Week 27 of 2023

Three nuclear energy innovation news!

💡 Three nuclear energy innovation news this week!

♨️ Seaborg Technologies (Denmark) changes the fuel type molten salt reactor from high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), which has supply chain issues, to low-enriched uranium (LEU). This decision will likely have a significant impact on the reactor design, notably requiring to switch the moderator from sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to graphite.

👉 This is an important development. Next-generation reactor projects keep popping up, each with their own fuel requirements. However, the fuel cycle is not as quick to adapt. It depends on complex infrastructures and large investments, in a heavily-regulated environement with a strong dual-use flavour.

🍩 The UK Atomic Energy Authority works towards a digital twin of the STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) fusion power plant. They plan to leverage on the supercomputer at the Cambridge Open Zettascale Lab at the University of Cambridge, powered by Dell Technologies PowerEdge servers, and the Intel Corporation oneAPI tools and optimised AI frameworks. This 'industrial metaverse' is a milestone to connect STEP to the grid in the early 2040's.

💊 The Canadian Medical Isotope Ecosystem (CMIE) is launched with CAD$35m worth of funding over five years. Its objective is to develop initiatives focused on the production, advancement and distribution of medical isotopes and radiopharmaceuticals, notably with Bruce Power, BWXT Medical Ltd., McMaster University and the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. It is placed under the  under the oversight of the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization and TRIUMF Innovations Inc.

🎓 Paper of the week: "Measurement of the α-Particle Monopole Transition Form Factor Challenges Theory: A Low-Energy Puzzle for Nuclear Forces?", Physical Review Letters (2023). https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.152502

👉 In short: they inflated a helium nuclei and it didn't expand as the theory predicts. We still don't understand the simplest nuclear systems.

👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me know!