3D printing has been getting a lot of hype as an innovative way of manufacturing everything from keychains, aircraft engine parts, and ventilators. Now, 3D printing is creating a nuclear reactor core in a development that could change nuclear energy technology forever.
Researchers in the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are 3D printing the nuclear reactor core, with plans to have the first one up and running by 2023.
"The nuclear industry is still constrained in thinking about the way we design, build and deploy nuclear energy technology," the director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory said in a news release. "DOE launched this program to seek a new approach to rapidly and economically develop transformational energy solutions that deliver reliable, clean energy."
The anti-nuclear lobby would argue that nuclear reactors are neither reliable nor clean. Indeed, nuclear power has got a lot of bad rap, and most of it is deserved. However, the historical body of evidence against it is arguably as strong as the evidence for nuclear energy. In terms of emissions, it is a much cleaner alternative to fossil fuels. It is more costly than renewables, but it lacks the intermittency problem of renewable installations. In short, there are as many arguments for nuclear as there re against it.
Amid the push/pull surrounding nuclear technology, one fact remains: we need nuclear energy.
The International Energy Agency last year issued a dire warning: the retirement of old nuclear power plants in the coming years could compromise the international effort to arrest the rise in global temperatures and result in an increase in carbon emissions instead. That's despite the growth in solar and wind capacity additions, making the warning all the more dramatic.
"Without policy changes, advanced economies could lose 25% of their nuclear capacity by 2025 and as much as two-thirds of it by 2040," the IEA said in May 2019. This loss of nuclear power capacity comes at a time when coal capacity is also being reduced fast because of emission concerns while wind and solar additions are stalling. Now, they are likely to stall further over the short term because of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy.
If the share of nuclear power generation capacity drops as much as the IEA estimated based on the situation in 2019, before the pandemic, the planet could suffer as much as 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide in additional emissions. Estimates now will be different because of the drop in energy demand resulting from the pandemic. Still, there are already warnings governments should make an effort to prevent a return to pre-pandemic emissions by enabling a "green recovery." Read original full article
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