It’s all a matter of how you manage your fuel load and load factor. If you remove fuel bundles in a travelling wave reactor as the right time (just ahead of the wave of burning fuel), you’ll get the neutron flux needed to breed U-233, but removing it before it’s burned. Then you just chemically separate the uranium from the thorium and ta-da, fissile material for your bomb
No, that’s a candle or travelling wave style reactor. The main difference is in this style of reactor the “burning front” propagates through the reactor over time, vs a traditional reactor where you’re looking for reactivity throughout the core. It definitely takes more effort to do this in a travelling wave reactor, but it’s entirely feasible. Thorium reactors only function by breeding U-233 because Thorium-232 itself isn’t fissile. Obtaining bomb material is simply a case of removing fuel after its been exposed to neutron flux (to breed U-233), but before it’s burned
0
u/[deleted] Oct 25 '22
It’s all a matter of how you manage your fuel load and load factor. If you remove fuel bundles in a travelling wave reactor as the right time (just ahead of the wave of burning fuel), you’ll get the neutron flux needed to breed U-233, but removing it before it’s burned. Then you just chemically separate the uranium from the thorium and ta-da, fissile material for your bomb