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Meta’s new nuclear deals with Oklo and TerraPower: The details
Tech giant Meta is making big bets on TerraPower and Oklo. With the former, the hyperscaler could support the deployment of up to eight new reactors. With the latter, it could be as many as sixteen.
For both start-ups, Meta hopes its demand bolsters supply chains, the workforce, and the nuclear industry generally. For itself, the company is aiming to secure more generation to cleanly power its AI ambitions.
M. E. Whatley, L. E. McNeese, W. L. Carter, L. M. Ferris, E. L. Nicholson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 8 | Number 2 | February 1970 | Pages 170-178
Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT70-A28623
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The molten-salt breeder reactor being developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) requires continuous chemical processing of the fuel salt, 7LiF-BeF2-ThF4 (72-16-12 mole%) containing ∼0.3 mole% 233UF4. The reactor and the processing plant are planned as an integral system. The main functions of the processing plant will be to isolate 233Pa from the neutron flux and to remove the rare-earth fission products. The processing method being developed involves the selective chemical reduction of the various components into liquid bismuth solutions at ∼600°C, utilizing multistage counter-current extraction. Protactinium, which is easily separated from uranium, thorium, and the rare earths, would be trapped in the salt phase in a storage tank located between two extraction contactors and allowed to decay to 233U. Rare earths would be separated from thorium by a similar reductive extraction method; however, this operation will not be as simple as the protactinium isolation step because the rare-earth-thorium separation factors are only 1.3 to 3.5. The proposed process would employ electrolytic cells to simultaneously introduce reductant into the bismuth phase at the cathode and to return extracted materials to the salt phase at the anode. The practicability of the reductive extraction process depends on the successful development of salt-metal contactors, electrolytic cells, and suitable materials of construction.