late to stop climate change. The world needs to do everything it can to reduce carbon emissions and minimize catastrophic damage, and we should have done it decades ago.
For Earth, nuclear fission is part of the global solution, along with the widespread deployment and deployment of renewable energy such as wind and solar.
On longer time scales, there is hope that nuclear fusion may replace fission. The fuel supply is much larger and more ubiquitously distributed, the waste problem is orders of magnitude smaller in quantity and time scale, and the technology cannot be weaponized.
Matthew HallProfessor, Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Department of Computer Science; Australian National University
This article is republished from conversation Under Creative Commons License. please read original article.
