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A traveling-wave reactor (TWR) is a type of nuclear fission reactor that can convert fertile material into usable fuel through nuclear transmutation, in tandem with the burnup of fissile material. TWRs differ from other kinds of fast-neutron and breeder reactors in their ability to use fuel efficiently without uranium enrichment or reprocessing, instead directly using depleted uranium, natural uranium, thorium, spent fuel removed from light water reactors, or some combination of these materials. The name refers to the fact that fission remains confined to a boundary zone in the reactor core that slowly advances over time. TWRs could theoretically run, self-sustained, for decades without refueling or removing spent fuel. ==History== Traveling-wave reactors were first proposed in the 1950s and have been studied intermittently. The concept of a reactor that could breed its own fuel inside the reactor core was initially proposed and studied in 1958 by Saveli Feinberg, who called it a "breed-and-burn" reactor.〔S. M. Feinberg, "Discussion Comment", Rec. of Proc. Session B-10, ICPUAE, United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland (1958).〕 Michael Driscoll published further research on the concept in 1979,〔M. J. Driscoll, B. Atefi, D. D. Lanning, "An Evaluation of the Breed/Burn Fast Reactor Concept", MITNE-229 (Dec. 1979).〕 as did Lev Feoktistov in 1988,〔L. P. Feoktistov, "An analysis of a concept of a physically safe reactor", Preprint IAE-4605/4, in Russian, (1988).〕 Edward Teller/Lowell Wood in 1995,〔E. Teller, M. Ishikawa, and L. Wood, "(Completely Automated Nuclear Reactors for Long-Term Operation" (Part I) ), ''Proc. of the Frontiers in Physics Symposium'', American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers Texas Meeting, Lubbock, Texas, United States (1995) ; Edward Teller, Muriel Ishikawa, Lowell Wood, Roderick Hyde, John Nuckolls, "(Completely Automated Nuclear Reactors for Long-Term Operation II : Toward A Concept-Level Point-Design Of A High-Temperature, Gas-Cooled Central Power Station System (Part II) )", Proc. Int. Conf. Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems, ICENES'96, Obninsk, Russia (1996) UCRL-JC-122708-RT2. 〕 Hugo van Dam in 2000〔H. van Dam, "The Self-stabilizing Criticality Wave Reactor", ''Proc. Of the Tenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems (ICENES 2000)'', p. 188, NRG, Petten, Netherlands (2000).〕 and Hiroshi Sekimoto in 2001.〔H. Sekimoto, K. Ryu, and Y. Yoshimura, "CANDLE: The New Burnup Strategy", ''Nuclear Science and Engineering'', 139, 1–12 (2001).〕 The TWR was discussed at the Innovative Nuclear Energy Systems (INES) symposiums in 2004, 2006 and 2010 in Japan where it was called "CANDLE" Reactor, an abbreviation for ''Constant Axial shape of Neutron flux, nuclides densities and power shape During Life of Energy production''.〔as proposed by Sekimoto in 2001 and 2005 published in Progress in Nuclear Energy〕 In 2010 Popa-Simil discussed the case of micro-hetero-structures,〔"advanced Nuclear Reactor from Fiction to Reality", by Popa-Simil, published in the INES-3 proceeding〕 further detailed in the paper "''Plutonium Breeding In Micro-Hetero Structures Enhances the Fuel Cycle''", describing a TWR with deep burnout enhanced by plutonium fuel channels and multiple fuel flow. In 2010 a group from Terra Power applied for patent EP 2324480 A1 following WO2010019199A1 "''Heat pipe nuclear fission deflagration wave reactor cooling''". The application was deemed withdrawn in 2014. No TWR has yet been constructed, but in 2006, Intellectual Ventures launched a subsidiary named TerraPower, LLC to model and commercialize a working design of such a reactor, which later came to be called a "traveling-wave reactor". TerraPower has developed TWR designs for low- to medium- (300 MWe) as well as high-power (~1000 MWe) generation facilities.〔K. Weaver, C. Ahlfeld, J. Gilleland, C. Whitmer and G. Zimmerman, "Extending the Nuclear Fuel Cycle with Traveling-Wave Reactors", Paper 9294, ''Proceedings of Global 2009'', Paris, France, September 6–11, (2009).〕 Bill Gates featured TerraPower in his 2010 TED talk. In September, 2015 TerraPower and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop a TWR. TerraPower plans to build a 600 MWe demonstration Plant, the TWR-P, By 2018-2022 followed by larger commercial plants of 1150 MWe in the late 2020's. 〔 World Nuclear News http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-TerraPower-CNNC-team-up-on-travelling-wave-reactor-25091501.html〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Traveling wave reactor」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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