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Are RTG only extremely expensive today because of low demand/supply and consequently a complete lack of economy of scale?
by Aperocky 6y ago
Are RTG only extremely expensive today because of low demand/supply and consequently a complete lack of economy of scale?
- Retric 6y agoThey require processing of a very high level nuclear waste which is extremely nasty to work with and in limited supply. So, there really isn’t much in the way of economies of scale to work towards. You can think of the upper limit for RTG’s as the amount of heat generated by spent nuclear fuel which worldwide doesn’t add up to that much power. Basically RTG’s don’t really generate extra heat just recycle and sort the spent fuel by isotope to get a dense power source.
- StillBored 6y agoWell if we were reprocessing all the fuel in the storage ponds of the existing reactors, then the "waste" isotopes would probably be a lot less expensive on their own.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- namibj 6y agoYes, pretty much. E.g. Germany has loads of Sr-90 as a product of their fission power plants (typically PWRs fed with low-enriched uranium), at least some of which is already vitrified in borosilicate glass along with the other high-activity waste and currently standing around to cool down so it can eventually be stuffed deep into probably a rock salt formation. It's not hard to separate it (and the Cs-137) from the rest of the spent fuel, if so desired.