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NN Asks: What hurdles stand in the way of nuclear power’s global expansion?
Jake Jurewicz
Nuclear technology is mature. It provides firm power at scale with minimal externalities and has done so for decades. The core problem isn’t about the technology—it is how the plants are built. Nuclear construction has a well-documented history of cost and schedule overruns. Previous nuclear plants often spent more than twice what was first budgeted, making nuclear among the power technologies with the largest average cost overruns worldwide.
Recent projects illustrate how severe the problem can be. In South Carolina, the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion saw projected costs rise from roughly $10 billion to more than $25 billion before the project was abandoned in 2017, by which time more than $9 billion had already been spent and customers were stuck paying for a site they have yet to benefit from.
Kwangjin Jung, Yeanjin Kim, Hongsuk Chung, Hee-Seok Kang, Sei-Hun Yun, Do-Hee Ahn
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | April 2017 | Pages 416-421
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1291250
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Tritium Storage & Delivery System (SDS) is part of a tokamak-type nuclear fusion reactor fuel cycle. For the safety of this cycle, the hydrogen isotopes are stored in a metal hydride form in the SDS. Depleted uranium (DU) was chosen as the storage material. DU hydride can be heated to very high temperatures that are sufficient for pumping hydrogen isotopes without using gas pumps. The experimental apparatus used to test the experimental DU bed consists of a tank that stores and measures the hydrogen, and a DU bed used for the hydriding and dehydriding of hydrogen. The DU bed is a vertical double-cylinder type with sintered metal filters. The bed is composed of primary and secondary vessels. The primary vessel contains DU, and a vacuum layer is formed between the primary and secondary vessels. In this study, recent experimental results on the pretreatment (activation and powderization) of DU and the direct hydrogen recovery and delivery of a DU bed are presented. In addition, the relationship between hydrogen pressure and temperature in the DU bed is obtained.
