By cryptoadmin 
January 15, 2025
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AI predicts properties of molten salts for modeling safer and extra sustainable nuclear energy reactors
Researchers from Skoltech and the Institute of Excessive Temperature Electrochemistry of UB RAS have developed and examined a mannequin based mostly on machine studying that predicts the properties of molten salts. These compounds are already utilized in metallurgy and maintain promise for resolving the issue of mounting nuclear waste.
Their industrially vital properties are laborious to measure in experiments. This makes fashions such because the one offered by the staff within the Journal of Molecular Liquids essential for making pure steel manufacture cheaper and nuclear energy safer and extra sustainable.
Molten salts are a really various class of compounds with a lot of bodily properties related to the trade. Supplies scientists are engaged on fine-tuning the composition and properties of molten salt mixtures to make the manufacturing of pure titanium, calcium, aluminum, and sure different metals more practical and to take away an vital technological barrier hampering the event of next-generation nuclear reactors.
With a lot consideration paid to photo voltaic and wind era, nuclear energy additionally has a vital function to play within the transition to a carbon-free future. Whereas fusion reactors promise a lot however stay elusive, there’s a nuclear energy expertise a lot nearer to implementation that might additionally do quite a bit for the vitality trade. And that expertise depends on molten salts with optimized bodily and chemical properties.
Molten-salt reactors can be safer, extra sustainable, and would produce extra energy than these in use as we speak. They don’t seem to be liable to hydrogen explosions, such because the one concerned within the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, and customarily function at near atmospheric strain, whereas most present-day reactors require between 75 and 150 atmospheres, with implications for each security and operational prices.
In contrast to most standard methods, MSRs might be refueled whereas working, with out the necessity for a brief shutdown. MSRs function at roughly twice the temperature of standard reactors, boosting energy era effectivity and the alternatives for capturing waste warmth.
Amongst their different advantages, molten-salt reactors may ease the issue of mounting nuclear waste from standard reactors. They produce extremely radioactive minor actinides: neptunium-237, americium-241, and so forth. Whereas this hazardous waste is difficult to get rid of, it could be appropriate gas for a molten-salt reactor.
To faucet into the potential of molten salts for each nuclear energy engineering and metallurgy, engineers have to know their properties. Supplies scientists are hard-pressed to produce that info, due to the sheer amount of potential combos of chemical parts and the variety of technologically related properties. Going over each mixture and doing an experiment can be extremely costly. Particularly given the extremely corrosive nature of molten salts and the excessive temperatures concerned.
"Computationally guided seek for melts with specific physico-chemical properties may considerably simplify and speed up the event of next-generation nuclear reactors, because the variety of actual experiments shall be minimized," says the research's lead writer Nikita Rybin, a analysis scientist at Skoltech AI's Laboratory of Synthetic Intelligence for Supplies Design.
"On this research, we offered and examined a technique that permits one to calculate thermophysical properties of molten salts at finite temperatures. Our findings for the salt referred to as FLiNaK (accommodates LiF, NaF, KF) coincide with the obtainable experimental knowledge, prompting us to proceed that work with different salt compositions and develop the vary of properties. This can finally make computationally guided developments in next-generation nuclear reactors possible."
The answer utilized by the staff to calculate molten salt properties is named machine-learned interatomic potentials. These are skilled on the output of smaller-scale fashions formulated with quantum mechanical accuracy. If it weren't for machine studying, the basic calculations would have gotten means too demanding computationally by the point the researchers acquired to the dimensions massive sufficient for the bodily properties to emerge within the mannequin.
Extra info: Nikita Rybin et al, Thermophysical properties of Molten FLiNaK: A second tensor potential method, Journal of Molecular Liquids (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.molliq.2024.125402
Offered by Skolkovo Institute of Science and Know-how Quotation: AI predicts properties of molten salts for modeling safer and extra sustainable nuclear energy reactors (2025, January 15) retrieved 15 January 2025 from https://techxplore.com/information/2025-01-ai-properties-molten-salts-safer.html This doc is topic to copyright. Other than any truthful dealing for the aim of personal research or analysis, no half could also be reproduced with out the written permission. The content material is supplied for info functions solely.
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