beryllium oxide and nuclear powerSolving the Nuclear Power Plant's Achilles Heel
Uranium fuel pellets are loaded up into a reactor and in producing neutrons and splitting other atoms in a chain reaction they produce heat which can be used to produce steam to drive a generator.
That's where the problems start.
You see, ironically, uranium is an absolutely terrible heat conductor.
That is, the core of the pellets heat up far faster than their surface.
The lopsided heat distribution forces those pellets to break apart long before all of the usable uranium is extracted... leading to less stable reactions and much more radioactive waste.
In other words, companies are not only tossing out billions of dollars a year in perfectly good uranium, but the poor heat distribution makes for far more dangerous reactions.
To top it off, the unspent uranium carries an extremely long radioactive half-life.
That first step, evenly dispersing the heat across the entire pellet, is perhaps the biggest problem facing nuclear industry today.
But that is now changing. The Light Water Reactor Sustainability workshop, funded by the Department of Energy, is a unique workshop that gathers top university scientists and physicists from nuclear power plants around the country to meet in an effort to help solve our impending energy crisis. They found that a hybrid metal, Beryllium Oxide, or BeO, whose characteristics include: a melting point of 4,500 degrees... thermal conductivity matched only by diamonds... able to dissipate heat and cool faster than any other metal... several times stronger than steel... and still the second lightest metal on earth, could be used to counter this problem.
Their mixture gives the uranium fuel pellets a "skeleton" of beryllium oxide.
This "skeleton" sucks the heat from the uranium core, creating, for the first time, a much longer, smoother, and safer reaction.
Now, thanks to the hybrid's unique formula, power plants across the globe that incorporate this creation suddenly won't just save billions of dollars every year by making the uranium work 25% to 50% longer, with less uranium needed at a time — 25% to 50% less! — the chances of any form of dangerous nuclear reaction are now virtually gone!
It's a move that has all plant operators thrilled. Even staunch environmentalists are backing it!