Re:Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Communit...
by pfdietz on Thursday November 04, 2021 @07:10AM
(#29105612)
I thought fuel pellet cracking was already a tolerated thing. Pressure builds up in fuel rods due to escaped xenon and krypton.
Re:Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Communit...
by acidburnNSA on Sunday October 31, 2021 @06:52PM
(#29061249)
Switching to solid fuel uranium breeders + fluid fuel thorium breeders gets you to around 4 billion years.
Because xenon is the most common fission product, and it's a gas, the reaction must be stopped before all fuel is used, as otherwise the solid fuel pellets would crack. If you assume 3% enriched uranium (U-235) and 97% depleted uranium (U-238) (a typical fuel load), the fuel pellets are unusable after about 1/3 of enriched uranium is spent. So the fuel is removed and "thrown away" while it still has 2% U-235 in it.
Switching to liquid fuel reactors assuming no other changes would immediately increase supply 3 times (because xenon simply bubbles out). Switching to liquid fuel breeder reactors ~ 100 times. Switching to breeders based on thorium - around 1000 to 10000 times.
Peak uranium is only a problem because we're using a very inefficient nuclear reactor technology - water reactors. Why? Because they were chosen by the military and the technology/know-how was already there. Efficiency was really low on the military's list of priorities.