NUCLEAR POWERResearch Drives Innovation in Gen-IV Reactor Safety and Efficiency
All U.S. nuclear reactors, which currently provide more than half of the nation’s carbon-free power, are first- or second-generation light water reactors. This means they use water as both a coolant and neutron moderator to control the nuclear reaction and produce useful electricity. Ut researchers pursue all kinds of reactor designs, and nuclear engineers at Argonne frame the future of nuclear design.
All U.S. nuclear reactors, which currently provide more than half of the nation’s carbon-free power, are first- or second-generation light water reactors. This means they use water as both a coolant and neutron moderator to control the nuclear reaction and produce useful electricity. However, the growing need for more clean energy is prompting scientific experts, policy makers and members of private industry to excitedly pursue all kinds of reactor designs.
A new generation of nuclear reactors, “Gen-IV,” aims to improve safety while optimizing efficiency and cost. One Gen-IV reactor design at the vanguard of development is the sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR). SFRs with metallic-alloy fuel are garnering a significant amount of interest because they have intrinsic passive safety and can produce more nuclear fuel material than they consume. This can reduce the amount of waste generated over the lifetime of the reactor.
At the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory — famously charged with peaceful expansion of Enrico Fermi’s successful Chicago Pile-1 fission experiment — fast reactor technology is nothing new. In fact, Argonne designed, built and operated the full-scale Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) and tested and validated molten sodium technology for 30 years until the lab safely shut down EBR-II in 1994. Information used by the nuclear industry almost everywhere in the world to validate reactor designs and by American industry to proceed with licensing applications and obtain Nuclear Regulatory Commission approvals are still strongly influenced by or directly produced from EBR-II operations and testing data and other Argonne research.
Today, Argonne’s primary SFR experiments and component testing take place in an innovative high-bay facility on the lab’s campus just outside of Chicago: the Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop (METL) facility. At METL, scientists like principal nuclear engineer Matthew Weathered work with federal sponsors and industry partners to pursue a common goal: testing and validating a new generation of sodium fast reactor designs.
A Tradition of Expertise and Innovation
Weathered earned his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and has almost a decade of work experience. But at Argonne, where engineers like Earl Feldman (who worked on EBR-II in 1974) still conduct research, Weathered is considered “early career.” Just like Feldman, however, his focus is thermal hydraulics.
