MIT’s analysis reactor was constructed within the Nineteen Fifties, and its objective has shifted over the many years. At varied factors, it’s been used to review the whole lot from nuclear physics to medical therapies, alongside its constant use for educating the subsequent technology of nuclear scientists.
However I used to be most excited to listen to about an energy-focused venture, which is geared toward bringing novel reactor know-how to actuality.
Whereas nearly all industrial nuclear reactors at the moment are cooled utilizing water, a rising variety of startups need to molten salt as a substitute. MIT’s nuclear reactor lab is engaged on a brand new analysis house that would assist illuminate how nicely different applied sciences face up to the extreme circumstances inside a nuclear reactor.
So for the e-newsletter this week, come alongside on my tour of MIT’s nuclear reactor lab. On the way in which, we are able to get into what all the thrill is all about with molten-salt reactors.
Sizzling subjects
The primary cease on my tour was the entrance desk, the place I and every member of my group picked up a private dosimeter to trace any potential radiation publicity. We then handed over our luggage and telephones and acquired stern warnings to not contact something or wander out of our tour information’s sight.
Lastly, we filed by means of a set of bolstered metallic doorways and into the lab. We handed rows of yellow lab coats as David Carpenter, the top of reactor experiments and our tour information, walked us by means of some historical past and fundamental details.
That is the second-largest college analysis reactor working within the US at the moment, producing about six megawatts of thermal energy. Industrial reactors are likely to have capacities a whole bunch of occasions higher than that—round 3,000 megawatts (or three gigawatts) of thermal energy.
(Speedy nuclear fundamentals: nuclear reactors are powered by fission reactions, the place uranium atoms break aside. These reactions produce neutrons, that are a kind of ionizing radiation, in addition to warmth that may be harnessed and reworked into electrical energy.)
