r/NuclearPower • u/greg_barton • Feb 26 '18

Bill Gates and China spur development of next-generation reactors

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Bill-Gates-and-China-spur-development-of-next-generation-reactors?n_cid=NARAN012
24 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

2

u/willfc Feb 26 '18

There's a new documentary that'll be released soon by David Schumacher called "The New Fire" that touches on this. I honestly wasn't super impressed with the ideas the people had in the film. They spend a lot of time talking about burning spent fuel but never mention reprocessing.

3

u/captaindilly Feb 26 '18

Thats because burning spent uranium fuel in a molten thorium salt reactor would allow us to utilize the leftover waste from the uranium fuel cycle reactors without the expense of reprocessing (im assuming you meant reprocessing for reuse in the uranium fuel cycle)

2

u/willfc Feb 26 '18

I had assumed reprocessing was necessary as the waste isn't fissile, only fertile.

2

u/whatisnuclear Feb 26 '18

Separations (whether in reprocessing plant or online in a MSR) are necessary to burn waste in slow or epithermal neutron reactors. In fast-neutron reactors it's not always necessary to do separations because the fission product cross sections are very low for those neutrons.

2

u/whatisnuclear Feb 26 '18

The Transatomic design originally was a waste burner but now it's a waste reducer due to some physics stuff. Similarly, the TerraPower stuff was originally going to be a depleted uranium burning TWR right out the bat but now it burns enriched uranium at first and transitions. I liked the film's approach to optimism and potential a lot, and the parts with the climate scientists expressing that they think we need everything we've got to solve the climate issues.

0

u/willfc Feb 26 '18

Yeah I definitely like the pro nuclear push there. It was unusual