5 ms·

Do not mistake technical viability with economic viability. The 1st Breeder reactor went into service in 1962, there have been many after and they have all mee

Do not mistake technical viability with economic viability. The 1st Breeder reactor went into service in 1962, there have been many after and they have all meet the same fate. Yes, they can breed their own fuel but the total cost of doing it is wildly prohibitive. You can get gold/uranium/lithium from Ocean water, try and do it at a price people will actually pay for it. You can get minerals from space, so long as the market rate of $10 million a ton is viable... etc. As always, if I get proven wrong - that will be a great day!

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Yes, they can breed their own fuel but the total cost of doing it is wildly prohibitive. You're being too generous. It's could theoretically not can. An actually closed fuel loop has never happened.
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  It's not theoretical. EBR-1 actually made more fissile material than it consumed, as confirmed by chemical measurements in 1953 [1]. [1] https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/resourcefiles/aboutasme/who%20we%20are/engineering%20history/landmarks/39-experimental-breeder-reactor-i-1951.pdf https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/resourcefiles/aboutasm...
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    And did it run on said fuel? Or did any of them? It has never happened.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      I mean yes, it was continuously breeding and the result of that breeding was in the reactor and partially was used to sustain the reaction. What has not happened is that that fuel was removed from that reactor and then inserted into another reactor.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        > I mean yes, it was continuously breeding and the result of that breeding was in the reactor and partially was used to sustain the reaction. This is a lie just like the rest. EBR 1 had a separate core and blanket. It didn't run on the bred fuel any more than a PWR does.
        panick21_ 4y ago
        You are right, I thought Shippingport reactor 3 did but it also was a blanket design. I don't really think this matters that much. The neutronics is pretty well understood and the principle has been proven. Its just a matter of investing the money to do it.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Putting fertile material near fissile material and some sodium or lead or beryllium has never been the hard part. Every attempt has sunk at the filthy and expensive reloading part and the making something that doesn't catch fire, leak everywhere or melt down when used with the blanket in part.
josephcsible 4y ago
It might be cost-prohibitive now, but is there any reason to think that it can't get cheaper?
- defrost 4y ago
  The entire history of mineral and energy extraction tells us that once dense deposits are exhausted extraction costs substantally increase even in the face of more sophisticated technology. eg: Oil was once extracted by sucking it out of a surface pool with a pump .. and now we are fracking for gas fractions. These "there are XXX tones at YY ppm (or ppb) of Z in the crust or ocean" calculations are almost always impractical wishful thinking economically infeasible bullshit. For example: Have a shot at guesstimating the tonnage and value of Palladium (used in catalytic converters) in the near vicinity of road surfaces - it falls there as by product waste. Now have a stab at the cost of ripping up and processing the central north american road surface to extract Palladium. Worth it? It'll be cheaper once we abandon cities and roads, of course.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    I think gold cyanidation considerably reduced costs for gold extraction compared to traditional mining methods which depended on higher-quality deposits.
    - defrost 4y ago
      By "Traditional methods" I guess you mean pre 1887 methods? You still need a relatively high (ie greater than mean crustal compisition) gold percentage to make circuit leeching (by whatever method) profitable. On the matter of the articles discussion of uranium in the ocean - that's a dream of chasing something evermore expensive. If there was an empty ocean basin the size of the Earths oceans and if there was an efficient cheap extraction method, then we could pass the entire ocean through that process from our ocean to the empty basin (okay, this already sounds impractical). Instead (if we had this hypothetical cheap extraction) we'd find ourselves endlessly pumping the same ocean through the same process and forever chasing smaller and smaller concentrations.
panick21_ 4y ago
The reason for this is that commercial adoption happened with PWRs and after that the nuclear companies had no need to commercialize anything else. By the time Breeder research by government was happening the anti-nuclear movement of the 70/80 was already in full effect and research money was being cut and very few nuclear plants were being built so there wasn't much reason invest in commercial breeders. Specially because fuel isn't that expensive in the first place and waste isn't actually a big problem either. There are still other good reason to create breeders and if we are gone develop next generation reactors, we might as well go in that direction.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> Yes, they can breed their own fuel but the total cost of doing it is wildly prohibitive. You're being too generous. It's could theoretically not can. An actually closed fuel loop has never happened.

acidburnNSA 4y ago
It's not theoretical. EBR-1 actually made more fissile material than it consumed, as confirmed by chemical measurements in 1953 [1]. [1] https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/resourcefiles/aboutasme/who%20we%20are/engineering%20history/landmarks/39-experimental-breeder-reactor-i-1951.pdf https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/resourcefiles/aboutasm...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  And did it run on said fuel? Or did any of them? It has never happened.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    I mean yes, it was continuously breeding and the result of that breeding was in the reactor and partially was used to sustain the reaction. What has not happened is that that fuel was removed from that reactor and then inserted into another reactor.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      > I mean yes, it was continuously breeding and the result of that breeding was in the reactor and partially was used to sustain the reaction. This is a lie just like the rest. EBR 1 had a separate core and blanket. It didn't run on the bred fuel any more than a PWR does.
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        You are right, I thought Shippingport reactor 3 did but it also was a blanket design. I don't really think this matters that much. The neutronics is pretty well understood and the principle has been proven. Its just a matter of investing the money to do it.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Putting fertile material near fissile material and some sodium or lead or beryllium has never been the hard part. Every attempt has sunk at the filthy and expensive reloading part and the making something that doesn't catch fire, leak everywhere or melt down when used with the blanket in part.

josephcsible 4y ago

It might be cost-prohibitive now, but is there any reason to think that it can't get cheaper?

defrost 4y ago
The entire history of mineral and energy extraction tells us that once dense deposits are exhausted extraction costs substantally increase even in the face of more sophisticated technology. eg: Oil was once extracted by sucking it out of a surface pool with a pump .. and now we are fracking for gas fractions. These "there are XXX tones at YY ppm (or ppb) of Z in the crust or ocean" calculations are almost always impractical wishful thinking economically infeasible bullshit. For example: Have a shot at guesstimating the tonnage and value of Palladium (used in catalytic converters) in the near vicinity of road surfaces - it falls there as by product waste. Now have a stab at the cost of ripping up and processing the central north american road surface to extract Palladium. Worth it? It'll be cheaper once we abandon cities and roads, of course.
- eesmith 4y ago
  I think gold cyanidation considerably reduced costs for gold extraction compared to traditional mining methods which depended on higher-quality deposits.
  - defrost 4y ago
    By "Traditional methods" I guess you mean pre 1887 methods? You still need a relatively high (ie greater than mean crustal compisition) gold percentage to make circuit leeching (by whatever method) profitable. On the matter of the articles discussion of uranium in the ocean - that's a dream of chasing something evermore expensive. If there was an empty ocean basin the size of the Earths oceans and if there was an efficient cheap extraction method, then we could pass the entire ocean through that process from our ocean to the empty basin (okay, this already sounds impractical). Instead (if we had this hypothetical cheap extraction) we'd find ourselves endlessly pumping the same ocean through the same process and forever chasing smaller and smaller concentrations.

panick21_ 4y ago

The reason for this is that commercial adoption happened with PWRs and after that the nuclear companies had no need to commercialize anything else. By the time Breeder research by government was happening the anti-nuclear movement of the 70/80 was already in full effect and research money was being cut and very few nuclear plants were being built so there wasn't much reason invest in commercial breeders. Specially because fuel isn't that expensive in the first place and waste isn't actually a big problem either. There are still other good reason to create breeders and if we are gone develop next generation reactors, we might as well go in that direction.