Examine competing viewpoints (“realities”) to enable energy transition, focusing on the practical challenges in bringing about change on a global basis. Find out what roles energy storage must play to support the transition, and discuss how we can optimize transition processes. In this course from the University of Alberta and Canadian Society for Evolving Energy, you will join us to learn about the many energy sources available, and where technology is providing exciting new solutions to energy and environmental challenges. Climate change, environmental sustainability, and energy poverty are all important – and sometimes conflicting – drivers as we strive to supply more energy to more people with fewer negative impacts on Earth’s environments. But now, even while half of humanity cannot access adequate energy supplies, we are beginning a profound transition to more diverse energy sources. For the past 150 years, more and more people have gained access to energy, primarily in the form of fossil fuels – coal, petroleum and natural gas. Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.Affordable, abundant and reliable energy is fundamental to human well-being and prosperity. Permission is not required) please go to the Copyright If you want to reproduce the wholeĪrticle in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figuresĪnd diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. Provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission Please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page. To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, Provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes. This article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, Najdanovic-Visak,Ĭreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. Nuclear fuel cycle, with a liquid ore and fuel: toward renewable energyĬ. This practice justifies the label renewable. In addition, the amount of seawater used by a nuclear power plant to cool the last coolant fluid and the turbine would be ∼2.1 × 10 9 tons per year for a fast molten salt reactor, corresponding to 7 tons of natural uranium extractable per year. The coupling of uranium extraction from the sea and its optimal utilisation in a molten salt fast reactor should allow nuclear energy to gain the label renewable. Under these optimal conditions the consumption of natural uranium would be 7 tons per year and per gigawatt (GW) of produced electricity. These effects can be achieved by using a maximum amount of actinides and a minimum amount of alkaline/earth alkaline elements yielding a harder neutron spectrum. This optimisation can be reached by reducing the moderation and the fission product concentration in the liquid fuel/coolant. The uranium ‘burning’ in a molten salt fast reactor helps to optimize the energy conversion by burning all actinide isotopes with an excellent yield for producing a maximum amount of thermal energy from fission and converting it into electricity. After contact time, the loaded material would be dried and burned (CO 2 neutral) with heat conversion into electricity. The uranium loading on the biomass would be around 100 mg per kg. For a renewable uranium extraction, the use of a specific biomass material is suggested to adsorb uranium and subsequently other transition metals. This equilibrium results from the input of 10 4 tons of U per year by river waters and its scavenging on the sea floor from the 1.37 × 10 18 tons of water in the oceans. An extraction rate of 10 3 tons of U per year over centuries would not modify significantly the equilibrium concentration of uranium in the oceans (3.3 ppb). This extraction should be carried out parsimoniously. Extraction of uranium from a diluted fluid ore such as seawater has been studied in various countries worldwide. To fulfill the conditions required for a nuclear renewable energy concept, one has to explore a combination of processes going from the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle to the fuel production and the energy conversion using specific fluid fuels and reactors.
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