Week 2 of 2024

Three nuclear energy innovation news!

I've started this weekly post almost two years ago. Each post reaches 5,000 to 10,000 impressions on LinkedIn, plus an additional 300+ readers on Substack across 25 US states and 42 countries. My original intention was to demonstrate that the nuclear sector was at a turning point, with a real awakening in terms of innovations. Today, the nuclear renaissance is an established fact. If you're a regular reader, I'd love to have your feedback on the editorial content. ✍

🍩 Proxima Fusion (Germany) starts testing its high-temperature superconducting (HTS) non-planar magnet prototypes, in cooperation with Bilfinger. These were designed with their StarFinder stellarator optimization framework, integrating engineering and economic constraints. This new lab phase is essential to demonstrate the feasibility and viability of these computational results.

🧂 Kairos Power (US) completes 1,000 hours of pumped salt operations with its non-nuclear Engineering Testing Unit (ETU). The system was loaded with 12 tonnes of Flibe salt, a chemically stable mixture of lithium, fluorine, and beryllium, serves as the coolant for Kairos's fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR). It is effectively the largest Flibe system ever built.

🚀 Nuclear Promise X and the Canadian Nuclear Isotope Council assess the feasibility of producing isotopes for deep space exploration applications with Canadian nuclear reactors. The study, commissioned by the Canadian Space Agency, focuses on irradiating Neptunium-237 (Np-237) into Plutonium-238 (Pu-238).

👨‍🎓 Paper of the week: "Experimental study on solidification of uranium tailings by microbial grouting combined with electroosmosis", Nuclear Engineering and Technology (2023).

👉 Microbes maintaining the safety and stability of uranium tailings dams.

👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me me know!