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IPFS News Link • Energy

Smaller, cheaper, safer: The next generation of nuclear power, explained

• Vox

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — Inside the Transient Reactor Test Facility, a towering, windowless gray block surrounded by barbed wire, researchers are about to embark on a mission to solve one of humanity's greatest problems with a tiny device.

Next year, they will begin construction on the MARVEL reactor. MARVEL stands for Microreactor Applications Research Validation and EvaLuation. It's a first-of-a-kind nuclear power generator, cooled with liquid metal and producing 100 kilowatts of energy. By 2024, researchers expect MARVEL will be the zero-emissions engine of the world's first nuclear microgrid here at Idaho National Laboratory (INL).


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