New look at NUCLEAR

It was only a demonstration project—a tiny, 17-megawatt nuclear reactor located north of Columbia, S.C., that began generating electricity in 1963.

Nuclear power has grown considerably since then and accounts for 20 percent of America’s electricity production. A new round of reactor construction could push that total higher still, and Carolina is continuing the state’s role as a nuclear pioneer with research focused on next-generation reactors and a new nuclear engineering degree program.

“There is the potential for 30 new plants to be built in the next decade so there will be a great need for more master’s- and Ph.D.-prepared professionals,” said Travis Knight, a mechanical engineering professor at Carolina. “The industry is looking down the road to a new generation of high-temperature nuclear reactors, and that will require new types of fuel.”

Knight has a three-year, $450,000 grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to investigate mixed carbide fuels for use in gas-cooled fast reactors. While conventional reactors use uranium dioxide to create heat and generate electricity, future gas-cooled fast reactors might use fuels that are coated with zirconium carbide, a highly conductive material that would be more efficient than ordinary uranium dioxide.

The so-called fast reactor operates at higher temperature and with much higher efficiency, creating smaller amounts of waste products. Even better, these reactors will be ideally suited to cracking hydrogen from various compounds to create hydrogen gas for fuel cells.

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