China, one of the biggest consumers of the energy. The country has already built 30 nuclear power stations, building 24 new ones and more are on the way. Now, China announced that in 2017; they will bring a new type of nuclear power plant which will immune to meltdown. The technology’s born place is Germany, but this is the first time that someone built on a commercial scale in the world. This new construction project is critical for our Earth. If China pulls this off, this will eliminate the biggest negative point of the nuclear power plants.
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So How this meltdown-proof system works? The new reactor prevents the meltdown in two ways. Firstly, the fuel of the reactor which is Uranium encased in graphite spheres that are almost a size of a tennis ball. These spheres prevent the fuel from a breakdown, even the temperature gets higher than what it supposed to be. Secondly, the reactor blasted with helium gas to keep the temperature at 950 degrees Celsius. With this coating system reactor does not need any external cooling system which failed at Fukushima, Japan. The graphite coating protects the uranium from breaking down, even the core temperature passes the certain threshold the system control the reaction and cool itself down.
With this new system, there will be no more Chernobyl or Fukushima – we hope – but still nuclear waste is a big problem. We see some changes in the energy sector, many countries are starting to invest in renewable energy systems but also Earth population is rising rapidly. For now, renewable energy investment is not enough for our needs, but some countries including China, are currently working on plasma technology which also called ” power of the sun “. This plasma technology could be next high amount of energy provider for our needs.–
Article via ScienceAlert
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