Terrapowers traveling wave reactor twr is designed to be a liquid sodiumcooled fast reactor that uses depleted uranium as fuel. China isnt building a traveling wave nuclear plant yet. Unlike todays reactors, a travelingwave reactor requires very little enriched uranium, reducing the risk of weapons proliferation. The traveling wave reactor twr is a oncethrough reactor that uses in situ breeding to greatly reduce the need for enrichment and reprocessing. In 1958, feinberg feinberg, 1958 first proposed that nuclear breedingburning waves can selfsustain and propagate in fissile material. In a wave that moves through the core at only a centimeter per year, this.
In purely nuclear terms, it is a fastneutron breeder reactor using the u238 to plutonium fuel cycle, which dates back to the 1950s and was used in many experimental reactors. It will be capable of utilizing fuel made from depleted uranium a waste byproduct of the uranium enrichment process allowing it to gradually convert the fuel through a nuclear reaction without. The travelingwave reactor, in concept, would use depleted uranium to produce vast amounts of energy without the need for enrichment plants and reprocessing facilities, which is why billionaire bill gates is interested in developing it. Pdf the traveling wave reactor twr is a oncethrough reactor that uses in situ breeding to greatly reduce the need for enrichment and.
Terrapower expects a typical 1,200megawatt traveling wave reactor to produce 5 metric tons of waste per gigawatt year, not 5 metric megatons. The traveling wave reactor twr is a oncethrough reactor that uses in situ breeding to greatly. A wave reactor on fast neutrons in selfregulating neutronnuclear mode of the second kind is known. The word is that terrapower, a company backed by bill gates thats developing a new kind of nuclear power plant, is going to develop the reactor in cooperation with the chinese government. Nonlinear stability of periodic traveling waves of the bbm system hakkaev, sevdzhan, communications in mathematical analysis, 20. Terrapowers traveling wave reactor twr is designed to be a liquid sodium cooled fast reactor that uses depleted uranium as fuel. Traveling wave reactor wikipedia republished wiki 2. Travelingwave reactors only need one batch of matches before they can run on wax depleted uranium for a very long time. First it was presented in papers 5,6 and its advanced implementation was patented in 14. A travelingwave reactor twr is a type of nuclear fission reactor that can convert fertile material into usable fuel through nuclear transmutation, in tandem with the burnup of fissile material.
The basic design of the fast uraniumplutonium nuclear travelingwave reactor with a softened neutron spectrum is. The twr has been studied since the late 1950s and there are several articles in the literature that describe the theory of the units. The traveling wave reactor twr is a proposed reactor design that belongs to. Likewise, a typical reactor today produces 21 metric. A travelingwave reactor twr is a proposed type of nuclear fission reactor that can convert fertile material into usable fuel through nuclear transmutation, in tandem with the burnup of fissile material. A travelingwave reactor could use widely available depleted uranium and operate for 60 years without refueling.
Sustainability of a twr economy 235 the main difference between thermal reactors and fast reactors is the degree to which uranium can be burned. Shunt reactor switching transients at high compensation levels. The company is exploring proposed reactor designs such as the traveling wave reactor and the molten salt reactor to find one that would be more costcompetitive and less accidentprone than past. Energy is often transferred as the wave propagates, but matter may not be.
The sodium coolant is also standard for this type of reactor. Nuclear experts head to china to test experimental reactors. The most practical embodiments of the twr involve moving the fuel while keeping the nuclear reactions in one place. The reactor uses depleteduranium fuel packed inside hundreds of hexagonal pillars shown in black and green. Some of the fastspectrum neutrons produced by fission are absorbed by neutron capture in adjacent fertile fuel i. Terrapowers travelling wave reactor why not use an ifr. The traveling wave reactor twr is a proposed reactor design that belongs to a set known as generation iv designs that are different in a number of respects than the current commercial designs which use water to cool the reactor and slow down moderate the neutrons that sustain the chain reaction. Traveling wave analysis of partial di erential equations. A private company called terrapower which is funded by bill gates among others has supposedly completed a design and is looking to actually build the first reactor.
Study of traveling wave reactor twr and candle strategy. It is possible both to increase the speed, the thermal power and the nal uence as well as decrease them. A truly sustainable and fullscale resource for global energy needs pdf. Contribute to sswelmkspinterstellarextended development by creating an account on github. The basic design of the fast uraniumplutonium nuclear travelingwave reactor with a soft ened neutron spectrum is developed, which solves. The mechanism can be used for constructing a reactor for long operation duration with high fuel utilization, which.
Travelingwave reactors twrs are advanced nuclear reactors that are capable of eventually running forever given only depleted uranium fuel. The traveling wave reactor, twr constitutes a reformulation of the liquid metal fast reactor, lmfbr and the coupled cores concepts and a reformulation of battery reactors based on naval propulsion reactors designs. Current issue copyright 2015 china engineering science press. By breeding and using its own fuel in place as it operates, a traveling wave reactor can obtain burnups that approach 50%, well beyond the current base of knowledge and experience. The constant coefficient telegraphers equations form. China is becoming the testing ground for a new breed of nuclear power stations designed to be safer and cheaper, as scientists from the u. Maple code is presented which performs this procedure automatically to obtain the speci c. We also have plans for a 1,000 mw electric reactor.
Hence using the above equations, forward and backward. The traveling wave that the reactors name references moves through the units core at a rate of only one centimeter per year. Our plans call for a 500 mw electric demonstration reactor. The accident took hours or days because it took time to boil off the coolant sitting in the reactor and going to a smaller design may help since you would expect heat generation to scale with volume while heat transfer to scale with surface area but. The travelling wave reactor concept is for a novel, fast neutron spectrum reactor that would use insitu breeding of its nuclear fuel essentially, the creation of the fuel within the reactor to.
Lately there has been some press on the traveling wave reactor twr. The traveling wave reactor, first conceived in 1958, has been intensively investigated only since about 2006. And while government researchers intermittently bring out new reactor designs, the travelingwave reactor is noteworthy for having come from something that barely exists in the nuclear industry. The department of energy definition for a small reactor is a reactor that produces 300 mw electric or lower. On the basis of the condition for nuclear burning wave existence in the neutronmultiplying media upu and thu cycles we show the possibility of surmounting the socalled dpaparameter problem and suggest an algorithm of the optimal nuclear burning wave mode adjustment, which is supposed to yield the wave parameters fluenceneutron flux, width and speed of nuclear burning wave that. Bill gates and china partner on worldfirst nuclear technology. On some fundamental peculiarities of the traveling wave. From the principle of fourier analysis, an anharmonic traveling wave can be decomposed into a sum of traveling harmonic wave components, i. September 20 institute for energy and environmental research. In 2006, terrapower launched an effort to develop the first practical engineering embodiment of a breedand burn fast reactor, producing a design concept known as a travelingwave reactor twr. Shanghai first published in may 2011 at the 22nd esact meeting in vienna, austria. Bill gates terrapower project and the traveling wave reactor answers with joe duration.
In addition, the tanh and exp methods, as outlined in the main appendix, are used to obtain traveling wave solutions to the single equation form of the fn equations. High yield antibody production in a disposable wave. Sodiumcooled fast reactors have a checkered history. It doesnt necessarily lend itself better to one or the other. Terrapowers traveling wave reactor twr incorporates inherent safety features and reduces the risk for proliferation in the nuclear energy supply chain. A wave is a recognizable signal which is transferred from one part of the medium to another part with a recognizable speed of propagation. Travelling waves 1 introduction one of the cornerstones in the study of both linear and nonlinear pdes is the wave propagation.
Comments on terrapowers travelling wave reactor printable pdf version here by dr george s. The travelling wave analysis consists of finding solutions of the telegraphers equations, bearing in mind the characteristics of the transmission lines, the equipment to which they will be connected and the nature of the signals likely to be experienced in power system transient situations. This breedandburn reactor concept caught the attention of dr. The basic design of the fast uraniumplutonium nuclear travelingwave reactor with a softened neutron spectrum is developed, which solves the problem of. A travelingwave reactor twr is a proposed type of nuclear fission reactor that can convert. This reactor does not implement a slow traveling solitonlike wave of neutronnuclear burning mode. Breeding converts incoming subcritical reload fuel into new critical fuel, allowing a breedburn wave to propagate. However, the current nuclear fuel cycle has some attributes that make it challenging to expand on a global scale. Transmission line protection based on travelling waves. It is a sodiumcooled fast reactor design in which neutrons are not slowed down and the heat created by fission is carried away by liquid sodium, which is used to boil water.
The wave doesnt actually move at all, but this is the easiest way. The concept works on the basis that breedburn waves and the fuel move relative to one another. The bifurcations of traveling wave solutions of the kundu equation yi, yating and liu. The reactor is fueled primarily by depleted uranium, but requires a small amount of enriched uranium or other fissile fuel to initiate fission. Twrs differ from other kinds of fastneutron and breeder reactors in their ability to use fuel efficiently without uranium enrichment or reprocessing, instead directly using depleted uranium, natural. He is now retired from argonne national laboratory after a career. George is is a nuclear reactor physicist, part of the team that developed the integral fast reactor. Stable salt reactor technology introduction duration. Twrs differ from other kinds of fastneutron and breeder reactors in their ability to use fuel efficiently without uranium enrichment or reprocessing, instead directly using depleted uranium. These reactors reach sustainability levels attainable by typical fast reactors, but do so without requiring the reprocessing plants that were the main concern when politicians effectively abandoned the us fast reactor. The traveling wave reactor design also operates at atmospheric pressure, which removes the possibility of a pressurerelated destabilizing event. High yield antibody production in a disposable wave bioreactor process intensification using perfusion culture christian kaisermayer1, jianjun yang2 1 ge healthcare europe gmbh, vienna, austria christian. Bill gates on the wrong path with travelling wave reactors. As a function of time, the latest design represents a standing wave or a soliton, rather than a traveling wave.
Travelingwave reactor twr technology, being developed by terrapower, llc, represents a potential solution to these limitations by offering a nuclear energy. Traveling wave solutions of a diffusive seir epidemic model with nonlinear incidence rate zhao, lin, zhang, liang, and huo, haifeng, taiwanese journal of mathematics, 2019. A spinoff from a bill gates backed company called terrapower is working with the design, but its really nothing new. Some have operated well, while others have done poorly.
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