Clean and Environmentally Safe Advanced Reactor

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Disputed science
CAESAR reactor
Claims
Related disciplines
Year proposed1998
ProponentsClaudio Filippone

The Clean and Environmentally Safe Advanced Reactor (CAESAR) is a nuclear reactor concept created by Claudio Filippone, the Director of the Center for Advanced Energy Concepts at the University of Maryland, College Park and head of the ongoing CAESAR Project. The concept's key element is the use of steam as a moderator, making it a type of reduced moderation water reactor. Because the density of steam may be controlled very precisely, Filippone claims it can be used to fine-tune neutron fluxes to ensure that neutrons are moving with an optimal energy profile to split 238
92U
 nuclei – in other words, cause fission.

The CAESAR reactor design exploits the fact that the

thermal neutron
flux profile, the neutron energy profile from delayed neutrons varies widely. In a conventional reactor, he theorizes, the moderator slows these neutrons down so that they cannot contribute to the 238
U
 reaction; 238
U
 has a comparatively large cross-section for neutrons at high energies.

Filippone maintains that when steam is used as the moderator, the average neutron energy is increased from that of a liquid water-moderated reactor such that the delayed neutrons persist until they hit another nucleus. The resulting extremely high neutron economy, he claims, will make it possible to maintain a self-sustaining reaction in fuel rods of pure 238
U
, once the reactor has been started by enriched fuel.

Skeptics[who?] , however point out that it is generally believed that a controlled, sustained chain reaction is not possible with 238
U
. Starting in the 1930s Physicists have used the

fissile).[3] The energy of delayed neutrons is so low that contribution to 238
U
 fission is almost 0.0000, requiring some fissile material to keep the reactor safely under prompt criticality: (e.g. 235
U
 in natural uranium
and preferably also some moderator, possibly outside the extra-fast core). The maximum ratio of 238
U
 fission is limited by the neutron physics to less than 100%, but greater than 40%, which allows even a relatively low conversion ratio of 0.6 to breed its own fuel (without uranium enrichment or Pu produced elsewhere). Conversion ratio of 0.6 is achievable in practice (actually achieved even with light-water reactor designs that waste a lot of neutrons in Boron, that has better alternatives).

See also

References

  1. ^ https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-power/reactor-physics/nuclear-fission-chain-reaction/six-factor-formula-effective-multiplication-factor/ [bare URL]
  2. ^ https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-power-plant/nuclear-fuel/uranium/uranium-238/ [bare URL]
  3. ^ "21.4: Transmutation and Nuclear Energy". 13 November 2018.

External links