[ RadSafe ] IFR and TWR with Bill and Melinda Gates Inteview on 60 minutes. What's Killing The Nuclear Industry?

Sat May 18 18:25:22 CDT 2013

They have openning for a couple of advanced reactor analyst positions with
PhD's, I never have gotten mine.
I hope, they will consider the fact that Bill Gates never have graduated
from Harvard as an advantage ;-)
I will tell you, after that famous Steve Jobs *Commencement* address at
Stanford, more and more Stanford students dropping off and going into
technology business...opening "start ups" companies.
One ethical problem, their Stanford's professors are becoming their first
business investors and becoming millioners too.....go figure.
It is a good thing that professors believe in their students so much as
investing own money!
Down side is who needs diploma if you better off without it? I mean waste
off time for the last 2 years to "satisfy graduation requirements".

Steve Jobs Commencement address at Stanford:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA&noredirect=1

On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 12:59 PM, David Lee <davidleesafe at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jaro,
>
> Thank you, for a such detailed and up to the date info. I got feeling,
> that something is cooking there!
>
> Here is what I looked up. So it is Washington State outfit, Bellevue
> (North) pretty close to Redmond (East).
> May be, I need to drop my resume there. Who knows, someone may
> be interested in an old dog like me, who knows a little about a lot and not
> a lot about anything.
> As ya'l can see, I got no life, sitting on Radsafe on the weekend. And I
> am VERY tired of working, commuting to all these "dead end" jobs with
> bossholes.
> *Corporate Information***
>
> TerraPower, LLC
> 330 120th Ave NE, Suite 100
> Bellevue, WA 98005
> Phone: (425) 691-4086
>
>
> On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Jaro Franta <jaro_10kbq at videotron.ca>wrote:
>
>> I haven't seen any updates in the last couple of years on TerrPower's TWR,
>> but presumably the design keeps evolving.....
>>
>>
>>
>> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11686324/Ellis_et_al-TWRs_A_Truly_Sustai
>> nable_Resource.pdf<https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11686324/Ellis_et_al-TWRs_A_Truly_Sustainable_Resource.pdf>
>>
>>
>>
>> And from another publication.....
>>
>>
>> Fuel Cycle Analysis of Once-Through Nuclear Systems
>> Prepared for
>> U.S. Department of Energy
>> Systems Analysis Campaign
>> T. K. Kim and T. A. Taiwo
>> August 10, 2010
>>
>>
>> 3.6 TerraPower Traveling Wave Reactor Concept
>>
>>
>> The Traveling Wave Reactor (TWR) concept being developed by TerraPower is
>> intended to provide a technology pathway for fast reactors that do not
>> require reprocessing facilities and a system that offers a high fuel
>> utilization [Ellis 2010]. The system adopts the breed and burn concept in
>> a
>> fast reactor, relying in the use of depleted uranium fuel to generate a
>> significant fraction of the system power. The system will have no external
>> fuel refueling but will allow internal fuel shuffling. Similarly to all
>> breed and burn concepts, the initial core of the TWR requires some amount
>> of
>> fissile fuel, which is currently assumed to be enriched uranium fuel.
>> Since
>> the intent is a regime with no fuel reprocessing, the use of transuranic
>> elements derived from LWR used nuclear fuel is not an option. TerraPower
>> speculates that the TWR should be able to achieve a uranium utilization
>> that
>> is 40 times greater than that of current LWRs.
>>
>> The current version of the TWR design is based on elements of
>> sodium-cooled
>> fast reactor technology that have been tested in a large number of
>> one-of-a-kind reactors over the years. Conceptually, the core consists of
>> hexagonal fuel assemblies containing enriched uranium fuel or depleted
>> uranium fuel. The core arrangement is such that the breed and burn wave
>> does
>> not move, but is "stationary". This stationary wave is achieved by
>> periodically moving fuel material in and out of the breed and burn zones
>> (shuffling). Metallic fuel is considered for the design because it offers
>> high heavy metal loading and excellent neutron economy. Zirconium is used
>> for alloying the metallic fuel to improve the dimensional stability of the
>> fuel during irradiation and to inhibit low-temperature eutectic and
>> corrosion damage of the cladding.
>>
>> TerraPower is now considering the "repurposing" (or re-cladding or
>> reconditioning) of the fuel following use. This is to allow the high
>> burnup
>> in a given pass through the core to be increased to a much higher value
>> (about 50%). This repurposing could involve a simplified reprocessing
>> step.
>> In the paper by Ellis et al., the proposed approach is melt refining
>> [Ellis
>> 2010]. This is a new twist to the TWR concept. The evolving reactor design
>> and associated fuel cycle for the TWR is however to be expected.
>>
>> The activities on the TWR design are proprietary to TerraPower LLC.
>> Information is provided here to inform USDOE efforts on assessing advanced
>> reactor concepts.
>>
>> <SNIP>
>>
>>
>>
>>  Jaro
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
>> [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of David Lee
>> Sent: May-18-13 2:44 PM
>> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] IFR and TWR with Bill and Melinda Gates Inteview
>> on
>> 60 minutes. What's Killing The Nuclear Industry?
>>
>> George,
>>
>> Thank you, for explaining it so nicely. My memory, is not as well as it
>> used
>> to be, so I am not sure, if I ever heard of this reactor concept before.
>>
>> I did not know that you guys at Argonne worked on such sophisticated and
>> cool things! kudos to you guys, I am very impressed!!!
>> Fissile trigger and breeder in within in waves. I bet it was exciting and
>> exhausting to do reactor design calculations.
>> ...............
>> .............
>> .......
>> ....
>> ...
>>
>> On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 10:14 AM, George Stanford
>> <gstanford at aya.yale.edu>wrote:
>>
>> > David:
>> >
>> >       No, not heavy water (not even heavy water could make depleted
>> > uranium go critical -- CANDUs can use natural uranium).
>> >
>> >   .  TerraPower's TWR (Travelling Wave Reactor) is a variant of the
>> > IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) developed at Argonne National Laboratory.
>> > It will use metal fuel and be cooled by liquid sodium (no moderator).
>> >
>> >      Both IFR and TWR need an initial charge of fissile material
>> > (U-235 or Pu-239), and then they breed enough new fissile to keep
>> > themselves going indefinitely, using ~1 ton of depleted uranium per
>> > GWe-year of energy produced.  The main difference is that the TWR
>> > would be loaded with 60 years-worth of fuel from the start (i.e.
>> > something like 80 tons per GWe), whereas the IFR would recycle its
>> > fuel much more frequently, adding fresh depleted periodically, and thus
>> would be very much smaller.
>> >
>> >      George S. Stanford
>> >      Reactor physicist. retired from Argonne National Laboratory
>> >
>> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**~~~
>> >
>>
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>
>