Popeye, the US has been saying for a long time now that they have a technology that can compete with the Russians and the Chinese, it will be cheaper and far more economical, I believe that technology is based on the Terrapower Natrium reactor AND the PRISM reactor, it will take the best from both of those technologies, what would or could they be?
Terrapower has not specifically submitted a licence for it’s TWR reactor as such, why?
I believe that they saw the advantages of using recycled fuel, it has been stated that that fuel will use fuels with metallic alloys, including high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel.
Of course it will use some HALEU, that was always a given, it has to, any MOX fuel reactor requires a small portion of HALEU to kick start the fast reactor MOX process, you will also notice that it has been stated that using this MOX fuel provides some sort of proliferation resistance, that in itself would be a must have thing by the US it would be highly desirable IMHO, GEH also stated that this PRISM design could be used to help the UK with their stockpile of UNF, so they still haven’t given up on that either.
Zog keeps trying to tell me that the PRISM concept doesn’t use the Silex Uranium enrichment process, I agree, it doesn’t now? but the original concept DID!
I reckon I have shown many times now where that was, it was in a PDF written back in 2009 by Lon Paulson (one of GEH’s senior Engineers) it specifically showed a flow diagram that showed what GEH’s original concept was, it was a detailed document and even went into criticality issues, they were definitely going to use the Silex process back then to overcome the nuclear poisons, that is a given IMHO, but something changed? GEH no longer need our process, they seem to have come up with something else that handles those issues, I believe that something else is the inclusion of Transmutation technology, something that Charles Forsberg from the MIT alluded to around the time when something changed.
MOX fuel in a reactor burns at a much greater temperature than what a Uranium 235 fuelled reactor and this I believe is where the components from Terrapower’s Natrium reactor comes in, they want to capture that heat in a secondary molten salt component, where that heat can be used to drive a secondary turbine, which can help with providing electricity during peak times, this in effect means that a smaller reactor can in effect become a larger supplier of electricity for short peak loading periods, when that isn’t required they can use this stored heat for the production of Hydrogen or they could use it for Desalination or any other process that requires heat in industry.
The fact that the Natrium reactor burns much hotter also means it can burn some of the nastier stuff as well in the process, that is also something that would be highly desirable by the US as it lessens the amount of UNF that has to be buried.
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.”
You would have to ask yourself why they have deviated from their original concept surely?
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.
Yes, a MOX reactor still needs a small amount of HALEU to kick start the process.
Waste to Watts
Recycling used nuclear fuel would generate additional electricity to help meet growing electricity needs and enhance our energy security.
That sounds to me as if they are looking at using this concept in the US?
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.
Why wouldn’t they use it what already exists, it is a no brainer IMHO.
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.
They brush over this last part in my opinion, because if they remove some of those highly radioactive components from the UNF they would be still as dangerous in burial for just as long, this is where something has changed, something has happened in this area that can make those highly radioactive components far less dangerous, I believe they can leave some of those highly radioactive components in the MOX fuel for providing proliferation resistance and in the much hotter reactor process they simply get burnt as part of the fuel, the parts that can’t be used in a reactor process is where something need to be done, this is where I believe Transmutation may be helping?
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