Traveling wave reactor

The name refers to the fact that fission remains confined to a boundary zone in the reactor core that slowly advances over time.

[1] Michael Driscoll published further research on the concept in 1979,[2] as did Lev Feoktistov in 1988,[3] Edward Teller/Lowell Wood in 1995,[4] Hugo van Dam in 2000[5] and Hiroshi Sekimoto in 2001.

The energy-generating fission zone steadily advances through the core, effectively consuming fertile material in front of it and leaving spent fuel behind.

Meanwhile, the heat released by fission is absorbed by the molten sodium and subsequently transferred into a closed-cycle aqueous loop, where electric power is generated by steam turbines.

The remainder of the fuel consists of natural or depleted uranium-238, which can generate power continuously for 40 years or more and remains sealed in the reactor vessel during that time.

Spent fuel can be recycled after simple "melt refining", without the chemical separation of plutonium that is required by other kinds of breeder reactors.

[22] TerraPower has also estimated that wide deployment of TWRs could enable projected global stockpiles of depleted uranium to sustain 80% of the world's population at U.S. per capita energy usages for over a millennium.

Recast and reclad into new driver pellets without chemical separations, this recycled fuel can be used to initiate fission in subsequent cycles of operation, thus displacing the need to enrich uranium altogether.

By replacing a static core configuration with an actively managed "standing wave" or "soliton", however, TerraPower's design avoids the problem of cooling a moving burn region.

Under this scenario, the reconfiguration of fuel rods is accomplished remotely by robotic devices; the containment vessel remains closed during the procedure, with no associated downtime.