Certainly 311 MWe from 840 MWt is approximately 37% thermal efficiency, so it is more efficient than most LWRs (at least on paper). I'm not sure about the claim of very little nuclear waste, since the fission of 1 fissile atom of U or Pu, or TU will produce two fission products. And we can add the activated cladding and structural materials in and around the core, so there will be a fair amount of waste. It would seem that the fuel cycle involves reprocessing, so the separated fission products would in theory be calcined and vitrified, and then placed in some geological repository. It would be interesting to see if there would some effort to separate out the rare Earth and certain transitional metal elements.greswd said:Said to be able to generate very little nuclear waste. Highly energy efficient.
All the more reason for engineers and scientists to debunk flawed technical objections made for political reasons. In the US, the light water reactor is probably an economic dead end due to cost and an unresolved waste stream, while the regulatory community states it won't tolerate anything but more light water reactors for the "foreseeable future", and the fossil fuel industry has a long history of http://atomicinsightscom.c.presscdn.com/wp-content/uploads/Atom-Power-Assailed.png (1958, NYT). Yet advanced nuclear is the only serious way forward for de-carbonizing advanced economies.Vanadium 50 said:The political challenge with fast reactors is substantially harder than with conventional fission reactors. And how many of those has the US built in the last 30 years?
The 50 cents is just the visible cost. A more opaque cost of big science like this is that it starves funding for alternatives, makes them appear fringe. The ITER design with low power density, first wall problems, and fuel breeding problems, seems to provide no path to an economic power reactor. Thus even if ITER manages a couple minutes of stable operation in 15 years, the 50 cents plus the opaque costs might be high indeed.mfb said:For every project there is someone saying it won't succeed. Every US citizen pays (averaged over the population) 50 cents per year for ITER. Is that too much for the possibility to have a completely new type of power plant in a few decades? Costs per person are a bit higher for EU citizens, but I'd still happily pay twice that amount to build a second one (or for a construction start 10 years earlier... but it is too late for that).
PRISM stands for Power Reactor Innovative Small Module and is a type of nuclear reactor technology that uses liquid metal as a coolant. Fusion, on the other hand, is a process where atoms are combined to release energy, similar to what happens in the sun.
PRISM reactors use liquid metal as a coolant instead of water, which allows for higher operating temperatures and increased efficiency. They also have a smaller size and can use different types of fuel, making them more versatile than traditional reactors.
Both PRISM and fusion have the potential to be safe forms of energy, but it ultimately depends on the specific design and implementation of each technology. PRISM reactors have passive safety features that make them less susceptible to accidents, while fusion reactors have no risk of a meltdown.
PRISM reactors have a higher efficiency rate compared to traditional nuclear reactors, but fusion has the potential to be even more efficient. However, fusion is still in the early stages of development and has not yet been proven to be a reliable energy source.
It is difficult to say which technology will become the main source of energy in the future. PRISM reactors are already being used in some countries, but fusion is still in the research and development stage. It is possible that both technologies will play a role in meeting our future energy needs.