Archinect - News

AL_A moves forward on world’s first magnetized fusion power plant in UK

2023-01-16T12:06:00-05:00

AL_A has been granted permission to construct the world’s first magnetized fusion power plant. The Culham Science Centre facility, to be located in Oxford, UK, is anchored by a 125-foot-tall cylindrical fusion hall wrapped in a translucent facade.

The scheme was first unveiled in August 2021, commissioned by the Canadian energy company General Fusion in collaboration with the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

Unlike traditional nuclear fission stations, which generate energy by splitting atoms, the fusion process involves merging two atoms to generate vast amounts of energy without the highly radioactive waste associated with nuclear fission. Last month, US scientists announced a major breakthrough in the process through a fusion experiment that released more energy than was inputted by the lab’s equipment.

Image credit: AL_A

For AL_A’s plant, the central cylindrical fusion hall is surrounded by a radial arrangement of support systems, all of which are equidistant from the core. In our 20...

China plans to build a fleet of floating nuclear power plants

2016-04-25T15:15:00-04:00

All the radar systems, lighthouses, barracks, ports and airfields that China has set up on its newly built island chain in the South China Sea require tremendous amounts of electricity, which is hard to come by in a place hundreds of miles from the country’s power grid. Beijing may have come up with a solution: floating nuclear power plants. A state-owned company, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, is planning to build a fleet of the vessels to provide electricity to remote locations [...]

Previously in the Archinect news:

The enclosure to dismantle Chernobyl's nuclear reactor is complete

2016-04-07T13:07:00-04:00

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. On April 26, 1986, technicians conducting a test inadvertently caused reactor number four to explode... Reuters reports that a huge recently-completed enclosure called the New Safe Confinement—the world's largest land-based moving structure—will be “pulled slowly over the site later this year to create a steel-clad casement to block radiation and allow the remains of the reactor to be dismantled safely.”

Although it sounds like an early aughts indie band name, the New Safe Confinement structure over Chernobyl's reactor number four is finally complete, constructed at an estimated cost of €1.5 billion. Meanwhile, neighboring city and officially uninhabitable Pripyat has become a hauntingly photogenic ghost town, as captured in these photos:

For what else is going on in Chernobyl:

Isotopes v.02 Is An Audiovisual Cage

2013-05-14T20:01:00-04:00

Design studio Nonotak—Noémi Schipfer and Takami Nakamoto—have created an installation, called Isotopes v.02, which is a reaction to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown that happened back in 2011. The piece featured at Geneva's 2013 Mapping Festival and consists of projected light which entices the viewer to investigate further. But, once the unsuspecting visitor has headed towards the light like a moth to the flame, they become trapped in this beguiling maze...

Nuclear bunker looks like a... nuclear bunker, say architects

2011-04-26T12:05:33-04:00

While the project is clearly a feat of engineering, architects couldn’t help but comment that it lacked a certain architectural flair.