Commercial nuclear energy to all intents and purposes means electricity generation. Has anyone looked at using the tremendous heat produced by nuclear reactors directly for industrial purposes, e.g. steel production?
There’s been some investigation of thermally-enhanced green hydrogen production:
https://www.fchea.org/in-transition/2020/5/11/using-nuclear-power-to-produce-green-hydrogen
The Office of Nuclear Energy is also conducting thermochemical water-splitting cycle (TC) research to produce hydrogen through long-term technology. TC uses waste heat of nuclear power or solar power energy to produce hydrogen via water-splitting with low to zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Some additional info on the subject:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/high-temperature-steam-electrolysis
IIRC there was a suggestion in the 1950’s to use nuclear energy to dig a second Panama canal…
If by “nuclear energy” you mean “nuclear fucking bombs”, then yes:
Another one was Project Orion, where the idea was to use nuclear detonations to propel a spacecraft: Project Orion (nuclear propulsion) - Wikipedia
If the OP’s question is whether nuclear reactors have been used for some purpose other than generating electricity, then an obvious answer is nuclear-powered ships (both surface and submarine). In most (IIRC not all) cases, the turbines that get their steam from nuclear energy power the propeller shafts directly (as opposed to powering a generator that provides electricity for electricity motors).
Plus, there is district heating, whereby waste heat from a power plant (possibly a nuclear one) is used to superheat water (i.e., water that has a temperature beyond the boils point but which remains liquid due to pressurisation) which is then pumped to household via pipelines for residential heating. It’s particularly common in Eastern Europe. This is, however, a case of putting the waste heat from electricity generation to good use; to my knowledge, there are no cases where a dedicated reactor is operated solely or mainly for the purpose of district heating.
Various space agencies have used the heat generated from the decay of certain radioactive elements along with a whole bunch of thermocouples to generate power for space probes.
At the opposite endd of the spectrum is the SLOWPOKE reactor - minimal risk, just produces heat.
One suggestion mentioned in Wiki is district heating. Back in the day, there would be one coal-fired plant that provided steam heat to several blocks of downtown in some cities. I also recall, back in the day, one suggested use for slowpoke was to provide heat to a large apartment building. The idea would be be that your building superintendent would also be a nuclear reactor technician, I suppose?
The problem with many industrial applications where nuclear would replace burning fuel is simply temperature. Using a reactor to melt iron, for example, would require a reactor running at or above the melting point of iron. This would require managing a reactor where the entire structure is red-hot, with special piping (titanium?) etc. to move that heat. I guess you wouldn’t have to worry about a meltdown, since the entire thing would be melted anyway. Uranium melts at over 1100°C while iron requires over 1500°C, so the core would not even be uranium in rod shape…
It’s probably easier to make electricity. At best, perhaps use that to produce hydrogen which can then be burned to create high levels of heat.
I imagine that there would be some resistance to using waste heat from a nuclear generator in domestic properties.
We have a local scheme where waste heat from a crematorium is used to heat a swimming pool and that was controversial.
Dang, I hadn’t thought of that. Also it now occurs to me that coal, other fossil fuels or electricity are a heck of a lot more distributable than a fission reactor. Industrial applications would have to be highly centralized around the reactor.
I wonder if the Soviet Union experimented along those lines? The USSR loved “futuristic” technology and tended to substitute gigantism for sophistication.
In iron/steel refining the coal isn’t there principally to melt things, it is there to rip the oxygen out of the ore. So you won’t be refining iron ore with a nuclear reactor just heating the ore up. Creating hydrogen from electrical power and using that as a reducing agent for refining is however a viable alternative to coal, and currently in at least a trial stage.
The Russians did claim to have shut down two gas wells with nukes. This was enough to have the peanut gallery suggesting that the US shut down the Mancondo disaster well with a nuke.
Since Orion has already been mentioned, I’ll toss out the NERVA style rockets, for a less-crazy option for nuclear assisted heavy lift capacity.
Which isn’t a completely dead technology (well, more modern derivatives of nuclear thrust rockets are still being researched at least) - from the link above.
An engine for interplanetary travel from Earth orbit to Mars orbit, and back, was studied in 2013 at the MSFC with a focus on nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) engines.[116] Since NTRs are at least twice as efficient as the most advanced chemical engines, they allow quicker transfer times and increased cargo capacity. The shorter flight duration, estimated at 3–4 months with NTR engines,[117] compared to 8–9 months using chemical engines,[118] would reduce crew exposure to potentially harmful and difficult to shield cosmic rays.[119] NTR engines, like the Pewee of Project Rover, were selected in the Mars Design Reference Architecture (DRA).[120]
Congress approved $125 million in funding for the development of nuclear thermal propulsion rockets on 22 May 2019.[121][122] On 19 October 2020, the Seattle-based firm Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies delivered a NTR design concept to NASA employing high-assay low-enriched Uranium (HALEU) ZrC-encapsulated fuel particles as part of a NASA-sponsored NTR study managed by Analytical Mechanics Associates (AMA).[123][124]
I’ve done a fair amount of work with spacecraft studies using nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) systems, and when you start getting into the details they aren’t nearly as favorable as basic advertised capabilities would seem to indicate. Part of the problem is just the minimum mass required for functional NTP including all of the safety assurance and thermal management systems makes it questionable or prohibitive for vehicles smaller than a certain size even with the dramatic improvement in propellant-specific Isp, notwithstanding the technical complexities and necessary investment to bring up to an adequate technical maturity level.
There is an excellent book on the topic (Nulcear Thermal Propulsion Systems by Dvid Buden, a notable expert in the field) which includes an entire chapter on NTX/NERVA/Rover programs including a long list of reactor structural anomalies (Table 3, pg 37). Almost no practical work has been done on NTP since 1972, although some paper design work was done in Project Timberwind under the Strategic Defense Initiative in the ‘Eighties and early ‘Nineties, and NASA has funded some incremental work on materials, design improvements using more efficient thermal exchange systems, and so forth, but it is nowhere near prime time.
Other uses of bulk thermal energy from conventional nuclear fission reactors are problematic for all of the reasons stated above. There have been various proposals for using waste heat for some kind of industrial processes but as this would necessitate having the facilities for those directly adjacent to a nuclear power plant these haven’t really gone anywhere. It could not be used for steel production the reasons noted by @Francis_Vaughan, and conversion into hydrogen or liquid fuels is not particularly efficient given the cost and the various invested energy that goes into separating, refining, and enriching uranium for use in conventional boiling water or pressurized water reactors.
Stranger
Oh, no arguments @Stranger_On_A_Train, it has a lot of issues - after all, I only mentioned it as a “less crazy” option than Orion after all. And that it is still being looked at a possible option in the sense that the OP is asking for an alternate application of nuclear energy.
It is still more in the realm of “hard” science fiction rather than in the journals of applied science. I did have to qualify it as ‘not completely dead’ after all.
Don’t forget the proposed nuclear powered airplane.
or,perhaps, it is best if everyone did. One version left a trail of radioactive exhaust as it flew.
Yeah, nuclear thermal propulsion is still definitely in consideration. Nuclear propulsion in some form (nuclear thermal, electrostatic thrust, magnetoplasmadynamic and other electromagnetic/electrothermal thrust) is definitely the only way we could have a sustained human presence beyond Low Earth Orbit or explore beyond. For all of the NASA Mars Mission Design Reference Architectures (DRA) through 4.0, NTR was essentially assumed for the crewed vehicle, and in DRA 5.0 NTR is the preferred approach although it also considered advanced chemical (H2/LOX) propulsion combined with aerocapture. And it certainly isn’t the hard sell that tossing nuclear bombs out the back and letting a giant piston absorb the impact. But it would require a large amount of development to bring the TRL>6. At this point, that isn’t going to happen for the next best opportunity for a crewed Mars mission in the 2033 or 2035 opportunities, and even before 2040 would be highly optimistic even if we started a program today.
Stranger
Hollywood’s on this. Blowing up and/or deflecting incoming asteroids - DONE!
Proven technology.
Does required the sacrifice of an aging cast of male A-listers.
But on the bright side, they’ll all get high schools named after them.
This made me think of a possible use for spent fuel rods. The hydrogen they produce could be harvested. That is, from the neutrons, which decay into a proton and electron with a halflife of 10 minutes or so and thus turn into hydrogen. OK, the helium would have to be separated out and maybe the radon too. And they probably don’t generate enough to make it worthwhile, but if we get desperate for a non-GHG-emitting source of hydrogen, it’s there.
Another way to use a nuclear reactors heat might be to store it for later use.
One reason for the lack of progress on uses for fission may be the desire to conserve uranium for ordinary electrical generation. Its not a totally tiny % of known viable uranium used each year ! They currently use 60 kilotonnes a year, and there is 6 megatonnes in easily mined deposits … thats not many years worth ! 40 ? There are 10 times that in difficult deposits, who knows if they can be mined for net power production. (techniques such as pumping acids, solvents or hot stuff underground may be power hungry. )