Core Power awards student ideas in nuclear shipping

In the UK, at Core Power’s first Academic Resource Program conference online on June 25, students from Europe and North America presented eight research projects exploring how advanced nuclear technologies could power the future of shipping. Three researchers were awarded prizes: for emergency shutdown, energy storage, and ship-reactor integration.

Etienne Vaquier of the University of Cambridge presented an emergency shutdown system for floating molten salt reactors, aimed at situations like equipment failure, sabotage, or piracy. His design injects gadolinium trichloride into the reactor core to absorb neutrons and stop the chain reaction. Simulations showed the chemical could shut down the reactor in under a minute with minimal pressure, providing a passive, non-mechanical safety fallback.

Jessica Chow, a PhD student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, focused on managing how nuclear-powered ships respond to rapidly changing energy demands without overloading the reactor. Reactors are designed to run steadily, but ships often need quick bursts of power for maneuvering, docking, or operating heavy equipment. Chow proposed using thermal batteries with high-temperature phase-change salts to store excess heat when demand is low, then release it when power needs spike.

Hal Berdichesky of the University of Michigan looked at the bigger picture: how to design ships and reactors together from the start rather than fitting one to the other after the fact. He built a model that shows how decisions in one area, like ship shape or safety features, affect everything else, including how the reactor performs. The goal is to help engineers, shipbuilders, and regulators make better choices early in the design process

Together, the projects support Core Power’s goal of enabling a new generation of nuclear-powered commercial vessels. Prize details were not disclosed.

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