Novel Photo/Thermal-Electric and Fission-Electric Power Systems

Abstract

Current green energy programs are incomplete without the long-term solution to the nuclear waste problem. In particular, spent fuel and depleted uranium (DU) that could be a major source of nuclear energy and isotopes are now being managed as waste. To integrate electrical-in-nature nuclear energy into green grids, a thermo-electric gas cooled water moderated small modular reactor (SMR) with a fission-electric (FE) corecan be used. Also,only about half of the solar radiation makes it to the Earth surface; the rest is either absorbed or reflected by clouds, and the atmosphere. A hybrid blackbody-cavity photoelectric (PE), PVand thermal modules are proposed. In the PV, PE/thermalcells, spacing between the photovoltaic (PV) mirror anode, in-planegate and cathode allows to greatly improve theirefficiencies, while also taking advantage of low-cost thermal storage.