Comment by AnthonyMouse
13 hours ago
> Indeed, Canada was also indirectly responsible for many Nuclear weapons proliferation issues in North Korea, India, and Pakistan. Selling small research reactors to emerging economies had long-term consequences.
What does that have to do with how the US can deal with spent fuel? The reactors that consume spent fuel are ordinary power generating reactors rather than small research reactors and the US already has nuclear weapons.
> As a side note, the CANDU are famously bad designs known to develop heavy maintenance costs even to remain operational
The CANDU design is from the 1960s. It's not what you would actually use for a new project, it's an empirical demonstration that reactors that run on spent fuel are a real thing that actually exist rather than merely a theoretical possibility. There are also modern designs under construction in Europe and the same company is partnering with a US company to permanently destroy some of the US government's cold war era plutonium.
>What does that have to do with how the US can deal with spent fuel?
Unlike France, the US did not use a closed-loop multi-grade fuel cycle for economic reasons.
>an empirical demonstration that reactors that run on spent fuel
It is more complex, as running on low-grade fuel is not the same as running on spent-fuel.
However, China's recent Thorium reactor facility is interesting, and it would be neat to see some real data on its output. The US shuttered their own facility a long time back, but it is unclear why the research was effectively abandoned. There probably was a legitimate reason, but who knows for sure. =3
> Unlike France, the US did not use a closed-loop multi-grade fuel cycle for economic reason
Those are the existing reactors. The premise is building new ones of a different design.
> It is more complex, as running on low-grade fuel is not the same as running on spent-fuel.
It has to be accounted for but it's not some kind of impossible sorcery.
> The US shuttered their own facility a long time back, but it is unclear why the research was effectively abandoned. There probably was a legitimate reason, but who knows for sure.
There is a lot of politics involved in energy in general and nuclear in particular.
There's no such thing as a closed-loop fuel cycle - that would be perpetual motion.
In a nuclear energy context "closed cycle" just means that the uranium and plutonium is separated out from the spent fuel for future reuse. The loop is only closed in the sense that some of the spent fuel material that leaves the reactor will enter it again in the future. It doesn't imply that new inputs won't be added to the loop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle_in_France#C...