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Accelerator Driven Treatment of Nuclear Waste
quax writes "In the wake of the Fukushima disaster the nuclear industry again faces massive opposition. Germany even decided to abandon nuclear energy altogether and the future of the industry is under a cloud of uncertainty in Japan. But one thing seems to be here to stay for a very, very long time: radioactive waste that has half-lives measured in thousands of years. But there is a technology under development in Belgium that could change all this: A sub-critical reactor design, driven by a particle accelerator can transmute the nuclear waste into something that goes away in about two hundred years. Could this lead to a revival of the nuclear industry and the reprocessing of spent reactor fuel?"
I'll be long gone by then. Let someone else deal with it. Don't waste a cent of my money on it.
You do have to admit, it's pretty easy to confuse "spent" with "spent." Both are spelled the same. Sound the same. Both can even be used as the past tense of spend. But, alas, most just don't get the intricacies in the differences between spent and spent.
Thanks for clarifying.
"Nuclear is bad for everyone!"
Compared to what? Coal and natural gas, that are bad for us even when they're within normal parameters? Renewables that are nowhere near enough to properly replace what we're currently using without using up massive land areas?
I'll take a nuclear reactor in my backyard over a natural gas plant in my neighborhood or a coal power plant within a 20 km radius any day.
Back in the 1990s this was developed at Los Alamos and a few other accelerator centers. it's not new or unique to belgium.
http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/science21/ATW.html
http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/1999/venneri.htm
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yes. Spent fuel has always been considered a long term asset by the nuclear industry. People in that industry believe that as mining the raw ore becomes more expensive and the technology for reprocessing the spent fuel becomes better it starts to become a more valuable source of future fuel.
The industry would be very different if the governments did not push the technology towards weapons production. The reactor designs we have are all old and they are designed in a way that facilitates the production of plutonium. If the research into other reactor and fuel designs that did not have as many dangerous byproducts were pursued it would be a safer industry today.
The most promising alternative is and was to use Thorium fuelled reactors instead of uranium. There is the potential for far safer reactor designs and far less hazardous waste when using that type of fuel. The USA took a relatively short look at this but then they stopped since they could not also produce weapons from these reactors and at the time it was all about the bomb. But from what I have read they will likely become a technology that becomes more interesting over time as it's capable of using depleted uranium along with the Thorium as a way to use up that spent fuel that's hanging around.
It should be obvious though there are significant challenges to getting the theory into a practical design. All those research reactor projects back in the 50's that gave engineers and scientists the knowledge to build the current reactors would need similar efforts to develop the technology for these alternative fuels and reprocessing technologies. It's starting to happen but in China and India where they have not lost their love for nuclear power yet.
Primary reason is the many billions of dollars of development needed to figure it all out.
There is no design for a "working commercial thorium reactors". It's all just bits and pieces of theory, and experimental reactors that only answered some of the questions.
It's a possible technology, just not an actual technology. Kind of like the guy at NASA who recently got into the news for a pen and paper proposal of how warp speed might be possible. We are still a long way from building interstellar spaceships. Just like we are long way from building a Thorium salt reactor that works and is economically viable.
I'm the guy who write the software for the reactor (and the accelerator) of TFA. And yes, it run Linux, on embedded Xilinx cards with custom FPGAs. I can't vouch for the ability of the system to transmute long-life waste in a semi-industrial way as it's only a research reactor, not even a demonstrator. But it's the 3rd prototype of its kind and it's working well enough. More information is available here in french, and, as a long time /. member, if you have questions about the control/command software, I'll be happy to answer when I wake up in the morning ! Yeah, the name of the experiment is somewhat confusing: Genepi/Guinevere/3C/Venus/Ganddalf. One is the accelerator, one is the reactor, one is the data acquisition, one is the combined experiment... I get lost too.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
We must ban this weapons-grade steel for the good of our children. Bronze is good enough for knives for shaving, tanning hides, working the fields. We don't need steel. The steel industry tries to convince us that steel has peaceful uses but we know that steel weapons easily fall into the hands of bandits and brigands. Arsenic poisoning is simply a lie by big steel so that they can create their death tools. In reality, bronze is safe, reliable and fulfills our tool needs.
This is really neat. So is the current control software in Mol using your code?
Yes.
Will MYRRHA use the same code base or does it require a complete re-write?
Myrrha is only a concept so far: no development yet. It will most likely be a complete rewrite looking as to how far the code has diverged from the original specs.
Are you using a real-time kernel?
No. Everything that needs to be real-time is done on FPGAs and then transmitted to the kernel and user app via GPIOs.
What kind of quality control are you using to ensure the software performs exactly as designed?
Basically years of testing. Anyway, since it is a subcritical reactor, the security requirements are much less stringent. Some purely security stuff (read: not the control/command and or acquisition), is handled by other systems which have no interaction with mine. And as for the original 'design', well, it is research, meaning that specs start from a white sheet and build from there as we add pieces to the machine.
Are you using a functional programming paradigm?
All in C.
Are the reactors computer systems networked to the outside world? If so what kind of security measures do you have in place to safeguard access?
They are indirectly accessible (2 sets of firewalls). Like I said it is a research system with much less stringent security requirements, and quite a few researchers work on it and need remote access.
Is your software a critical component of the control feedback loop e,g. reduces beam intensity based on the measured neutron flux? If so what kind of redundancy is build into the system?
One set of software runs on the cards themselves: a minimalist BuildRoot install with a basic software that does as few things as possible (transferring acquired data to the network, reacting to commands from the Control/Command, sanity checks, basic security, going into security mode in case contact is lost, ...). One or more linux PCs run the C/C software and communicate with those cards and tell them what to do. If this soft crashes, nothing actually happens, the system keeps running for a while. You can actually shut down one PC and start another and everything keeps running like nothing happened.
But all the 'real' security is done in hardware: thermal shutdowns, beam intensity shutdowns, etc... It's actually difficult to turn the system on: everything has to be just right and there are plenty of little things that do stop the process.
Non-Linux Penguins ?