Week 18 of 2023

Three nuclear energy innovation news!

💡 Three nuclear energy innovation news this week!

🔌 Westinghouse Electric Company (US) unveils the AP300, a 300-MWe single-loop pressurized water reactor. It will benefit from the 18 reactor years of safe operations of the AP1000, from which its design is scaled. Design certification is anticipated by 2027. There is thus a new player in the mid-size reactor range, alongside GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (US) with the BWRX-300.

🧲 The gamma radiation cryostat system, a vacuum device developed by Tokamak Energy (UK) to provide thermal insulation for the magnets in its spherical tokamak, is headed to Sandia National Laboratories (US) to be tested in the Gamma Irradiation Facility. The system was previously built and commissioned at Tokamak's headquarters in Oxfordshire. Commercial-grade fusion demonstration planned in the early 2030's.

⛽ Framatome (FR) manufactures the first molybdenum-uranium (U-Mo) foils for monolithic fuel developped for the Forschungsreaktor München II research reactor at the Technical University of Munich (DE). Irradition of the first fuel plate prototype is planned for September this year. It is Europe’s low-enriched fuel with the highest density ever realised for research reactor operations.

🎓 Paper of the week: "Tuning of grain boundaries in MgB2 by boron ultra-sonication in 2-propanol—A way to low-cost high-J bulk superconducting magnets", Journal of Alloys and Compounds (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jallcom.2023.170146