The end is only the next beginning

The passing of time is always so bittersweet.  I am talking of course about the end of the semester.  The school year has come and gone, and my senior year is quickly coming to a close.  The end of the semester of course means that this class is coming to an end and the blog project that we started back in January is wrapping itself up.

The future of nuclear power, even despite the events of the last few weeks, is very bright.  I believe this so much that I think you should listen to this song as you finish reading this post.  It has kind of become my adopted theme song...  Anyway, to close out the blogging this semester I though it would be appropriate to describe the bright future of nuclear power.  If I could only get one message across with this blog, it would be that nuclear power has a very exciting and productive future ahead of it!

Generation IV reactors are going to revolutionize the face of nuclear power within my lifetime.  The idea of being a part of this excites me beyond words.  When I call a reactor a Generation IV reactor, I mean that is a revolutionary design as opposed to an evolutionary design from the status quo.  In other words, the nuclear industry is going to undergo a total face reconstruction within the next 30 years.  The common types of reactors we talk about today (light water reactors, canduu reactors, etc...) are all going to be a thing of the past as well as are many of the problems that are associated with them.

Just to get a last little bit of a technical stab before the end of the semester, the new reactors are going to operate at higher temperatures, have a higher efficiency, produce less waste, and are going to be passively safe.  And as a kicker, they are going to do this all for cheaper!  This is truly a testament to human engineering.  Let me explain my claims just a little further.

Generation IV reactors will no longer be based on using water as a moderator.  Instead, coolants such as helium gas will be used to cool the reactor.  This allows for reactors to be designed for and run at higher operating temperatures.  From the basics of thermodynamics, higher operating temperatures allow for higher efficiencies in power output.  Keep in mind that nuclear power is already the most efficient form of power production.  The higher operating temperatures also lower the risk of meltdown in a reactor.  The fuel will be designed to operate at extremely high temperatures, so a loss of coolant would be less harmful to the fuel than it would be for the current light water reactors.

I have talked about passive safety features in previous posts, so I will refrain from beating you over the head again with it here.  But the best part is that the new reactors will be cheaper!  How is this going to be done?  Well you see, the nuclear industry made a mistake in our process for building new reactors.  Right now, each reactor has to be individually designed for every new site.  There is not much standardization meaning that construction is slow and the permitting process is a real $&@$...but anyway, the process is changing.  New reactor designs will be standardized which will allow for faster construction and less problems with the NRC permitting the construction.  After all, the construction process is the most expensive part of a nuclear power plant.

Let's not consider the thorium fuel cycle and breeder reactors that we discussed earlier this semester.  These too will have their part in solving the energy problems!

There is a ton of cool stuff to talk about when it comes to Generation IV reactors, but I am going to have to leave it to you to do your own research.  This site is a good place to start if you are interested.  If all goes well, we could be seeing some of this technology coming online within the next 20 years or so.  It is an exciting time to be a nuclear engineer!

So enough technical information.  The semester is over and we are all tired I am sure.  I know that the last few weeks of the semester have been the hardest ones that I have had in my time here at Mines...and that is saying something considering I survived the junior year of being a physics major.  I am actually sad to see this semester come to an end.  I have learned so much about nuclear power especially and I have had a blast sharing it all with you here!

We have covered a long journey here, covering the nuclear power process all the way from taking the nuclear material out of the ground to putting it back into the ground, and much of what is to be discussed in between.  There are many issues to be settled still about nuclear power, but I have full confidence that they can be handled.  The future is bright!

In a perfect world, I will continue to post periodically about cool things I learn.  That is actually my intention, but I also know that it is almost summer which means there will be many distractions calling.  I don't know about you guys, but I plan to see the top of the world from a few different mountains this summer.  I hope to see some of you up there!  The journey has been awesome, now lets continue to share the information with the other 8 billion people out there that haven't been reading this!  Here's to the future...