3 ms·
Ah, ok, I misunderstood. What did you mean by "gone a burner"?
by NumberWangMan 5y ago
Ah, ok, I misunderstood. What did you mean by "gone a burner"?
- panick21_ 5y agoI wanted to say 'its going to be a burner type reactor rather then a breeder'.
- DennisP 5y agoIn nuclear reactors a "burner" is like a conventional reactor, with uranium fuel and slow neutrons, which mainly just fission the U235 (plus a bit of plutonium that shows up). It means you're fissioning about 1% of your uranium ore. A "breeder" can be one of two things: 1) Thorium fuel, slow neutrons. A neutron hits thorium, converts it to U233, then that fissions. Take a ton of thorium, fission all of it, get one gigawatt-year. 2) Uranium fuel, fast neutrons. The fast neutrons can fission U235, U238, plutonium, and other transuranics. Take a ton of uranium, fission all of it, get one gigawatt-year. Compared to burners, either type of breeder only requires 1% as much fuel, produces 1% as much waste, and the waste is mostly fission products with much shorter half-lives. Encase it in glass and bury it, and it'll be back to the radioactivity of the original ore in about 300 years, with most of the radioactivity going away in the first few decades.
- panick21_ 5y agoYou could have a Thorium fast breeder as well I think. I think a thermal breeder can actually be about 10x more efficient then any uranium fast burner can achieve. But once you do a fast breeder there is really no point in using Thorium at all. The only reason to use thorium is really thermal breeding. Also you can have both a thermal and a fast burner I'm pretty sure.