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You need a lot more fuel fabrication and waste processing facilities for a conventional light water uranium reactor. This is because uranium fuel must be enric

You need a lot more fuel fabrication and waste processing facilities for a conventional light water uranium reactor. This is because uranium fuel must be enriched, and there also is orders of magnitude more waste, because only a small portion of the fuel in the solid can be used. One could say that in a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) those separate plants are integrated in the same building, but they can be much simpler because of the very different nuclear physics and chemistry. Here's a simplistic diagram http://imgur.com/aKK7JaO http://imgur.com/aKK7JaO

rleigh 10y ago
But in terms of processes, this diagram is too simplistic. What about all the attached chemical plant required for semi-continuous on-line fuel reprocessing? Keeping that safe, leak-free and coping with the activation of all the pipework and processing equipment is a huge engineering challenge. Don't get me wrong, I love the simplicity of the LFTR reactor, but keeping the reactor running at scale requires a lot of additional infrastructure around it, and that's the hard part.