A perspective of “Nuclear Hot Spring” for long-term sustainable economy of the world

Abstract

The rapid growth of human economy in the late 20th century gave rise to great concern over sustainability of the world. A pessimistic “Full World Model” forecasts that human economy could not develop further. The nuclear fission (and fusion later), however, could release huge amount of energy to create sufficient useful material resources and turn the said pessimistic modelinto a new optimistic “Sustainable World Model”.The dilemma of nuclear energy (Military Giant vs. Civil Dwarf) jeopardizes its performance as a “Technologic Fixer”. According to Mother Nature’s teachings, the elimination of the root-causes of the design-based risk factors could solve this problem. Recent technology break-through from inherent safety to natural safety has been made in China. The proposed full-power natural circulation “Nuclear Hot Spring (NHS)” reactor could operate solely on natural forces without complex man-made coolant circulation equipment and human-operated control systems. The cheap, unlimited supply of energy from nuclear energy could change the geopolitics forever, and finally eliminate the root-causes of most international and regional conflicts.

Keywords

natural safety reactor / full power natural circulation / sustainable world economy

References

[1] Daly H E. Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1996

[2] Wikipedia. Nuclear power. 2011-<month>07</month>-<day>01</day>, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power

[3] US DOE. A Technical Roadmap for Gen-IV Nuclear Energy System, <patent>GIF-002–00</patent>. 2002

[4] Weinberg A M. The First Nuclear Era—The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer. New York: AIP Press, 1994

[5] Karam A. The natural nuclear reactor at Oklo: A comparison with modern nuclear reactors. 2005-<month>04</month>-<day>16</day>, http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/Files/Okloreactor.pdf

[6] Wikipedia. Natural nuclear fission reactor. 2011-<month>07</month>-<day>01</day>, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power

[7] Meshik A, Hohenberg C, Pradivtseva O. Researchers describe how natural nuclear reactor worked in gabon (two billion years ago). Space Daily, <month>November</month><day>4</day>, 2004

[8] Peterson F. Liquid-salt cooled advanced high temperature reactor (AHTR), NERI Seminar, 2008

[9] Lu Y Z. A Process for Producing High-Temperature Nuclear Energy with Full-Power Natural Circulation Operation. Chinese Patent<patent>201010145086.9. 2010</patent>

[10] Lu Y Z. An inherently-safe, high-temperature nuclear energy producing process for the replacement of the fossil and other depletive energy on a large scale. Chinese Journal of Nuclear Science and Engineering, 2011, 31(1): 1–9 (in Chinese)

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg