[ RadSafe ] Highly Enriched Fuel Reactors

[George Stanford]

Dave:

      With nuclear power, the cost of  fuel is not a major consideration.
As with the non-nuclear renewables, the main cost is the up-front
capital cost plus the operating cost.  Even with today's reactors, the
fuel cost is less than 2 cents per KWe-hr.  With IFRs, the fuel cost is
low or even negative (the uranium has already been mined, and
currently the depleted uranium and used fuel are seen as a white
elephants).  With TWRs (which are based on IFR technology), the
fuel cost is low, but somewhat higher than for IFRs because
TerraPower seems to be ruling out the use of plutonium as the
start-up fissile, which means the continuation of uranium mining and
enrichment.

      Waste?  Yes, like beauty, waste is in the eye of the beholder.
Even most of the fission products have commercial value and could
be recovered profitably.  See Ed Sayre's piece at
<http://snipurl.com/241zptl>.

      --  George

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At 12:00 AM 5/19/2013, David Lee wrote:
>George,
>
>What about the fuel cost?
>
>Even manufacturing would be cheaper of metal fuel versus pellets.
>
>Waste, I am a very frugal guy. "Some one's waste the other guy's treasure"
>;-)
>I have around 25 items listed one eBay and a half of that on the Craigslist.
>Today, we have solar panels on the roofs.
>May be, we will have gamma, beta and super deluxe alpha panels in the
>basements, tomorrow
>
>Dave.
>
>
>On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 9:22 PM, George Stanford 
><gstanford at aya.yale.edu>wrote:
>
> > Guys:
> >
> >      Regardless of reactor type, you get approximately 1 ton of fission
> > products for each GWe-yr of energy.  Most of the activity for the first
> > couple of centuries is due to Cs-137 & Sr-90.  If a 1-GWe TWR runs for 60
> > years, it will accumulate 60 tons of fission products, and only about half
> > of the created Cs & Sr will have decayed by then.
> >
> >      As Jaro says, uranium with enrichment below 20% is considered LEU.
> >
> >      The TWR publicity that I've seen says that the uranium utilization
> > will be between 40 and 50 times that of the LWR (which is considerably less
> > than 1%).  Thus the TWR (as currently planned) would use less than 50% of
> > the energy that was in the original ore.  Because of the length of time the
> > residual transuranics have been exposed to the neutron fluence, recycling
> > the used fuel after 60 years would be difficult because of built-up alpha
> > activity -- perhaps too difficult to be feasible.
> >
> >       Consider a 1-GWe TWR.  After 60 years of operation it will have
> > produced 60 tons of fission products and will still contain more than 60
> > tons of unused uranium, along with probably a few tons of long-lived
> > transuranic actinides -- so its initial fuel loading had to contain more
> > than 120 tons of heavy metal.  It will not solve the waste problem, but it
> > will kick it 60 years down the road.
> >
> >      In comparison, the same size IFR  with recycling has a core about
> > one-tenth the size, and after 60 years will also have produced 60 tons of
> > fission products, disposed of at he rate of one ton per year.  And, with
> > close to 100% utilization of the uranium, the waste will contain
> > little else.
> >
> >      -- George
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**~~
> >
> >
> > At 04:07 PM 5/18/2013, David Lee wrote:
> >
> >> Joe,
> >>
> >> I think, I may be wrong, I was once ;-)
> >> It all depends on how deep you burn the fuel.
> >> Deeper better, more energy output, less fragments to deal with.
> >> Some one, please, correct me if I am wrong.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 1:58 PM, <JPreisig at aol.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Hey All,
> >> >
> >> >      So, with these TWR's and other highly enriched  fuel reactors, with
> >> > significant use of the fuel, the Cs-137, Sr-90 (i.e. Fission  Fragment)
> >> > radiation will build up quite quickly.  This will be a challenge  for
> >> > Health
> >> > Physicists, Nuclear Engineers at such reactors.  Sounds like  fun.
> >>  Neutron
> >> > production will increase considerably also.
> >> >
> >> >     Have a good week.
> >> >
> >> >     Joe Preisig
> >> >
> >> > PS  I wonder if the bug zapper could be tuned up for tse tse
> >>  flies......
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
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