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Second round of Launch Pad selections includes eight newcomers
The National Reactor Innovation Center at Idaho National Laboratory has announced 13 project selections across 12 companies for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, a Department of Energy–led program that integrates reactor and fuel facility authorization, testing, and deployment support for private nuclear developers.
The Launch Pad emerged from the Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program.
According to INL, projects selected include reactor development and nuclear fuel cycle advancements, including fabrication, enrichment, and conversion technologies.
Yuki Edao, Yasunori Iwai
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 2 | February 2020 | Pages 135-140
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1704572
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A passive catalytic reactor without heating is required to enhance the safety of a fusion facility. A precious metal catalyst without heating is not suitable to oxidize tritium under conditions of low hydrogen concentration and room temperature. In addition, under a moisture condition, tritium oxidation of a precious metal catalyst drops drastically since moisture adsorbs active sites on the surface of the catalyst. Hence, as a method of tritium oxidation under a moisture condition at room temperature, we have focused on bacterial oxidation of tritium by hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria in natural soil to realize a passive reactor. In this study, we investigated the effect of hydrogen concentration on tritium oxidation by hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria in natural soils to understand the characteristic of tritium oxidation by hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria from the viewpoint of engineering. In our experiment, efficiency of tritium oxidation by a natural soil was obtained at room temperature in the range of hydrogen concentration from 0.5 to 10 000 parts per million (ppm) under a moisture condition. The efficiency of tritium oxidation was the highest at a hydrogen concentration of 0.5 ppm, which equals the value of the hydrogen concentration in air. Our results show that hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria could efficiently oxidize tritium with a low concentration of hydrogen, at room temperature, with high moisture. This showed a tendency opposite to a metal catalyst. A bioreactor using hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria complemented a conventional catalytic reactor using a precious metal catalyst since hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria could oxidize tritium efficiently with a low concentration of hydrogen, at room temperature, with high moisture.