GE To Turn World's Biggest Civilian Plutonium Stockpile Into Electricity

First time accepted submitter ambermichelle writes "GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy has proposed to the U.K. government to build an advanced nuclear reactor that would consume the country's stockpile of radioactive plutonium. The technology called PRISM, or Power Reactor Innovative Small Module, would use the plutonium to generate low-carbon electricity. The U.K. has the world's largest civilian stockpile of plutonium. The size of the stockpile is 87 tons and growing. Nuclear reactors unlock energy by splitting atoms of the material stored in fuel rods. This process is called fission. For fission to be effective, neutrons – the nuclear particles that do the splitting and keep the reaction going – must maintain the right speed. Conventional reactors use water to cool and slow down neutrons, keeping fission effective. But water-cooled reactors leave some 95 percent of the fuel's potential energy untapped."

Water-cooled reactors are only 5% efficient?

[timeOday]

I am amazed that conventional water-cooled reactors are only 5% efficient. It sure casts the seemingly low efficiency factors of other alternative fuels(such as the cheapest solar panels) into a different light.

isn't untapped energy a more universal problem?

[khallow]

But water-cooled reactors leave some 95 percent of the fuel's potential energy untapped."

I gather the problem is that decay products poison the fuel after it's been run for a while. One would still need to reprocess fuel rods on a regular basis. But once that's done, you can get more than 5% of the energy from a fuel rod.

Re:New power source?

[ae1294]

This 'fission' technology sounds interesting, but is it safe?

Yes perfectly safe as long as nothing goes wrong.

wording

[StuffMaster]

I'm getting tired of all these posts saying "some entity to do something" when the summary says "proposed".

Assuming that "to" means "going to" to everybody else as it does me, I'd appreciate it if the editors could stop doing or allowing that.

Re:New power source?

[geekoid]

" low frequency risk is still beyond catastrophic.

Not with modern generators.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor [wikipedia.org]
Liquid metal thorium reactor are incredibly safe.
No event in any nuclear reactor that has ever happened can happen in one. Plus you can burn waste in them.
Oh and the waster from these return to background radiation levels in 200-500 year. Very workable, and possible to store on site. No shipping the waste.

The US government should be building 20 of these right now. And the US government should operate them;remove the desire to make bonuses , and all other problems go away with it.

These are the solution until we can get cheaper solar, or maintainable fusion.