MIT’s analysis reactor was constructed within the Fifties, and its function has shifted over the a long time. At numerous factors, it’s been used to review all the things from nuclear physics to medical therapies, alongside its constant use for educating the following technology 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 nearly all business nuclear reactors right now are cooled utilizing water, a rising variety of startups wish to molten salt as a substitute. MIT’s nuclear reactor lab is engaged on a brand new analysis house that might assist illuminate how nicely different applied sciences face up to the extreme situations inside a nuclear reactor.
So for the publication this week, come alongside on my tour of MIT’s nuclear reactor lab. On the best way, we will get into what all the thrill is all about with molten-salt reactors.
Sizzling subjects
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 luggage and telephones and acquired stern warnings to not contact something or wander out of our tour information’s sight.
Lastly, we filed via 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 via some historical past and fundamental info.
That is the second-largest college analysis reactor working within the US right now, producing about six megawatts of thermal energy. Industrial reactors are inclined to have capacities a whole bunch of instances higher 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 reworked into electrical energy.)
