Closed-Circuit Nuclear Reactors Now Possible

Physicists have been looking for a way to reduce the amount of nuclear waste produced by power plants for a long time, but they couldn't manage any breakthroughs because the technology they have used has not been advanced enough. Now, recent innovations make it possible to consider the idea of closed-circuit reactors, which would produce far less radioactive waste to be buried than existing reactors.

“New types of nuclear power plants can switch to a closed fuel cycle. It means that nuclear waste wouldn’t be buried as such; instead, it would be chemically dissolved and the recyclable component re-processed into new fuel. As a result, many of the most long-lived radioactive substances could be used at new types of facilities,” Riitta Kyrki-Rajamaki, who is a professor at the Lappeenranta University of Technology, explains the new idea.

The new generation of proposed nuclear reactors varies widely from existing light water reactors, and their schematics have already drawn worldwide interest. The Academy of Finland is the main engine behind the research, through its Sustainable Energy Research Program. The initiative includes the New Type Nuclear Reactors project, which is being led by Kyrki-Rajamaki. A large number of researchers, from fields such as reactor physics, reactor dynamics, materials technology, thermal hydraulics, and computational fluid dynamics, are also involved in the work.

“The transition to new types of reactors over the next few decades would guarantee that the existing reserves of raw material for nuclear fuel last for thousands of years to come,” the expert adds. However, she admits, there is also a need for more strict security measures, so as to prevent any possibility that the new, fourth-generation reactors interact with the atmosphere or the soil. This objective is the most important of them all, the project leader adds.

In addition to LUT, researchers from the Helsinki University of Technology and the Technical Research Center of Finland VTT are also involved in the new studies, AlphaGalileo reports.