Bill Gates' next-generation nuclear power plant is about to launch, using grid-scale energy storage technology
Release time：2024-09-20click：2
Renewable energy sources such as wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy, water energy, wave energy, etc. are important supports for decarbonization of the energy production industry and plans to curb the use of fossil fuels. But due to intermittency, location dependence, land requirements and many other reasons, they are not yet able to carry this burden alone. Fully eliminating greenhouse gases from the world's energy industry requires a form of energy that is cheap, scalable, zero-emissions, and capable of reliably producing electricity 24/7/365.
It would be even better if the output power could be raised and lowered to help the grid cope with load peaks and interruptions in renewable energy supply. The current solution to fill this role is advanced nuclear power. While no one wants a repeat of Chernobyl or Fukushima, nuclear power is clearly one of the safest ways to produce energy. Coal and petroleum-derived energy are responsible for 24.6 and 18.4 deaths respectively for every terawatt of energy provided, while nuclear power is responsible for only 0.07 deaths - and this includes high-profile disasters that have tarnished nuclear power's reputation.
Thanks to an $80 million U.S. Department of Energy grant received in October last year, Bill Gates' Terrapower company is launching a new activity in partnership with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy - Natrium. The word means "sodium" in Latin, and the project will commercially demonstrate "cost-competitive sodium fast reactors and molten salt energy storage systems."
Natrium’s demonstration plant will be fully operational by the middle of this year. Its fast neutron reactor will use high-temperature liquid sodium as the reactor coolant instead of water. One of the main advantages of sodium is its huge temperature range of 785 Kelvin between solid and gaseous states; water only offers a temperature range of 100 Kelvin, so it needs to be pressurized to handle the higher thermal energy.
Liquid sodium will transfer a large amount of heat away from the reactor under normal atmospheric pressure. An additional benefit is that it will not dissociate into hydrogen and oxygen, so Fukushima A hydrogen explosion is impossible. It is also non-corrosive, sidestepping issues that have raised questions about molten salt reactors.
Like many next-generation nuclear reactors under development, the Natrium design will use highly weighted low-enriched uranium (HALEU) as nuclear fuel. When natural uranium is unearthed, it contains about 0.7% of the uranium 235 isotope, which can produce nuclear energy after splitting. Traditional low-enriched uranium (LEU) nuclear reactor fuel is enriched by centrifugation or gas diffusion and contains 3-5% of uranium 235, while HALEU Then further concentrate, between 5% and 20%. In comparison, nuclear weapons require a uranium concentration of more than 90%.
In terms of safety, in the event of a power outage, the control rod will drop by itself due to gravity, and the natural circulation of air will play an emergency cooling role. Due to the liquid sodium design, the power plant does not need a huge containment vessel like a light water reactor, and the design places the reactor underground, again improving the safety factor and reducing costs.
The Natrium plant is designed to operate at 100% output rate, 24/7, with a continuous output of 345MWe in the form of heat. This heat is run through a molten salt thermal energy storage system, similar to the systems already proven in many direct solar plants around the world. At the other end of this energy storage system is a set of steam turbines that can take this constant power and generate enough electricity to power approximately 225,000 homes.
(Original title: Bill Gates’ next-generation nuclear power plant is about to launch, using grid-scale energy storage technology)
