Recent content by corealist

Yes it is a similar idea, but the traveling wave seems to breed the new fuel on the outside of the active part of the reactor, and move slowly from the inside to the outer rings. To me this seems very complicated to design correctly, as the ring gets wider and wider but the output energy must...

Thanks for the detailed response. The last paragraph about marine propulsion is what I was looking for. A reactor core that lasts long enough that there is no need for complicated, dangerous, expensive recycling of uranium/plutonium. Anyway based on you response it seems that fission gases and...

I understand that breeding is just one factor. I assume It would require some way to periodically ( yearly ?) rearrange fuelrods in the core to maintain an even burn, but if that is physically possible it would result in an order of magnitude less maintenance, radioactive waste and processing...

I read that even in a light water reactor the breeding ratio is about 0.6 ( no breeding blanket), and breeding reactors with breeding blanket can achieve a ratio of about 1.4 so to me it doesn’t seem to be farfetched that a appropriately designed fast reactor ( I was thinking lead based fast...

Nuclear fast reactors are capable of breeding more fuel than they consume. I was wondering if it would be possible to design a nuclear reactor that (initially) breeds just a little more fuel than they consume. The breeding ratio will reduce a little over time, but with a felxible design it...