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Nuclear and Hydro Power
Published in Anco S. Blazev, Energy Security for The 21st Century, 2021
A breeder reactor then is a nuclear reactor capable of generating more fissile material than it consumes because of its neutron interactions and fuel economy, which is high enough to breed fissile fuel from fertile material like uranium-238 or thorium-232.
The Other Energy Sources
Published in Anco S. Blazev, Power Generation and the Environment, 2021
A breeder reactor then is a nuclear reactor capable of generating more fissile material than it consumes because of its neutron interractions and economy, which is high enough to breed fissile fuel from fertile material like uranium-238 or thorium-232.
Nuclear Energy
Published in Efstathios E. Michaelides, Energy, the Environment, and Sustainability, 2018
Reality: As it is apparent in Figure 5.9, at the current (2017) rate of uranium consumption, which is approximately 5,600,000 t per year, the existing uranium reserves in the world are large enough to guarantee the continuous supply of nuclear fuel for more than 250 years. In addition to the proven and inferred reserves, other resources and potential resources exist that may extend this time frame to 600–700 years [18]. Therefore, there is not an immediate urgency to switch to breeder reactors, even if our nuclear fuel consumption doubles or triples. It will be good though to develop safe breeder reactor technologies in the future because the breeder reactors can guarantee our future electric power supply for millennia, rather than centuries.
Molybdenum-99 from Molten Salt Reactor as a Source of Technetium-99m for Nuclear Medicine: Past, Current, and Future of Molybdenum-99
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2023
Jisue Moon, Kristian Myhre, Hunter Andrews, Joanna McFarlane
During the first MSRE at ORNL in the 1960s, it was recognized that the MSR would be ideal for the thermal breeding of uranium from thorium.40 Breeding reactors generate more fissile materials than they consume. In other words, the neutron economy in the breeder reactor is high enough to create more fissile fuel than it uses by the irradiation of a fertile material such as 238U or 232Th. Because of the breeding aspect, neutron economy was considered to be a key factor, and 7LiF-BeF2 (FLiBe), with 5% ZrF4 as an oxygen getter, was selected as the fuel carrier because of the very low neutron capture cross section of 7Li ( = 0.045 barns) and Be ( = 0.0088 barns). Due to the low neutron capture cross section in the thermal spectrum, so far FLiBe is the prime carrier salt under consideration. Lithium in natural abundance possesses about 7.6% 6Li, and this has to be removed due to its high parasitic neutron capture cross section ( = 940 barns) and tritium formation.
Safe, clean, proliferation resistant and cost-effective Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactors for sustainable development
Published in International Journal of Sustainable Energy, 2022
The more advanced reactor is the Molten Salt Breeder (MSBR), also started at ORNL, and described in detail by (Robertson et al. 1970). This is a breeder reactor, implying that more fissile material is created than consumed in the fission process, and it consists of two fluids. A representative design is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). The LFTR consists of a core and a ‘blanket,’ a volume that surrounds the core. The blanket contains a mixture of thorium tetrafluoride in a fluoride salt containing lithium and beryllium, made molten by the heat of the core. The core consists of fissile uranium-233 tetrafluoride also in molten fluoride salts of lithium and beryllium within a graphite structure that serves as a moderator and neutron reflector. The uranium-233 is produced in the blanket when neutrons generated in the core are absorbed (Hargraves and Moir 2010).
Benchmark of GOTHIC to EBR-II SHRT-17 and SHRT-45R Tests
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2020
J. W. Lane, J. M. Link, J. M. King, T. L. George, S. W. Claybrook
The Experimental Breeder Reactor–II (EBR-II) was a sodium fast reactor designed to demonstrate the feasibility of a complete breeder reactor power plant based on the breeding process of 238U fuel. It was located at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory and operated by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) for the U.S. Department of Energy from 1964 through 1994. The sodium-cooled design was an evolutionary step toward a commercial-size fast breeder reactor. The 62.5-MW(thermal) pool reactor used metallic fuel rods, steel reflectors, and blanket assemblies. Two primary pumps transferred sodium from the pool to the core, through the electromagnetic (EM) pump and intermediate heat exchanger (IHX), and back to the pool. The core heat was transferred to the intermediate loop and ultimately to the steam generators on the secondary side.