CANDU reactor questions
- From: nospam@xxxxxxxxxx (Paul Ciszek)
- Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 03:41:48 +0000 (UTC)
I can't find a newsgroup that specifically addresses nuclear power,
at least not on the panix newsserver, so I guess I will ask this here.
I have been reading about the CANDU reactor design, and had some questions.
1) If you fuel a CANDU reactor with natural unenriched uranium, and run
it until it is time to take that fuel out, what sort of re-processing
is needed to convert that spent fuel into something that can be used
in another CANDU reactor?
2) Can it be done without isotope separation? (i.e., the whole charm of
the CANDU design is supposed to be that you only need to chemically
isolate the uranium, and I was wondering if the same were true of
fuel reprocessing.)
3) What do you get after running the re-processed fuel? Can something
useful be extracted from that, or have you already reached the point
of diminishing returns?
4) When you do reach the point of diminishing returns, what are you
left with? i.e., what makes it no longer worth re-processing?
Besides fission products, are you left with U-238 and plutonium with
too many nusiance isotopes to make them worthwhile?
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