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...

World's biggest nuclear fusion project completes civil engineering work on Tokamak Building

2019-11-13T15:29:00-05:00

A Vinci-led consortium [...] completed civil engineering works on the high-spec building that will house the world’s largest fusion machine, called a “tokamak”, which scientists hope will start replicating the sun’s energy by the middle of the next decade. [...] The 73-metre-high, 120-metre-wide structure required highly specific concretes. Teams developed about 10 formulations to shield staff and the environment from fusion-generated radiation.

Building a tokamak machine to exploit fusion energy similar to our sun is no simple engineering feat: the building will house reactions that happen at extremely high temperatures, around 150 million degrees Celsius, fusing hydrogen nuclei when they reach the plasma state, thus releasing enormous amounts of energy in the process.

ITER, the international organization tasked with operating and subsequently dismantling the experimental facility, hopes to maintain its ambitious First Plasma target in 2025.

Image via VINCI/Twitter

"Some parts of the Tokamak Building also called for steel reinforcement density rarely used on projects on this scale (up to 10 times the density of an apartment building wall)," explains a statement released by French contracting giant VINCI.

"[...] access to the heart of the Tokamak Building required customized production of 46 heavy nuclear doors. Each 70-tonne door is manufactured in Germany, brought to the site, filled with concrete and assembled in the hea...

Chernobyl’s nuclear “sarcophagus” to be dismantled

2019-08-19T07:00:00-04:00

Workers are taking down Chernobyl's "sarcophagus," once meant to keep the reactor's radioactive materials locked inside, before it falls on its own accord. The dismantling will begin after the New Shelter Containment (NSC) is in full working operation. Currently, the NSC controls part of the confinement. Earlier this year, the European Union handed off control of the NSC to Ukraine.

The steel and concrete containment structure, hastily erected following the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986, is being replaced by internationally funded and coordinated effort. The new shelter, a €1.5 billion complex considered to be the largest work of movable architecture in the world, has been in the works for several years.

Plans call for the old “sarcophagus” to be fully replaced by 2023.

Carbon-free nuclear fusion power within reach, according to MIT

2018-03-09T13:55:00-05:00

The dream of nuclear fusion is on the brink of being realised, according to a major new US initiative that says it will put fusion power on the grid within 15 years. The project, a collaboration between scientists at MIT and a private company, will take a radically different approach to other efforts to transform fusion from an expensive science experiment into a viable commercial energy source.

Potentially an inexhaustible and carbon-free source of energy, the dream of making fusion power commercially viable appears to be getting a lot closer, according to a new announcement from researchers at MIT this morning.

"Fusion is the true energy source of the future, as it is completely sustainable, does not release emissions or long-term waste, and is potentially inexhaustible," said Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Italian energy company Eni which is currently collaborating with MIT on the project. "It is a goal that we are increasingly determined to reach quickly."

The research team is confident to have a first working reactor up and running within 15 years.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry nominated as Secretary of U.S. Department of Energy

2016-12-15T12:29:00-05:00

President-elect Donald Trump has added another name to his cabinet: former Texas Governor Rick Perry will head the U.S. Department of Energy. The announcement has drawn mixed responses. The oil and gas industry, on the one hand, welcomed the fossil fuel industry-friendly climate change skeptic, and immediately requested that he support increases in natural gas exports. On the other hand, environmentalists and others concerned with accelerating global warming found the choice worrisome, to say the least. A few years ago, Perry proposed abolishing the department altogether, although he also forgot its name once during a debate in a notorious gaffe.

The nomination is the latest addition of an oil industry-friendly climate change skeptic to the cabinet, following the selection of Exxon Mobil Corp’s CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a major opponent of climate change mitigation efforts, as head of the EPA.

Besides managing energy-related re...

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:

U.S. Nuclear Plants Brace for Hurricane Sandy Impact

2012-10-30T18:32:00-04:00

Oyster Creek, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Atlantic City, generates 630 megawatts (MW), or enough electricity to power 600,000 households. Situated about a mile inland from the brackish inlet of the Atlantic Ocean known as Barnegat Bay, it shares the same design as Japan's tsunami-crippled coastal nuclear plant, Fukushima Daiichi.

Japan Goes Nuclear-Free For the First Time in Four Decades

2012-05-04T12:44:00-04:00

For the First Time in Four Decades Japan will shut down its last working nuclear power station this weekend, culminating — at least for now — a national shift away from nuclear energy in the aftermath of last year’s Fukushima disaster. The shutdown of the No. 3 Tomari reactor in Hokkaido will leave the country without nuclear power for the first time since 1970.

Radioactive Fukushima Concrete Found In New Japanese Building

2012-01-17T12:47:00-05:00

Following last year’s nuclear disaster in Fukushima, there has been a great deal of public concern over the contamination of local food sources and water and now, newly constructed buildings can be added to the list of radiation fears in Japan. A three-month long survey of students in Nihonmatsu City turned city officials onto the presence of high levels of radiation in one recently built three-story apartment complex.