Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2010
Volume 55, Number 1
Saturday–Tuesday, February 13–16, 2010; Washington, DC
Session D6: Particle Beams and Accelerators in Energy Research and Applications |
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Sponsoring Units: DPB GERA Chair: Jill Dahlburg, Naval Research Laboratory Room: Washington 5 |
Saturday, February 13, 2010 1:30PM - 2:06PM |
D6.00001: Increasing the Acceptance of Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposal by the Transmutation of Minor Actinides Using an Accelerator Invited Speaker: The main challenge in nuclear fuel cycle closure is the reduction of the potential radiotoxicity of spent LWR nuclear fuel, or the length of time in which that potential hazard exists. Partitioning and accelerator-based transmutation in combination with geological disposal can lead to an acceptable societal solution for the nuclear spent fuel management problem. Nuclear fuel seems ideally suited for recycling. Only a small fraction of the available energy in the fuel is extracted in a single pass and the problem isotopes, consisting of the transuranic elements plutonium, neptunium, americium, curium and the long-lived fission products iodine and technetium, could be burned in fast-neutron spectrum reactors or sub-critical accelerator driven transmuters. Most of the remaining wastes have half-lives of a few hundred years and can be safely stored in man-made containment structures (casks or glass). The very small amount of remaining long-lived waste could be safely stored in a small geologic repository. The problem for the next 100 years is that a sufficient number of fast reactors are unlikely to be built by industry to burn its own waste and the waste from existing and new light water reactors (LWRs). So an interim solution is required to transition to a fast reactor economy. The goals of accelerator transmutation are some or all of the following: 1) to significantly reduce the impacts due to the minor actinides on the packing density and long-term radiotoxicity in the repository design, 2) preserve/use the energy-rich component of used nuclear fuel, and 3) reduce proliferation risk. Accelerator-based transmutation could lead to a greater percentage of our power coming from greenhouse-gas emission-free nuclear power and provide a long-term strategy enabling the continuation and growth of nuclear power in the U.S. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, February 13, 2010 2:06PM - 2:42PM |
D6.00002: Plasma Heating and Current Drive for Fusion Reactors Invited Speaker: ITER (in Latin ``the way'') is designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy. Fusion is the process by which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier one and thus release energy. In the fusion process two isotopes of hydrogen - deuterium and tritium - fuse together to form a helium atom and a neutron. Thus fusion could provide large scale energy production without greenhouse effects; essentially limitless fuel would be available all over the world. The principal goals of ITER are to generate 500 megawatts of fusion power for periods of 300 to 500 seconds with a fusion power multiplication factor, Q, of at least 10. Q $\geq$ 10 (input power 50 MW / output power 500 MW). In a Tokamak the definition of the functionalities and requirements for the Plasma Heating and Current Drive are relevant in the determination of the overall plant efficiency, the operation cost of the plant and the plant availability. This paper summarise these functionalities and requirements in perspective of the systems under construction in ITER. It discusses the further steps necessary to meet those requirements. Approximately one half of the total heating will be provided by two Neutral Beam injection systems at with energy of 1 MeV and a beam power of 16 MW into the plasma. For ITER specific test facility is being build in order to develop and test the Neutral Beam injectors. Remote handling maintenance scheme for the NB systems, critical during the nuclear phase of the project, will be developed. In addition the paper will give an overview over the general status of ITER. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, February 13, 2010 2:42PM - 3:18PM |
D6.00003: Light Driven Energy Research at LCLS: Planned Pump-Probe X-ray Spectroscopy Studies on Photosynthetic Water Splitting Invited Speaker: Arguably the most important chemical reaction on earth is the photosynthetic splitting of water to molecular oxygen by the Mn-containing oxygen-evolving complex (Mn-OEC) in the protein known as photosystem II (PSII). It is this reaction which has, over the course of some 3.8 billion years, gradually filled our atmosphere with O$_2$ and consequently enabled and sustained the evolution of complex aerobic life. Coupled to the reduction of carbon dioxide, biological photosynthesis contributes foodstuffs for nutrition while recycling CO$_2$ from the atmosphere and replacing it with O$_2$. By utilizing sunlight to power these energy-requiring reactions, photosynthesis also serves as a model for addressing societal energy needs as we enter an era of diminishing fossil hydrocarbon resources. Understanding, at the molecular level, the dynamics and mechanism of how nature has solved this problem is of fundamental importance and could be critical to aid in the design of manufactured devices to accomplish the conversion of sunlight into useful electrochemical energy and transportable fuel in the foreseeable future. In order to understand the photosynthetic splitting of water by the Mn-OEC we need to be able to follow the reaction in real time at an atomic level. A powerful probe to study the electronic and molecular structure of the Mn-OEC is x-ray spectroscopy. Here, in particular x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) has two crucial qualities for LCLS based time-dependent pump-probe studies of the Mn-OEC: a) it directly probes the Mn oxidation state and ligation, b) it can be performed with wavelength dispersive optics to avoid the necessity of scanning in pump probe experiments. Recent results and the planned time dependent experiments at LCLS will be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
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