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MIT’s analysis reactor was constructed within the Nineteen Fifties, and its function has shifted over the many years. At numerous factors, it’s been used to check every thing from nuclear physics to medical therapies, alongside its constant use for educating the following era of nuclear scientists.
However I used to be most excited to listen to about an energy-focused challenge, which is geared toward bringing novel reactor expertise to actuality.
Whereas just about all business nuclear reactors as we speak are cooled utilizing water, a rising variety of startups need to molten salt in its place. MIT’s nuclear reactor lab is engaged on a brand new analysis area that would assist illuminate how properly various applied sciences face up to the extreme circumstances inside a nuclear reactor.
So for the e-newsletter this week, come alongside on my tour of MIT’s nuclear reactor lab. On the way in which, we will get into what all the thrill is all about with molten-salt reactors.
Sizzling matters
The primary cease on my tour was the entrance desk, the place I and every member of my group picked up a private dosimeter to trace any potential radiation publicity. We then handed over our baggage and telephones and obtained stern warnings to not contact something or wander out of our tour information’s sight.
Lastly, we filed by way of a set of strengthened metallic doorways and into the lab. We handed rows of yellow lab coats as David Carpenter, the pinnacle of reactor experiments and our tour information, walked us by way of some historical past and primary info.
That is the second-largest college analysis reactor operating within the US as we speak, producing about six megawatts of thermal energy. Business reactors are likely to have capacities tons of of instances better than that—round 3,000 megawatts (or three gigawatts) of thermal energy.
(Speedy nuclear fundamentals: nuclear reactors are powered by fission reactions, the place uranium atoms break aside. These reactions produce neutrons, that are a kind of ionizing radiation, in addition to warmth that may be harnessed and remodeled into electrical energy.)
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