News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on How do you make safe, cheap nuclear reactors? Bury them a mile deep. Parent comment

Re:How do you make safe, cheap nuclear reactors? Bury them a... by Qem on Thursday August 29, 2024 @08:58AM (#41390345)
> by the time you’re dealing with actual fuel rods you can stick in a reactor not just ore or 99.3% U235 0.7% U235 metal.

It's actually possible to run a reactor on natural unenriched uranium. IIRC the first man-made reactor ever, the Chicago pile, used natural uranium. Why did we stop using natural uranium in reactors?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How do you make safe, cheap nuclear reactors? Bury them a... by Retric on Thursday August 29, 2024 @10:03AM (#41390937)
Read up on CANDU, it ends up being slightly more expensive and produces more high level nuclear waste. Currently they’re enriching uranium even if the design doesn’t need to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

There’s a lot of different trade offs you can make with nuclear designs, but so far non of them have been demonstrated to actually be meaningfully cheaper.

[ Parent | on HN ]