Fusion breakthrough?

[barbos]

You're talking about U-235. The relevant half-life is 4.5 billion years, for U-238. If humanity survives for millions of years and doesn't sink into a permanent anti-nuclear theocracy we'll undoubtedly be using breeder reactors.

Nuclear plants use U-235. U-238 can not be used for chain reaction.

 

[barbos]

And as noted upthread, fusion is only cleaner if we master a D-D reaction

All fusion reactions are cleaner than fission.

 

[Jokodo]

You're talking about U-235. The relevant half-life is 4.5 billion years, for U-238. If humanity survives for millions of years and doesn't sink into a permanent anti-nuclear theocracy we'll undoubtedly be using breeder reactors.

Nuclear plants use U-235. U-238 can not be used for chain reaction.

U-238 can be bred to plutonium. That technology exists today. Why shouldn't people it, especially if concentrations of U-235 are significantly lower than now.

 

[Bomb#20]

And as noted upthread, fusion is only cleaner if we master a D-D reaction

All fusion reactions are cleaner than fission.

But to use D-T fusion you need to manufacture tritium, and tritium manufacture is dirty.

 

[barbos]

U-238 can be bred to plutonium.

Can be, but then you have nuclear proliferation problem.

 

[barbos]

and tritium manufacture is dirty.

It's not as if it is currently manufactured in any industrial quantities to judge.
The point, fusion itself is much more cleaner than fission.

 

[Jokodo]

U-238 can be bred to plutonium.

Can be, but then you have nuclear proliferation problem.

Are you suggesting that in the year 500002022, humans will (a) still be around, and (b) still lack a protocol to safely control the flow of plutonium to everybody's satisfaction?

I find those two propositions highly improbable in conjunction. A humanity without mechanisms for the latter will have found 50 different ways to wipe itself off the face of the planet without a gram of plutonium by then - and successfully tested exactly one.

 

[barbos]

Are you suggesting that in the year 500002022, humans will (a) still be around

I am talking about near future. Fission is absolute no go in 100 years.
It's dirty, expensive and not really that sustainable.

 

[Jokodo]

Are you suggesting that in the year 500002022, humans will (a) still be around

I am talking about near future. Fission is absolute no go in 100 years.
It's dirty, expensive and not really that sustainable.

You were talking about the time when running low on U-235 starts to become an issue because of its short half life.

 

[barbos]

You were talking about the time when running low on U-235 starts to become an issue because of its short half life.

And then and now I was/am talking about near future.

 

[bilby]

U-238 can be bred to plutonium.

Can be, but then you have nuclear proliferation problem.

Yeah, but you really don't.

Making plutonium for bombs isn't like making plutonium for power plants.

No nation other than India has developed nuclear power plants before developing nuclear weapons, and even in India the development of nuclear weapons was independent of their nuclear power industry.

Proliferation is a propaganda nonsense.

Making electricity isn't like making bombs. It's possible to do both with a single reactor design, but such designs turn out to be utterly crap at both objectives.

RBMK reactors are dangerous, and don't make plutonium very effectively. Magnox reactors are safe, but don't make electricity very efficiently.

Every single nation that has ever developed nuclear weapons has done so without the assistance of a nuclear power industry; Most have done so before any such industry ever existed.

Look at Korea. The North has nuclear weapons, but no nuclear power; The South has nuclear power, but no nuclear weapons.

 

[Jokodo]

You were talking about the time when running low on U-235 starts to become an issue because of its short half life.

And then and now I was/am talking about near future.

Not when you brought up the half life

 

[barbos]

You were talking about the time when running low on U-235 starts to become an issue because of its short half life.

And then and now I was/am talking about near future.

Not when you brought up the half life

So?

 

[barbos]

Making plutonium for bombs isn't like making plutonium for power plants.

True, but if you want to you can use plutonium from fuel for bomb.
it's less economical but you can do it, hence proliferation problem.

 

[Bomb#20]

Making plutonium for bombs isn't like making plutonium for power plants.

True, but if you want to you can use plutonium from fuel for bomb.
it's less economical but you can do it, hence proliferation problem.

There are breeder reactor designs optimized for nonproliferation. They turn the U-238 into plutonium and fission the plutonium within the reactor itself. Anybody who tries to extract some plutonium gets a lethal dose of radiation.

 

[bilby]

Making plutonium for bombs isn't like making plutonium for power plants.

True, but if you want to you can use plutonium from fuel for bomb.
it's less economical but you can do it, hence proliferation problem.

Any organisation with the capability to make weapons grade plutonium from power reactors already has the capability to build a specialist reactor for making weapons grade plutonium.

Literally none of the nuclear weapons states have ever chosen to do things the hard way, given that it's so much cheaper and easier to just make weapons without the extra (and very expensive) steps.

You can do it, but you wouldn't, because it would be utterly pointless and cost a fortune.

Places like North Korea decided they wanted a bomb, so they made plutonium and built a bomb - without generating a single kWh of nuclear power.

Proliferation simply isn't a problem that can be in any way mitigated by limiting the use of nuclear energy generation technologies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

U-238 can be bred to plutonium.

Can be, but then you have nuclear proliferation problem.

Nobody uses power reactors for bomb programs. Thus that leaves the only threat being diversion. There's a reasonably simple fix for this: Don't do full reprocessing, just remove the useful isotopes and the poisons, leave the rest. The plutonium will be mixed with hot debris, very easy to monitor for and likely to make a diversion attempt accomplish nothing more than suicide.

Furthermore, plutonium from a power reactor will have heavy contamination with Pu-240. While it is technically possible to make a bomb out of such material (there has been a successful test of a bomb based on power reactor plutonium) it's far harder than a normal bomb.

 

[bilby]

U-238 can be bred to plutonium.

Can be, but then you have nuclear proliferation problem.

Nobody uses power reactors for bomb programs. Thus that leaves the only threat being diversion. There's a reasonably simple fix for this: Don't do full reprocessing, just remove the useful isotopes and the poisons, leave the rest. The plutonium will be mixed with hot debris, very easy to monitor for and likely to make a diversion attempt accomplish nothing more than suicide.

Furthermore, plutonium from a power reactor will have heavy contamination with Pu-240. While it is technically possible to make a bomb out of such material (there has been a successful test of a bomb based on power reactor plutonium) it's far harder than a normal bomb.

Several of the new Gen IV fast reactor designs don't require reprocessing at all.

Molten chloride fast reactors, for example, can be fed spent fuel pellets from current thermal neutron reactors; The only "reprocessing" required is to mechanically chop up the fuel so it dissolves more rapidly in the molten chloride substrate.

The existing fuel in dry cask storage at current sites in the US is sufficient to supply the entire electricity consumption of the nation for a couple of centuries without any further uranium being mined.

It seems fairly obvious to me that the future is in liquid fuels, which are far more straightforward to regulate than solid fuel designs. Meltdowns aren't the safety risk that public imagination suggests, but they are very expensive, so a reactor that can't melt down, by reason of the fuel already being molten, would be a smart move.

Liquid fuels - molten salts - also have a number of advantages for producing industrial process heat directly, avoiding the inefficiencies inherent in using hot steam to generate electricity, only to convert that electricity back to heat.

 

[barbos]

Any organisation with the capability to make weapons grade plutonium from power reactors already has the capability to build a specialist reactor for making weapons grade plutonium.

True. But the idea it to make it secretly, without being bombed by the World Police.

 

[bilby]

Any organisation with the capability to make weapons grade plutonium from power reactors already has the capability to build a specialist reactor for making weapons grade plutonium.

True. But the idea it to make it secretly, without being bombed by the World Police.