COWI and Sinotech Team Up on Taiwan’s Super-Hot Geothermal Potential Taiwan’s geothermal story is moving from possibility to execution, and the COWI-Sinotech collaboration is a sign that the sector is entering a more serious phase of development. The partnership is focused on unlocking super-hot geothermal resources, which could improve project economics and expand the country’s clean-energy options. Introduction Geothermal has long been one of Taiwan’s most intriguing renewable resources because the island sits on active tectonic terrain with strong heat potential. What has held the sector back is not a lack of heat, but the difficulty of converting that heat into bankable projects at scale. The new collaboration between COWI and Sinotech points to a more technical, internationally connected approach to solving that problem. Why Taiwan Matters Taiwan has ambitious decarbonization goals, and geothermal fits neatly into the need for firm, low-carbon power. Unlike solar and wind, geother...
"Unlocking the Secrets of Fast Reactor Fuel Safety: US and Japan Join Forces in a Groundbreaking Experiment"
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An experiment in the experiment in Broad Use Specimen Transient Experiment Rig (BUSTER) is loaded into TREAT (Image: INL)
As the world searches for sustainable energy solutions, a groundbreaking research program into the safety of fast reactor fuel is set to resume at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) next month. After being suspended since the 1990s, the program will use INL's Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) facility to mimic postulated accident conditions in fast reactors and test the safety of high-burnup materials.
INL researchers have crafted a special capsule to house the experiments and repurposed fresh legacy fuel pins from the lab's former EBR-II reactor, which ceased operations in 1994, for experimental commissioning tests. The team will now move on to transient experiments on high-burnup materials archived from historic irradiation testing in EBR-II, including tests on mixed oxide fuel used by Japanese and French fast reactor designs and metallic alloy fuel used by the USA.
This ambitious program is part of a four-year cost-shared initiative between the US Department of Energy (DOE) and Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) under the bilateral Civil Nuclear Energy Research and Development Working Group, established in 2014. However, it also marks the completion of work that began in the late 1980s to test high-burnup fast reactor fuels before it was suspended in 1994, when EBR-II was closed.
Work has begun to load the first of four irradiated fuel experiments into TREAT, with the first transient test expected to start in February. The first three DOE/JAEA fuel experiments are expected to be completed "by early spring" with the US testing completed before the end of 2024.
TREAT is one of the few facilities in the world that can produce bursts of energy several times more powerful than conditions found in a commercial reactor, known as transients, which can be used to study fuel performance under extreme conditions. TREAT was placed on standby the same year that EBR-II closed but was brought back into operation in 2017.
Daniel Wachs, national technical director for the US Advanced Fuels Campaign, said the unique experiments represent an important step towards developing global confidence in the enhanced performance and safety of advanced nuclear reactor technologies. "It's also a remarkable example of how critical international collaborations will enable the next generation of energy technology development," he added.
Source: World Nuclear News
#Japan #Nuclear Fuel #Research to Develop #US #Reactors
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