Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The projected increase in uranium price did not materialize, but if uranium demand increases in the future, then there may be renewed interest in fast reactors. The GFR base design is a fast reactor, but in other ways similar to a high temperature gas-cooled reactor. It differs from the HTGR design in that the core has a higher fissile fuel ...
Reactors that use lead or lead-bismuth eutectic can be designed in a large range of power ratings. The Soviet union was able to operate the Alfa-class submarines with a lead-bismuth cooled intermediate-spectrum reactor moderated with beryllium from the 1960s to 1998, which had approximately 30 MW of mechanical output for 155 MW thermal power (see below).
A fast neutron reactor uses fast neutrons, so it does not use a moderator. Moderators may absorb a lot of neutrons in a thermal reactor , and fast fission produces a higher average number of neutrons per fission, so fast reactors have better neutron economy making a plutonium breeder reactor possible.
A fast reactor is therefore more efficient than a thermal reactor for using plutonium and higher actinides as fuel. These fast reactors are better suited for the transmutation of other actinides than thermal reactors. Because thermal reactors use slow or moderated neutrons, the actinides that are not fissionable with thermal neutrons tend to ...
The CNRS project EVOL (Evaluation and viability of liquid fuel fast reactor system) project, with the objective of proposing a design of the molten salt fast reactor (MSFR), [72] released its final report in 2014. [73] Various MSR projects like FHR, MOSART, MSFR, and TMSR have common research and development themes. [74]
The nuclear fuel cycle employs a full actinide recycle with two major options: One is an intermediate-size (150–600 MWe) sodium-cooled reactor with uranium-plutonium-minor-actinide-zirconium metal alloy fuel, supported by a fuel cycle based on pyrometallurgical reprocessing in facilities integrated with the reactor. The second is a medium to ...
A gas-cooled reactor (GCR) is a nuclear reactor that uses graphite as a neutron moderator and a gas (carbon dioxide or helium in extant designs) as coolant. [1] Although there are many other types of reactor cooled by gas, the terms GCR and to a lesser extent gas cooled reactor are particularly used to refer to this type of reactor.
The BN-350 fast-neutron reactor at Aktau, Kazakhstan.It operated between 1973 and 1994. A fast-neutron reactor (FNR) or fast-spectrum reactor or simply a fast reactor is a category of nuclear reactor in which the fission chain reaction is sustained by fast neutrons (carrying energies above 1 MeV, on average), as opposed to slow thermal neutrons used in thermal-neutron reactors.