Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

The Atomic Show #130 – Better Uses for Fissile Material

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Kirk Sorensen, Charles Barton and Rod Adams got together for a long distance conversation inspired by President Obama’s speech about his commitment to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles. That action will free up valuable material useful for many power plant applications.

It is important to understand – the president’s call is for a world free from nuclear weapons, not a nuclear-free world. There is an important difference.

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  1. During the conversation, there was discussion over the uncertainties over the use of MOX fuel. My understanding is that MOX has been used in LWRs in Europe for 30+ years. Do they have more xenon oscillation issues than the US reactors of the same type? My guess is no.

  2. Pod cast is a great venue to get the word out on nuclear power.

    Just listened to the podcast of presentation to the Naval Academy. The part that has the actual sizes of the PBMR reactor is most applicable to my 8th grade physics class. They are designing a nuclear powered research submarine, and two of the classes are trying to use PBMR as the power source. They are getting nervous because MIT, Idaho National Lab and folks in South Africa have told them that you can’t package a high enough power density for a PBMR in a submarine.

    Do you have any material/other pod casts that they can use which detail the reactor spaces and machinery spaces so they can get a better idea of how to size and package the powerplant? Can you throttle for propulsion and can you use a governor valve for SSTGs in the same way you can for a steam plant?

  3. Charlie:

    The system design assumptions that MIT, INL and PBMR have are a bit different from mine. The publicly available material can be readily found via the Design Concepts link on the Adams Atomic Engines, Inc. web site. You might also want to have your students visit the ROMAWA web site http://www.romawa.nl/welcome.html.

    It is certainly possible to throttle a turboexpander running on N2 with a valve that is similar to a steam turbine poppet valve. In fact, you can read a pretty good explantation of how that works by finding US Patent number 5309492. (Note the inventor name on that patent. 🙂 )