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No, it's still not burning renewable fuel. It intrinsically turns a fissile or fertile product into a lower energy product until it's no longer fissile. I am aw

No, it's still not burning renewable fuel. It intrinsically turns a fissile or fertile product into a lower energy product until it's no longer fissile. I am aware of breeder designs - I mention CANDU reactor designs later in the thread which can be used as a breeder with unenriched U, Pu239, or Thorium inputs. This stretches out the fuel supplies substantially, but it's still nonrenewable. Solar is, as long as our large scale fusion reactor is still running.

pdonis 12y ago
> It intrinsically turns a fissile or fertile product into a lower energy product until it's no longer fissile. No, it turns an isotope that is not fissile into one that is. > This stretches out the fuel supplies substantially, but it's still nonrenewable. Solar is, as long as our large scale fusion reactor is still running. The Sun will eventually stop, as will any energy source eventually; so if "renewable" means "inexhaustible", there is no such thing as a renewable energy source.
- throwaway5752 12y ago
  > No, it turns an isotope that is not fissile into one that is. That is what fertile means. The sun will be a viable energy source for billions of years, vs tens or hundreds for nuclear.
  - pdonis 12y ago
    > That is what fertile means. Ah, sorry, I missed that word. I'm still confused about the "lower energy" bit, though. > The sun will be a viable energy source for billions of years, vs tens or hundreds for nuclear. Or thousands or tens of thousands, if we use breeders. Or millions or billions, if we get fusion working. I'll agree that the Sun is the current front runner by a wide margin for "time available" if that's all we look at. But given the pace at which human technology is changing, I don't think there's much difference between a few hundred, a few thousand, a few million, or a few billion years; on any of these time scales, we are going to make profound changes in the way we generate energy. What we need right now is a way to get to that point; right now, solar can't give us that because we don't know how to capture it in a way that can provide reliable base load power all the time.

pdonis 12y ago

> It intrinsically turns a fissile or fertile product into a lower energy product until it's no longer fissile. No, it turns an isotope that is not fissile into one that is. > This stretches out the fuel supplies substantially, but it's still nonrenewable. Solar is, as long as our large scale fusion reactor is still running. The Sun will eventually stop, as will any energy source eventually; so if "renewable" means "inexhaustible", there is no such thing as a renewable energy source.

throwaway5752 12y ago
> No, it turns an isotope that is not fissile into one that is. That is what fertile means. The sun will be a viable energy source for billions of years, vs tens or hundreds for nuclear.
- pdonis 12y ago
  > That is what fertile means. Ah, sorry, I missed that word. I'm still confused about the "lower energy" bit, though. > The sun will be a viable energy source for billions of years, vs tens or hundreds for nuclear. Or thousands or tens of thousands, if we use breeders. Or millions or billions, if we get fusion working. I'll agree that the Sun is the current front runner by a wide margin for "time available" if that's all we look at. But given the pace at which human technology is changing, I don't think there's much difference between a few hundred, a few thousand, a few million, or a few billion years; on any of these time scales, we are going to make profound changes in the way we generate energy. What we need right now is a way to get to that point; right now, solar can't give us that because we don't know how to capture it in a way that can provide reliable base load power all the time.