Traveling-Wave Reactor - Runs on Waste?

[padren]

This looks like quite an innovative new nuclear reactor:

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22114/page1/

 

Apparently it needs very little U-235 and runs mostly on U-238. I don't keep up on nuclear physics very much so I am going with the information in the article to a large degree, but it sounds very promising.

 

Does anyone know more about this technique?

 

 

(also, if this post would be better elsewhere, please feel free to move)

[swansont]

It looks like it's a modified breeder reactor; it doesn't really "run" on U-238. What happens in some of the excess neutrons from fission are absorbed in the U-238, making U-239, which eventually becomes Pu-239. Pu-239 is fissile, and is the fuel that is bred and undergoes subsequent fission.

 

One political drawback is that the fuel is never fully used up, and so when the reactor is finished it will still have Pu-239 in it.

 

 

(moved from GD)

[Mr Skeptic]

And more importantly, Pu-239 can be chemically separated into weapons-grade material instead of the extremely difficult process to separate isotopes of the same element. If one of these plants were not monitored carefully, it could be selling weapons-grade plutonium at a huge profit.

[insane_alien]

And more importantly, Pu-239 can be chemically separated into weapons-grade material instead of the extremely difficult process to separate isotopes of the same element. If one of these plants were not monitored carefully, it could be selling weapons-grade plutonium at a huge profit.

 

i think the point of the reactor is that the plutonium is used pretty much as soon as it is generated, resulting in a ver low plutonium content for the reactor at any one time.