To extract Am and Np out of the Purex stream(if you do that allready anyway) should be barley a problem,(an Make gray-rods out of the Np237 for further transmutation to Pu238) but I 'fear' that we don't need that much RTGs,.. as we have Np237 and Am in the spent fuels anyway. ;)
Seems a waste to dump the spent fuel in pools for a decade? Can’t this residual thermal energy be used for something before the rods are then sent for reprocessing?
Alweg Fan France and Russia have large reprocessing plants that also reprocess fuel for foreign customers. The UK has also been reprocessing nuclear fuel for over half a century, but they will stop reprocessing in 2020. Japan will open a large reprocessing plant in 2021. So as you can see, reprocessing nuclear fuel is neither unusual, nor is it unsafe.
Trying to get weapons grade Plutonium for nuclear weapons out of spent or used nuclear fuel is a lot harder than most people think. Yes it is easy to separate Plutonium chemically from nuclear fuel once it was dissolved in concentrated nitric acid, BUT only one isotope is of any use for nuclear weapons, and that is Plutonium-239. Plutonium 238, 240, 241 and 242 are not usable, they either fission too quickly or otherwise poison the chain reaction. So even if terrorists managed to get used fuel from MOST nuclear reactors and managed to separate plutonium from it, they have to do the same process to enrich Uranium for nuclear reactors, and that requires a large facility that is impossible to hide. Most reactors create Plutonium as the Uranium-235 fissions, and towards the end of the life of the fuel, Plutonium generates more and more power in the reactor. There are fast breeder reactors, and unlike others they do generate almost exclusively Plutonium-239 and if that fuel is stolen, a state actor supporting a terror movement could furnish them a nuclear weapon because they can simply chemically separate it from the fuel. In all cases though, spent nuclear fuel is intensely, and lethally radioactive from dozens of very unstable isotopes. However, two isotopes make nuclear fuel deadly for generations for anyone near it without shielding, and that is Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, which emit intense gamma radiation as well as beta rays. They make it suicidal to steal nuclear fuel. However, burying it underground means after 300 years, the fuel turns into what amounts to a uranium and plutonium mine.
@@admiralxxx7906 There's more to 'value' than just the market price for the kilowatt. Imagine spent fuel ponds incorporated a sterling engine or a bank of peltiers as part of their heat dissipation systems. Now imagine a tsunami hits and takes out your diesel generators and your connection to the grid.. You've got a thermo-electric generator or a thermo-mechanical engine right in your reactor building, exactly where you need it. That little bit of 'Waste Energy' becomes a priceless asset when you need to run a circulator pump doesn't it?
@Alweg Fan According to the World Heath Organization, burning fossil fuels kills around 3 million people per year just due to the air quality effects. More folks die to accidents every year in the Oil and Gas industry than have ever credibly died to any kind of nuclear power accident. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency; all reprocessing accidents and near misses have resulted in only 3 deaths and 18 injuries (of which only one was considered 'severe'). Which tech do the facts say is dangerous? We need to quit being hysterical, put on our big-boy pants and move on from burning ancient dead stuff we dig up. It's time to take the lessons we've learned, build safer reactors and reprocessing facilities, dump the idiotic Linear no-threshold model, and get on with our lives.
Light and heavy water reactors are more much less than ideal, much better than gas and coal, for civil use. However, the inventor of the water cooled reactor, who was the director of ORNL until some political moron fired him, also invented a much better and safer reactor type which has: 1. A much cheaper fuel which is 24 times more abundant than 235 U. 2. Has 180 times more efficiency and thus much less waste 3. Operates at near atmospheic pressure not insane 2000 psi requiring massive forged steel vessels 4. Has much more benign waste profile making it essentially a very bad choice for weapons production. 5. Operates at higher temps making it more efficient 6. Has intrinsic safety from runaway. 7. Deals with meltdown as a normal mode of operation. 8. Waste byproducts can be removed as an inline process. 9. Can be made very small in factory mass production. 10. Has been sucessfully proven in a well publicized test over 40 years ago. 11. Can be used on current reactor sites for retrofitting. Alvin Weinberg is the man who invented this and the water cooled reactor but never saw the latter to be scaled up beyond a small marine motor unit. The answer is Thorium. Look it up.
This is only half true. Fast breeders (Th Reactors) were built in Germany but the technology has been abandoned because the technological challenges could not be mastered. The Russians still have a Lage scientific Thorium reactor up and running. The only problem the Thorium reactor solves is the shortage of fuel. It is by no means less dangerous or less toxic. This is, unfortunately, Internet propaganda.
Cqwet Dbdfte Yes. In Germany it was molten salt. For any Thorium reactor you need a non moderating coolant. This is either a liquid metal or a molten salt reactor. Effectively you are breeding U238 and Pl239 from the Thorium blanket. You then have to refine the metals in the blanket and fission is sustained by the fuel rods made of Plutonium and Uranium. If you reprocess depleted fuel rods you have effectively the same fuel. France, Japan, Germany, the UK amongst others reprocesse their fuel rods. The US does not because it is not cost effective. There is absolutely no benefit in Thorium reactors.
Thanks to the algorithm for this in my feed
🍻
That mic noise gate is actually slightly more annoying than the noise itself.
What I would want out of reprocessing is Pu-238 and Am-241 for RTG:s to use in space exploration.
space exploration? Ughh! get out!
@@Raffael-Tausend Yes, you know that thing beyond the glass dome...
To extract Am and Np out of the Purex stream(if you do that allready anyway) should be barley a problem,(an Make gray-rods out of the Np237 for further transmutation to Pu238) but I 'fear' that we don't need that much RTGs,.. as we have Np237 and Am in the spent fuels anyway. ;)
yeppppppppppp... and pm-147 for betavoltaics and strontium-90 RTGs
Seems a waste to dump the spent fuel in pools for a decade? Can’t this residual thermal energy be used for something before the rods are then sent for reprocessing?
If you calculate value of this waste Energy, is not worth to build Plant to recover it.
Alweg Fan
France and Russia have large reprocessing plants that also reprocess fuel for foreign customers. The UK has also been reprocessing nuclear fuel for over half a century, but they will stop reprocessing in 2020. Japan will open a large reprocessing plant in 2021. So as you can see, reprocessing nuclear fuel is neither unusual, nor is it unsafe.
Trying to get weapons grade Plutonium for nuclear weapons out of spent or used nuclear fuel is a lot harder than most people think. Yes it is easy to separate Plutonium chemically from nuclear fuel once it was dissolved in concentrated nitric acid, BUT only one isotope is of any use for nuclear weapons, and that is Plutonium-239. Plutonium 238, 240, 241 and 242 are not usable, they either fission too quickly or otherwise poison the chain reaction. So even if terrorists managed to get used fuel from MOST nuclear reactors and managed to separate plutonium from it, they have to do the same process to enrich Uranium for nuclear reactors, and that requires a large facility that is impossible to hide. Most reactors create Plutonium as the Uranium-235 fissions, and towards the end of the life of the fuel, Plutonium generates more and more power in the reactor. There are fast breeder reactors, and unlike others they do generate almost exclusively Plutonium-239 and if that fuel is stolen, a state actor supporting a terror movement could furnish them a nuclear weapon because they can simply chemically separate it from the fuel. In all cases though, spent nuclear fuel is intensely, and lethally radioactive from dozens of very unstable isotopes. However, two isotopes make nuclear fuel deadly for generations for anyone near it without shielding, and that is Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, which emit intense gamma radiation as well as beta rays. They make it suicidal to steal nuclear fuel. However, burying it underground means after 300 years, the fuel turns into what amounts to a uranium and plutonium mine.
@@admiralxxx7906 There's more to 'value' than just the market price for the kilowatt. Imagine spent fuel ponds incorporated a sterling engine or a bank of peltiers as part of their heat dissipation systems. Now imagine a tsunami hits and takes out your diesel generators and your connection to the grid.. You've got a thermo-electric generator or a thermo-mechanical engine right in your reactor building, exactly where you need it. That little bit of 'Waste Energy' becomes a priceless asset when you need to run a circulator pump doesn't it?
@Alweg Fan According to the World Heath Organization, burning fossil fuels kills around 3 million people per year just due to the air quality effects. More folks die to accidents every year in the Oil and Gas industry than have ever credibly died to any kind of nuclear power accident. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency; all reprocessing accidents and near misses have resulted in only 3 deaths and 18 injuries (of which only one was considered 'severe'). Which tech do the facts say is dangerous? We need to quit being hysterical, put on our big-boy pants and move on from burning ancient dead stuff we dig up. It's time to take the lessons we've learned, build safer reactors and reprocessing facilities, dump the idiotic Linear no-threshold model, and get on with our lives.
Light and heavy water reactors are more much less than ideal, much better than gas and coal, for civil use. However, the inventor of the water cooled reactor, who was the director of ORNL until some political moron fired him, also invented a much better and safer reactor type which has:
1. A much cheaper fuel which is 24 times more abundant than 235 U.
2. Has 180 times more efficiency and thus much less waste
3. Operates at near atmospheic pressure not insane 2000 psi requiring massive forged steel vessels
4. Has much more benign waste profile making it essentially a very bad choice for weapons production.
5. Operates at higher temps making it more efficient
6. Has intrinsic safety from runaway.
7. Deals with meltdown as a normal mode of operation.
8. Waste byproducts can be removed as an inline process.
9. Can be made very small in factory mass production.
10. Has been sucessfully proven in a well publicized test over 40 years ago.
11. Can be used on current reactor sites for retrofitting.
Alvin Weinberg is the man who invented this and the water cooled reactor but never saw the latter to be scaled up beyond a small marine motor unit.
The answer is Thorium. Look it up.
This is only half true. Fast breeders (Th Reactors) were built in Germany but the technology has been abandoned because the technological challenges could not be mastered. The Russians still have a Lage scientific Thorium reactor up and running. The only problem the Thorium reactor solves is the shortage of fuel. It is by no means less dangerous or less toxic. This is, unfortunately, Internet propaganda.
Watch this for example: ua-cam.com/video/H6mhw-CNxaE/v-deo.html
@@flugschulerfluglehrer7139 .....are these molten salt?
This is also applicable to fast spectrum reactors.
Alvin Weinberg was not wrong.
@@flugschulerfluglehrer7139 Yea, saw it long time ago.
Thorium in a water cooled reactor is sub par idea.
Cqwet Dbdfte Yes. In Germany it was molten salt. For any Thorium reactor you need a non moderating coolant. This is either a liquid metal or a molten salt reactor. Effectively you are breeding U238 and Pl239 from the Thorium blanket. You then have to refine the metals in the blanket and fission is sustained by the fuel rods made of Plutonium and Uranium.
If you reprocess depleted fuel rods you have effectively the same fuel. France, Japan, Germany, the UK amongst others reprocesse their fuel rods. The US does not because it is not cost effective.
There is absolutely no benefit in Thorium reactors.