NUCLEAR POWER
T
he general consensus is that a modern energy supply must be low-emission, reliable and inexpensive. However, opinions
diff er on how to achieve this goal. In Germany, an experiment worth hundreds of billions and unique in the world has been underway for two decades, the “Energiewende”. T e money has fl owed primarily into wind and solar power. At the same time, Germany gave up baseload-providing, inexpensive nuclear power from 14 nuclear power plants that were prematurely shut down over the course of a decade. T e sobering result is that emissions
have fallen only slightly, while electricity has become expensive and the grid unstable. Since gas stopped fl owing from Russia to secure Germany’s fragile energy supply, an acute energy crisis has erupted. T e experiment has obviously failed. Leaving ideology aside, all the arguments are in favour of nuclear power: it is as low-emission as wind power and as reliable as coal. It is one of the safest energy sources of all, even when major accidents are taken into account. It consumes little land and raw materials with the smallest amounts of waste, which – contrary to the prevailing narrative – are easily manageable. Today, after years of stagnation, increasing numbers of countries are deciding to either expand nuclear power or enter into it for the fi rst time.
THE POTENTIAL OF FISSION GOES FAR BEYOND LIGHT WATER REACTORS As proven and widespread as light-water reactors are today, they nevertheless have a decisive disadvantage: the monumental plants can only turn a tiny fraction of the extensively extracted natural uranium into electricity. In other words, they are not very effi cient. With the goal of making the most of nuclear fuel, Dual Fluid is developing a new, more effi cient way of fi ssion. Instead of fuel rods, the company uses two fl uids in the reactor core: one carries the fuel, the other dissipates the heat. T anks to this patented design, the liquid fuel, an undiluted metallic actinide mixture, can develop its full power at 1000°C. T e reactor is cooled by liquid lead, which optimally dissipates the heat without slowing down the neutrons in the reactor core.
46
www.engineerlive.com
Image shows the Dual Fluid reactor core
EFFICIENT FISSION
Götz Ruprecht explains why nuclear fi ssion is our best option for displacing fossil fuels
Unlike nuclear fusion, Dual Fluid technology is in principle feasible with today’s technology. Even though the media regularly report breakthroughs in fusion, it is still decades away from a marketable, because economical, application. T e tools that make fusion possible in the fi rst place (the most powerful lasers or fi eld-generating magnets) themselves consume orders of magnitude more energy than has been released in fusion processes to date. In nuclear fi ssion, on the other hand, the fundamental issues have been resolved for decades. T e only thing left to do here is to get the maximum out of it – that is the task Dual Fluid has set itself.
T anks to its new operating principle,
a Dual Fluid reactor could generate about 10 times more energy from the same amount of fuel than a light water reactor. If future power plants were to provide 10 times more energy than today’s, an enormous surge in productivity and innovation would follow: living standards could improve in ways unimaginable today. At the same time, nature would regain space. Dual Fluid is convinced that the age of nuclear fi ssion has only just begun.
Götz Ruprecht is CEO of Dual Fluid.
www.dual-fluid.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
