China DUPIC Fuel Recycling Program to Reuse Us Nuclear Fuel Without Chemical Recycling in Trials.

The process works because of the extremely high neutron efficiency of heavy water reactors, which are moderated by deuterium oxide.

Deuterium has a very low neutron capture cross section, as close to helium-4's zero, as one can practically get.

The heavy water reactor - originally designed by our neighbors to the North - can run on natural, unenriched uranium.

Used nuclear fuel from traditional Light Water Reactors - the most widely used kind of nuclear reactor worldwide - is enriched, containing typically 3 - 4% (sometimes more) U-235, which is only present in natural uranium at 0.7%.

The DUPIC cycle - which is also being explored in South Korea - uses used nuclear fuel, in which the concentration has fallen, upon burn-up, to less than 2%. What actually causes used nuclear fuel to shut down is not actually consumption of the U-235, but rather the accumulation of high neutron absorbing fission products like Sm-149 (and others). This accumulation of neutron poisons is somewhat offset by the presence of about 1% plutonium which increases reactivity and allows higher burn-ups in nuclear fuels.

If adopted widely, this process will convert all of the world's used nuclear fuel - usually called by people who know no nuclear science "nuclear waste" - into usable fuel resources.

I am surprised the Chinese are piloting this work. I expected South Korea to get there first.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=27401&terms=DUPIC">Chinese Candu reactor trials uranium reuse

Done with consideration of the importance of durability. SO far they have really been disappoiting the Chinese populace just with respect to building apartment buildings that don't come crumbling down.

And my Chinese made garden hose leaks within three weeks of purchase.

make the steel for these reactors. the containment vessel is forged in japan but the rest of the metal will be made in china.

the chinese are behind but catching up to the rest of the industrialized countries in steel processing.

the company my son used to work for ordered printing presses from china...the main frame split in half and others could`t be aligned. chinese industrial ball bearings are to be avoided at all costs.

AECL’s $26 billion bid was based on the construction of two 1,200-megawatt Advanced Candu Reactors,
working out to $10,800 per kilowatt of power capacity.
By comparison, in 2007 the Ontario Power Authority had assumed for planning purposes a price of $2,900
per kilowatt, which works out to about $7 billion for the Darlington expansion. During Ontario Energy
Board hearings last summer, the power authority indicated that anything higher than $3,600 per kilowatt
would be uneconomical compared to alternatives, primarily natural gas.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x201750

Actually, it seems that China, India, Romania and South Korea, all of which have currently active heavy water moderated reactors, could not care less what a bunch of gas apologists with no science educations in the West think of their program.

In fact, Canada built lots of heavy water reactors, and no, they didn't break the bank. Thus, if the Canadian nuclear infrastructure has been destroyed, it was probably destroyed by dumb anti-nuke rhetoric.

Anti-nukes complaining about the FOAKE costs of nuclear power are rather like arsonists wanting to be applauded for joining the volunteer fire department.

I note that there is NOT ONE solar facility on earth that can provide 1000 MWe of continuous average power at 90% capacity utilization for under $40 billion dollars.

If one can do math - and anti-nukes, um, can't - and understand that solar energy has a capacity utilization of something like 10% of peak capacity, one can glean these figures from the solar buzz data: http://solarbuzz.com/Moduleprices.htm

The calculation runs like this ($4.23/peakwatt)*1000MW*1000W/MW/0.1 = $42,300,000,000, not counting batteries and redundant infrastructure and fuels.

That doesn't stop lightweight bloggers with no science educations from saying that solar energy is cheap.

If it were, with all the insipid mindless cheering going on for 5 decades for the solar scam, it would have been a significant form of energy, and would be producing something like the 16 exajoules of electricity the lying gas salesman Amory Lovins predicted for it in 1979.

The reality, as I never tire of pointing out, is different: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html

Neither India, China, Romania, France or any other country on the planet care about soothsaying from light weight bloggers repeating their same mindless crap over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over like some of those unfortunate people who muttered to themselves when the State of New York dumped its mental patients on the street.

To repeat: The price of electricity in nuclear powered and renewable powered countries require nosoothsaying from dumb mystics armed with ignorant charts and graphs that are not connected with reality.

The price of electricity in nuclear and non-nuclear is an observable experimental fact.

http://www.energy.eu/#Domestic">France, 0.138 euros/kwh; Denmark, 0.268 euros/kwh

Wanna cut, pase post the ignorant drivel form God, um, I mean Mark Z. Jacobson again?

Go for it. http://www.energy.eu/#Domestic">France, 0.138 euros/kwh; Denmark, 0.268 euros/kwh

Wanna post the stupid graphic above again and again and again and again?


http://www.energy.eu/#Domestic">France, 0.138 euros/kwh; Denmark, 0.268 euros/kwh


http://www.energy.eu/#Domestic">France, 0.138 euros/kwh; Denmark, 0.268 euros/kwh

http://www.energy.eu/#Domestic">France, 0.138 euros/kwh; Denmark, 0.268 euros/kwh

If you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, just wave your hands and repeat yourself saying the same dumb things over and over.

The answer will still be the same: http://www.energy.eu/#Domestic">France, 0.138 euros/kwh; Denmark, 0.268 euros/kwh

For one thing - even in the best of equations, the pro nuke crowd leaves out the cost of the transport and storage of the nuclear material once it has been used. It seems they cannot reason that those costs are indeed part of the overall costs.

Yucca Mountain discussions mean anything to you?

And then, you have to look at the fact that the nuclear power plants expose people to cancers that they wouldn't have had without those plants being built. What are the costs of those cancers?

Solar power harnesses the sun - which is of course guilty of skin cancers. But the sun exists whether or not we use it for its solar power -whereas nuke plants only exist and so go on to expose the population to cancer because of our building them.

Case closed.

The govt collected the money 0.1 cents on every kWh generated. Billions of dollars a year. The govt collected for decades and then said "oops no Yucca". Kinda like paying the movers and storage company to put your stuff in storage and after you pay they just don't show up.

The cost of spent fuel storage is included in life-cycle cost of nuclear power. Life-cycle means life-cycle. Mining, milling, enrichment, fabrication, plant construction, interest/capital costs, fission (power generation), maintenance, labor/operational, spent fuel storage, decommissioning = life-cycle costs. The total life-cycle costs / life-cycle power = life-cycle cost per kWh.

There is no credible evidence linking increased cancer with nuclear reactors in the United States. There significant studies (by EPA, DOE, American Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, World Health Organizations, dozens of universities) that all shows no link between cancer rates and proximity to nuclear reactor.

So case "not so" closed.

To said studies from
EPA,
DOE,
American Cancer Institute,
American Cancer Society,
World Health Organizations,
dozens of universities (6 will do)

We'll wait.

There is no credible evidence linking increased cancer with nuclear reactors in the United States.

Sort of ignores the years of research focusing on Washington state residents after that state went nuclear.

Oh and that state has a troubled financial history as well - very related to the nuclear industry.

But some will see only what they wish to see.