Energy
Everyone can agree that the world needs more plentiful sources of secure, reliable, clean, and affordable electricity—and that means weaning ourselves from fossil fuels. We’re working on a few ideas, but the most significant we hope are our TerraPower nuclear reactors.
TerraPower Reactors Approach the Nuclear Ideal
Advanced Traveling-wave reactors offer a path to zero-emissions, proliferation-resistant energy that would reduce nuclear waste volumes. Exploiting new physics that has only recently been fully explored with 21st-century computational tools, traveling-wave reactors run on depleted uranium, a waste byproduct of the enrichment process. Huge amounts of depleted uranium already exist in stockpiles around the world, with more being made each year as the fleet of conventional reactors is refueled. Burned in traveling-wave reactors, this inexpensive but energy-rich fuel source could provide a global electricity supply that is, for all practical purposes, inexhaustible.
A traveling-wave reactor can sustain fission in a nonfissile fuel such as depleted uranium because it sets up a slow-moving wave in which neutrons produced by fission reactions in one small part of the core convert adjacent fuel pellets from fertile isotopes (such as U238) into fissile isotopes (such as Pu239).
The traveling-wave reactor creates the simplest nuclear energy fuel cycle. A TWR breeds its own nuclear fuel, where it needs it, when it needs it. Exhausted fuel can be left in the core. So unlike conventional nuclear plants that take in new fuel and expel high-level waste every 18 months or so, a TWR can in principle be fueled once, sealed up, and run without refueling for 60 years or more.
Latest News
(3/10/10)
John Gilleland, who has cultivated IV’s nuclear project into TerraPower, joined other energy industry leaders in Washington DC this week to discuss the future of electricity at the EnergyBiz Leadership Forum.
Panelists addressed where power will come from when the economy recovers and demand increases. From clean coal to improved batteries, their examples demonstrated that the ultimate solution will be a full range of sustainable, safe and affordable options.
We all know that the devices that make our lives easier and more enjoyable soak up electricity, even if we don’t normally think about what that really means. The growing demand for clean sources to power our way of life is one of the greatest problems facing our society – and an important segment of the work done by everyone who participated at the forum.
TerraPower’s work on a reactor design that offers a simpler nuclear fuel cycle promises to address some of the industry’s historical political and economic hurdles. As we move closer to the construction of Light Water Reactors in the United States, innovation and invention will continue to create better options like the traveling-wave reactor that will help resolve incumbent issues facing today’s energy producers.
[Download pdf slides from presentation]
Further Reading
TerraPower’s reactor, Powered by Nuclear Waste
Traveling-Wave Reactor Animation