Sentences with phrase «fast reactors because»

Thus, liquid sodium is the coolant of choice in fast reactors because it can effectively transfer heat away from the nuclear fuel, while at the same time maximizing the number of fast neutrons.

Not exact matches

Because the fast - reactor waste would contain no significant quantity of long - lived transuranics, its radiation would decay to the level of the ore from which it came in several hundred years, rather than tens of thousands.

An Outdated Strategy Early nuclear engineers expected that the plutonium in the spent fuel of thermal reactors would be removed and then used in fast - neutron reactors, called fast breeders because they were designed to produce more plutonium than they consume.

We understand that their first fast reactors will use oxide or carbide fuel rather than metal — a less than optimum path, chosen presumably because the PUREX reprocessing technology is mature, whereas pyroprocessing has not yet been commercially demonstrated.

Fast reactors can extract more energy from nuclear fuel than thermal reactors do because their rapidly moving (higherenergy) neutrons cause atomic fi ssions more effi ciently than the slow thermal neutrons do.

Mark Poling, wastewater treatment director at Durham, says it could be faster, because the reactors are functioning better than expected.

Conceived in the 1970s, Monju was once at the leading edge of research into fast fission reactors, which have always been controversial because they burn plutonium, an ingredient in bombs.

But experimental fast reactors in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France have all been shut down because of high costs and concerns over handling plutonium.

Superphenix the French fast - breeder reactor shut down in 1990 because air leaked into its liquid sodium coolant, can not start up again until a public inquiry has been held, Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy announced this week.

The dream turned nasty because technologically the fast reactor was too demanding.

«The possibility of cooperative work with Japan in the area of fast reactors is something that is attractive to us precisely because they have Monju,» Daniel Poneman, the U.S. deputy secretary of energy, said at a press conference today.

Poneman said Monju came up in the discussions because of the possibility of using fast reactors to burn plutonium and the long - lived isotopes of elements such as neptunium and americium that account for much of the radiotoxicity of nuclear waste.

The idea remains that fast reactors, which get their name because the neutrons that initiate fission in the reactor are zipping about faster than those in a conventional reactor, could offer a speedy solution to cleaning some nasty nuclear waste, which fissions better with fast neutrons, while also providing electricity as a by - product.

«Unlike today's nuclear reactor, the IFR [integral fast reactor] can generate unlimited amounts of inexpensive clean power for hundreds of thousands of years... It provides an excellent solution for what to do with our nuclear waste because it can use our existing nuclear waste for fuel and it is significantly more proliferation - resistant than other methods of dealing with nuclear waste... The IFR is also inherently safe.

«Integral fast reactors avoid this whole problem because you never have to enrich uranium.

I support R&D for fast and thermal neutron molten salt breeder reactors because I believe they can be proven safe from high energy criticality accidents from basic principles of physics.