Nuclear Materials | Patrick Burr

Nuclear fusion promises to provide humankind with abundant, carbon-free, reliable energy for millennia. But harnessing the power of the sun right here on earth is no easy feat. While scientists have managed to achieve fusion reactions, they’ve only lasted milliseconds and produced just enough energy to boil a kettle. The problem? The materials needed to withstand the extreme temperatures of the fusion process don’t exist.
Patrick Burr is working to solve this problem by designing new materials that will not only enable sustained fusion reactions, but will help make the current generation of nuclear fission reactors more efficient. Understanding how the world around us is built on an atomic level, is the first step.
In 10 minutes, Patrick will outline how much a difference the right materials could make, resulting in better utilisation of the incredible energy density of uranium, more nuclear power, and less nuclear waste.
Patrick Burr
Patrick Burr is an Associate Professor Faculty of Engineering at UNSW Sydney. The aim of his research is to discover the degradation mechanisms of materials used in energy applications, to aid the design of new materials with improved resilience to degradation processes. His focus is on nuclear materials (fusion and fission) as these are subject to the most extreme conditions and therefore pose the greatest challenge, but he continually transfer the knowledge to solar cells, solid electrolyte fuel cells, electrochemical capacitor and batteries.

[@williamgoode9114]

Patrick Burr do you see the Chinese move to pebbles being another less wasteful approach than rods that we should adopt if we are ever going to follow the high tech countries along the Nuclear Fission path towards electrification in transportation using rail as a grid distributor to overhead suspended pod rail like SHWEEB and EVs generally is going to require far far more electricity than our panel system?

[@williamgoode9114]

Did you know -
HALEU fuel has some big advantages over conventional light water reactor fuel including longer cycle times in reactor, less waste production and less downtime for refueling.20 Nov 2023
But
Expanding the global use of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) would potentially exacerbate proliferation and security risks because of the potentially greater attractiveness of this material for nuclear weapons compared with the low-enriched uranium used in light water reactors, so it’s scary UK and USA so keen all of a sudden!

[@mauropavia64]

I don't understand why talking about fusion, creating also false expectations, if the title is about the nuclear fission reaction and the materials requirements.

[@williamgoode9114]

There was over lap in the material design field - extremely well explained, now get Chris Bowen to understand!