Jan 8, 2024, China Startup Betavolt New Energy Technology announced the successful development of a miniature atomic energy battery. It uses nickel-63 nuclear isotope decay and China’s first diamond semiconductor (4th generation semiconductor) module to successfully realize the miniaturization of atomic energy batteries. It has modularization and low cost. The battery can provide power for …
A 2024 phase 1 NASA Advanced Innovations concept study will look at thin film isoptope nuclear rockets. This will enable faster probes with years of thrust capability. The years of thrust using nuclear isotopes will provide energy for course changes beyond Saturn and even in interstellar space far from the solar energy of the sun. …
China has designed the world’s first large containership with a nuclear Molten Salt reactor. The design was developed by Jiangnan Shipbuilding, a division of the Chinese state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC). They reported that DNV issued an Approval in Principle (AiP) certificate for the design. Nuclear commercial ships would save a lot of on …
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced $80 million for the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) funding to demonstrate the Westinghouse eVinci micro nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan. SRC will apply the research and knowledge gained from the licensing and deployment of an initial microreactor to support the Saskatchewan nuclear industry to better understand this type of technology and …
he U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has voted to issue a construction permit to Kairos Power for the Hermes demonstration molten salt nuclaer reactor to be built at the Heritage Center Industrial Park in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The Kairos Power FHR (KP-FHR) is a novel advanced reactor technology that leverages TRISO fuel in pebble form …
Lawrence Livermore National Lab has a new tool toA improves our understanding of the nuclear deflection’s radiation interactions on the asteroid’s surface while opening the door to new research on the shockwave dynamics affecting the inner asteroid. The paper introduces an efficient and accurate library of X-ray energy deposition functions, developed using the Kull radiation-hydrodynamics …
As of November 2022, China held a total of 2,510 GW of installed capacity, 44% of which is coal, 16.3% hydro, 14.7% solar, 13.9% wind, 4.5% natural gas, and 18.4% other fuels. Nuclear only accounted for 2.2% of the total domestic capacity, the least of all sources. Nuclear has a higher capacity factor and delived …
Fast neutron reactors of Russian design can increase the usable uranium and nuclear fuel by 100 times. Russia alone has already accumulated about 1 million tonnes of depleted uranium hexafluoride. U-238 of near-nuclear purity can be used to produce fuel for fast reactors. Russia’s depleted uranium alone carries energy which is 100 times greater than …
The BN-800 sodium-cooled fast reactor at unit 4 of Russia’s Beloyarsk NPP has registered a year of reliable and safe operation using an almost full load of uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel. Russia says this proves the readiness of the closed nuclear fuel cycle technology for implementation on an industrial scale. The BN-800 is using …
China’s HTR-PM (High Temperature) modular pebble bed reactor has finally started commmercial operation. It has two small reactors (each of 250 MWt) that drive a single 210 MWe steam turbine. It uses helium as coolant and graphite as the moderator. Each reactor is loaded with more than 400,000 spherical fuel elements (‘pebbles’), each 60 mm …
The DOE funding $42 million to support three hubs to develop inertial fusion. The hubs will be led by researchers at Colorado State University, the University of Rochester, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Projects funded by the program—known as Inertial Fusion Energy Science and Technology Accelerated Research (IFE-STAR)—will bring together expertise and capabilities across DOE’s …