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DOE News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 28, 2002

NEWS MEDIA CONTACTS:
Teri Ehresman, ehr@inel.gov. 208-526-7785
Kendall Morgan, morgkk@inel.gov.  208-526-3176

INEEL Scientists Bring in $6 Million for Nuclear Energy Research

The position of the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory as the nation's premier nuclear energy technology center just got stronger.  

INEEL researchers racked up eight awards for nuclear research: three lead and four support awards sponsored by the DOE's Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI) and another funded by the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.  The awards will inject $6 million into INEEL's nuclear research efforts over the next three years, bolstering an array of technological advances in nuclear reactor design and the nuclear-assisted production of hydrogen as a transportation fuel.

INEEL nuclear engineer Abderrafi Ougouag, recipient of two NERI awards this year, sums it up: "The nature of progress is to do better work with better tools year after year.  The NERI awards will allow us to create the tools needed to devise safer and more economical reactors for the benefit of the United States and all humanity."

The NERI support promises to secure INEEL's status as the leading institution in many areas of nuclear research and design.  What's more, INEEL scientists foresee their contribution to nuclear innovation making a real difference in people's everyday lives.  "Our work has the potential to pay off--increasing the standard of living worldwide--in the next ten years," says nuclear engineer William Terry.  "It could provide affordable electricity to people who today have none."

INEEL nuclear engineers and lead awardees Kevan Weaver, Jim Sterbentz and Jacopo Buongiorno, along with colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will pursue an advance that promises to make fast spectrum reactor types even better by eliminating the need for fuel reprocessing or recycling. "The fuel will stay in the reactor for a much longer time," Weaver says, a waste-reducing benefit.

The team's research will boost a reactors' fuel-burning efficiency, stretching uranium resources for greater energy production.  To put this in perspective, Weaver says, "It's like finding a way to use gasoline more efficiently.  If you get 50 miles to the gallon now, with the new technology you would get 500 miles per gallon."

Four of the proposals set out to improve the performance of the modular pebble bed reactors (PBRs)-an attractive next generation reactor type because of its potential high fuel economy and intrinsic safety.  "If you shut off the coolant to the current generation of reactor, you have a major nuclear incident," Ougouag explains.  "On the other hand, with pebble bed reactors, the reactor is designed to shut down by itself."  

A number of technical issues must be addressed before PBR-generated electricity can be made commercially available, motivating the research of INEEL's nuclear scientists.

Ougouag--along with fellow INEEL nuclear engineers Hans Gougar and Terry and their collaborators at Georgia Tech, the South African company PBMR (Pty.) Ltd., Penn State, and the University of Arizona--are developing a pebble bed nuclear reactor physics model to predict the behavior of the neutron chain reaction in the PBR core as the fuel burns. Their goal is to evaluate the advantages of particular reactor designs in terms of their safety, proliferation resistance and fuel economy, and to make optimal decisions about their operation.  "Models like ours are the only way to know," Terry says.

Support awardees David Petti and Greg Miller, INEEL nuclear engineers, in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, are working to design coatings that improve the integrity of PBR fuel.  His research will focus on basic properties of fuel coating-for example, how it shrinks and swells in response to temperature changes.  The coatings' fundamental properties will then be plugged into a computer model the team created, improving their ability to predict fuel's behavior in the reactor core.

INEEL chemical engineer Chang Oh, along with fellow INEEL researchers Richard Moore and Richard Wright, received a lead award to investigate a new PBR design. The design would increase the reactors' efficiency by 15 percent by using supercritical carbon dioxide-a fluid whose unique heat transfer properties will enable higher core outlet temperatures.  A second objective is to identify more durable materials for the construction of higher temperature reactors.

The high temperature of the next generation of many reactors has a potential side benefit: it will generate enough heat to enable hydrogen production by splitting water or by using a thermo-chemical process, Oh says.  INEEL researchers anticipate that hydrogen will become the primary fuel source for cars in the future as fossil fuel resources dwindle, and hydrogen production is another major focus of their proposed nuclear research.

"Our interest in hydrogen production goes along with an increased interest in advanced nuclear reactors," nuclear engineer and support awardee Ed Harvego explains.  "As INEEL takes the lead in Generation IV reactor development, it's natural that we get into this since the high temperatures of advanced reactors are ideally suited for hydrogen-generating chemical reactions."

Today, industry obtains the majority of its hydrogen from steam reforming of natural gas, Harvego notes.  But that method produces greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, and the demand for hydrogen will soon outstrip the fossil-fuel-derived supply.  To address the problem, Harvego has teamed up with General Atomics in San Diego, along with Texas A&M University and Entergy Nuclear, Inc., to create a design for hydrogen production with a modular helium reactor.  Their design promises a significant advancement, he says, offering a safe and economical source of clean, renewable hydrogen.

Another method of hydrogen generation is to split water with electricity.  Current methods of electrolysis, though reliable, are energy intensive.  Steve Herring will lead an INEEL research team that includes Carl Stoots, Paul Lessing and Jim O'Brien, to develop a better method of breaking up water molecules using heat and electricity generated from nuclear reactors.  "This project uses nuclear energy to produce hydrogen from water with no atmospheric releases," Herring says.

Gas stations might soon be converted to sodium borohydride stations, if the vision of INEEL nuclear engineer Peter Kong and Herring becomes a reality.  Their lead proposal seeks to develop a method of converting sodium borate into sodium borohydride fuel-a safe and efficient means of storing and transporting hydrogen in liquid form-using plasma technology and the heat and electricity generated from nuclear reactors.  Reactors would supply electricity during the day and produce fuel to power cars at night, Kong says.
 
The U.S. Department of Energy created the Nuclear Energy Research Initiative to address the principal technical and scientific challenges to the future use of nuclear energy in the United States by funding creative research ideas at the nation's science and technology institutions. The NERI program strives to meet the following objectives: the development of advanced reactor and fuel cycle concepts and scientific breakthroughs in nuclear technology, the maintenance of U.S. economic competitiveness in nuclear technology, and the promotion of a nuclear science and engineering infrastructure to meet future technical challenges.  Fulfillment of these objectives will provide the advanced technologies required to make nuclear power a significant global source of electricity in the 21st century.  For more information about NERI, see http://neri.ne.doe.gov.

The INEEL is a science-based applied engineering national laboratory dedicated to supporting the DOE's missions in environment, energy, science and national security. The INEEL is operated for the DOE by Bechtel BWXT Idaho, LLC.

--INEEL--

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