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A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes. [1] These reactors can be fueled with more-commonly available isotopes of uranium and thorium, such as uranium-238 and thorium-232, as opposed to the rare uranium-235 which is used in conventional reactors.
Strontium-90 is a radioactive byproduct produced by nuclear reactors used in nuclear power. It is a component of nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel. The half life is long, around 30 years, and is classified as high-level waste. [14] Researchers have looked at the bioaccumulation of strontium by Scenedesmus spinosus in simulated wastewater.
RBMK reactor fuel was used in Soviet-designed and built RBMK-type reactors. This is a low-enriched uranium oxide fuel. The fuel elements in an RBMK are 3 m long each, and two of these sit back-to-back on each fuel channel, pressure tube. Reprocessed uranium from Russian VVER reactor spent fuel is used to fabricate RBMK fuel.
In a nuclear-powered ship, the nuclear fuel is essentially a solid inside a reactor core which is inside the ship's nuclear reactor. Once a reactor core has gone critical, meaning it has been used during a reactor operation, highly radioactive nuclear fission products have formed in the core, and the core has become highly radioactive ...
Uranium from natural sources is enriched by isotope separation, and plutonium is produced in a suitable nuclear reactor. Experiments have been conducted with uranium-233 (the fissile material at the heart of the thorium fuel cycle). Neptunium-237 and some isotopes of americium might be usable, but it is not clear that this has ever been ...
The reactor buildings of Bradwell magnox nuclear power station. The magnox reactors were considered at the time to have a considerable degree of inherent safety because of their simple design, low power density, and gas coolant. Because of this they were not provided with secondary containment features. A safety design principle at the time was ...
A fission fragment reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates electricity by decelerating an ion beam of fission byproducts instead of using nuclear reactions to generate heat. By doing so, it bypasses the Carnot cycle and can achieve efficiencies of up to 90% instead of 40–45% attainable by efficient turbine-driven thermal reactors.
Therefore, they do not predict peak uranium. In his 1956 paper, M. King Hubbert wrote that nuclear energy would last for the "foreseeable future". [183] Hubbert's study assumed that breeder reactors would replace light water reactors and that uranium would be bred into plutonium (and possibly thorium would be bred into uranium). He also assumed ...