Radioactive Candy Makes Nuclear Reactors Safer

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The TRISO fuel for nuclear reactors looks like the candy called Gobstoppers or Jawbreakers. Reactors using this fuel should be much safer than current commercial reactors.

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Image by Richard Manship from Pixabay

Gobstoppers or Jawbreakers are types of candy that last for a long time. Between the world wars, they were very popular, especially in the UK. They are ball-shaped and made from many layers which give them their unique lasting properties. Such a candy is almost impossible to chew down and they are very resilient to licking and sucking. The largest ones can take days or even weeks to fully dissolve and if you ever read or saw Willy Wonka – then you know he made an everlasting one.

It may sound strange, but this inspired scientists and engineers who develop the fuel for the upcoming generation of nuclear reactors. They created similar “candy” but instead of being sweet, this candy is radioactive. It is the TRISO fuel (tristructural isotropic) which was originally made in the UK.

This radioactive candy is roughly the size of a poppy seed. In the middle, the fuel itself in the form of uranium oxides can be found. The fuel is enveloped in a layer of pyrolytic carbon which is followed with a layer of silicon carbide. Similar designs were developed as far back as the sixties but so far such fuels were too expensive and did not conform with the heavy demands of the majority of nuclear reactors.

The TRISO fuel was designed to prevent uranium from melting even at temperatures of around 1,760° Celsius. Such temperatures exceed the common temperature inside a nuclear reactor which is commonly between 540° Celsius and 1100° Celsius. As Paul Demkowicz says – in advanced reactors, it is almost impossible to go over such temperatures. And if you used the TRISO fuel on top of that the reactors should be almost fully resistant to the possibility of the uranium melting.

Older nuclear reactors usually used control rods made from silver, boron, and other materials that are great at absorbing the neutrons produced during the fission reaction. These rods tend to be large and extremely expensive. But if the security material is built directly into the fuel – as is the case of TRISO – the financial demands on the reactor's construction and service should go down substantially.

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