Do other here see the connection?
PRISM isn't really dead, it has just changed course IMHO.
Does anybody here really believe that this won't come into play as one of the better aspects from PRISM in the Natrium reactor? a combination of the best aspects from Terrapower's TWR and GEH's PRISM reactor?
So far, the Natrium system has garnered the attention of numerous utilities through the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). “PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Energy Northwest and Duke Energy have expressed their support for the commercialization effort, which will provide energy and energy storage to the electrical grid,” they said.
GEH and TerraPower, notably, are also part of a team led by Bechtel National Inc. that was recently selected by Battelle Energy Alliance (BEA) to spearhead the design and build phase of the DOE’s Versatile Test Reactor (VTR), a one-of-a-kind research facility designed to give U.S. companies access to fast spectrum irradiation testing. Negotiations on that contract are ongoing.
GEH and Bechtel had previously joined forces to provide a conceptual design for the VTR project that featured GEH’s PRISM technology. Kemal Pasamehmetoglu, executive director of the VTR project, told POWER on Tuesday that the unique test reactor, which is still awaiting Critical Decision-1, will likely be a 300-MWth sodium-cooled pool-type fast reactor based on the PRISM design that will use fuels with metallic alloys, including high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel.
TerraPower also confirmed it did not specifically submit an application for its traveling wave reactor (TWR) because the “Natrium system combines the best of the [TWR] and GE Hitachi’s PRISM technology.” https://nuclear.gepower.com/content...t-fact-sheets/GE Hitachi PRISM Fact Sheet.pdf PRISM can recycle used nuclear fuel, generating electricity while reducing radiotoxicity from hundreds of thousands of years to hundreds of years, thereby reducing the footprint/cost of the geological repository.
GE Hitachi Nuclear EnergyPRISM
fact sheet
PRISM can produce up to 100 times more power per unit of fuel compared to conventional light water reactors.
PRISM can recycle used nuclear fuel, generating electricity while reducing radiotoxicity from hundreds of thousands of years to hundreds of years, thereby reducing the footprint/cost of the geological repository.
Waste to Watts
Recycling used nuclear fuel would generate additional electricity to help meet growing electricity needs and enhance our energy security.
The PRISM reactor, as part of the Advanced Recycling Center, would recycle all the uranium and transuranics (elements heavier that uranium) contained within used nuclear fuel. This is a substantial improvement over previous reprocessing methods.
About 95 percent of the available energy remains in used fuel removed from light water reactors. This energy becomes accessible in a different kind of reactor, PRISM.
GEH believes that modern recycling technologies should be used to address used nuclear fuel. This would generate at least a hundred times more electricity from used nuclear fuel and decrease the long-term radiotoxicity of the remaining wastes.
The potential also exists to initially deploy PRISM to address UK civil plutonium stockpiles with a future option to later expand the facility to provide complete recycling of the resulting used PRISM fuel. Why Consider Recycling?
We can continue down the same path for used nuclear fuel that we have been on for the last 50 years, or we can develop an approach that brings the benefits of nuclear energy to the world while also reducing proliferation concerns and nuclear waste.
GEH believes that recycling is a good approach in general, and is invested in solving the issue of used nuclear fuel by recycling it in a proliferation-resistant manner, rather than securely storing a resource with more than 95 percent of its fuel unused.
In GEH’s view, what is generally considered to be “nuclear waste” these days is not really waste at all. Light Water Reactor (LWR) used nuclear fuel is composed of 95 percent uranium, 1 percent transuranics, and 4 percent fission products. Many of these transuranic isotopes have long half-lives, which can create long-term engineering challenges for geologic disposal. By using electro-metallurgical separations, PRISM is designed to perform the recycling of the 96 percent of the fissionable material (uranium and transuranics) remaining in used nuclear fuel.
PRISM fuel is metallic, which allows the use of a simple electrometallurgical process to recover all the long-lived waste products that make spent fuel so problematic to dispose of.
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