Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’
eleitl@lemm.ee 1 month agoSome of the new Russian reactor types are designed to burn away dangerous hot actinides. MSR need onboard fuel processing to continue to operate anyway.
fullsquare@awful.systems 1 month ago
These are fast reactors and operate on different principles. The coolant there is sodium and while hard to design and run, it’s doable. French had similar reactor but only one and it was shut down. Nice thing about fast reactors is that these can burn even-numbered isotopes of plutonium, useless in water moderated reactor, and give fresh mostly 239Pu plutonium of good quality. weapons grade even, and IAEA doesn’t like it. But who cares since nonproliferation is dead anyway?
eleitl@lemm.ee 1 month ago
The new generation of Russian fast neutron reactors use lead and lead-bismuth as coolant, not sodium anymore. They are not proper breeders, as I understood it.
fullsquare@awful.systems 1 month ago
These were not supposed to be breeders, but this is only due to agreements that are ignored ny now. Technical capability is there