News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on NASA completes full-power tests of small, portable nuclear reactor. Parent comment

Re:NASA completes full-power tests of small, portable nuclea... by larkeith on Thursday May 03, 2018 @09:57PM (#16991660)
There's a few problems with making Highly-Enriched Uranium commercially available, even before we get to radiation.

Thorium reactors [1], on the other hand, might be more feasible due to their lack of weaponization potential, cheaper fuel, and reduced waste. However, Thorium reactors are much more complex, and will likely never approach the small scale of KiloPower; they also have significant startup costs, remain commercially unproven, and have a more dangerous fuel cycle (in terms of radioactivity).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:NASA completes full-power tests of small, portable nuclea... by IdeaHamstir on Thursday May 03, 2018 @10:49PM (#16991864)
They have completed designs using low enriched Uranium. They're not quite as elegant or as small, but they should work fine.

https://fas.org/nuke/space/leu-reactor.pdf

[ Parent | on HN ]