The Canadian Reactors that can Burn Nuclear Waste

Currently, there are two advanced nuclear reactors being developed in New Brunswick, Canada, that can burn nuclear waste to generate electricity. How is that possible? Well, that’s what I’m here to explain.

SOURCES:
Fast Reactors:

ARC-100:

Moltex SSR-W:

Politics of SMRs:

CANDU Natural Uranium Equivalent Fuel:

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Intro
0:12 How Fast Reactors Work
2:10 The ARC-100
4:07 The Moltex SSR-W
5:50 Politics of SMRs
6:52 Could CANDU Reactors Burn Nuclear Waste?

[ProfessorGoose]

I wanted to clarify that "burning" nuclear waste doesn't mean to combust/incinerate it. "Burning" is just the term for when fuel is used in the reactor - these nuclear reactors don't combust anything, they merely reuse the spent fuel from traditional reactors.

[trulyinfamous]

Considering how little actual nuclear fuel is used in a reactor, nuclear waste from power plants shouldn't be as big of an issue as it is. Spent fuel still contains an immense amount of energy. It's like you had a glowstick which produced the brightest light for only a minute, but still produced mild light for a year, yet it was still thrown away after that minute.

[glynnec]

Referring to spent fuel as "nuclear waste" only adds the confusion.

Spent fuel just needs to be reprocessed into fresh fuel, then it can used to generate more power. This video gives several examples of how this is done.

The term "nuclear waste" should be reserved for the actual (low, medium, high)-level waste which is generated by various (medical, industrial, scientific, military) activities. It needs to be carefully handled and disposed of in secure, long-term facilities.



By tonnage, the amount of waste is small compared to spent fuel. However, on a *volumetric* basis the waste is the larger problem, mainly because spent fuel is so incredibly dense.

[takashitamagawa]

Passive shutdown in a nuclear reactor design is really crucial. The loss of electrical power and the resulting failure of coolant circulating systems caused the disaster at Fukushima. It is good that novel reactor designs which address safety and waste issues are being explored. Innovation in the nuclear power industry has been lacking for a long time.

[Nanook]

Japan had one of these liquid sodium cooled reactors. Problem, sodium is highly corrosive and combusts explosively when exposed to air and even more so water. Japan's reactor ate through a pipe, leaked sodium, started a fire.

Molten salt reactors have all the same advantages with none of the disadvantages. The salt though still somewhat corrosive is MUCH less corrosive than sodium AND is not flammable in the event of a leak.

[howardroth]

Canada has a great track record in the nuclear reactor realm with CANDU. Given we need energy and need to stop using fossil fuel, investing in nuclear is imperative. As we see in Europe today, wind and solar alone doesn't cut it. I believe China has an MSR going online very soon, and they have plans to share their technology with developing nations. If that works out, we'll see many countries escape poverty by have the energy they need to industrialize. There is so much good that can come from this, whether it's addressing climate change, reducing stockpiles of spent fuel, helping developing nations, and so on. Safety concerns have improved dramatically with these new designs and tech advances in alloys and sensors. The only thing that is of concern is that some of the advanced nuclear reactor technology will still allow an operator to obtain bomb grade material. I would like to see that those reactor technologies that can't produce bomb material are the ones being invested in, so the technology can be shared without worrying about someone initiating the destruction of humanity. Talking about the demise of humanity, I suspect that this new reactor technology is what will be needed to establish colonies on Mars. Lots of hope and opportunity ahead if we take our heads out of the anti-nuclear sand.

[terrytytula]

About bloody time, I've been asking this question for 20 years.

[wilbur]

Go Canada! Hopefully they can get it cheap enough for mass use in the future!

[TedSchoenling]

This is the kind of thinking that solves

[richard]

This type of fast breeder reactor at Dounreay in the UK about 30 years ago - no idea why the UK stopped this development.

[Planicaboys]

Great summary of it all! Key fact is that this is all proven technology, and was scrapped only due to funding issues. If these new wave of reactors can stay within budget and schedule, then the industry will have no problem with public support.

[kirillshmidt]

You haven't mentioned fast sodium reactors are in Russian electricity grid and functioning for decades (the BN series) with 800 MWh capacity. And it demonstrated capabilities to work on MOX fuel. Great that other countries picking up in fast reactors design.

[TheMusicalFruit]

It's cool to see that better nuclear reactor technologies are being developed. Looking at the numbers, it doesn't appear that green energy technologies will be enough to meet the world's energy demands if we quit using fossil fuels right now, so it looks like nuclear will help fill in the gaps. Great video!

[zoot]

Fast breeder reactors are nothing new and neither is converting uranium 238 into plutonium 239 for fuel. The thing is that fast breeder reactors generally are less controllable than the conventional reactors due to the changing nature of the fuel in and how breeder reactors have to be designed, which leaves less space for the safety measures in place at conventional reactors. I am still hoping for this to succeed because there are ways to make breeder reactors that are safe and efficient. And anyways i’m always happy to see new innovations in this field. As a nuclear engineer myself, I’m still a bit skeptical due to being very strict with my own work, but i think this could be a step forward for nuclear power if it works out.

[TheGreatSeraphim]

Its always been a well known fact "spent" fuel is still useable. Its just not enough to run a normal reactor at peek efficiency, cause thats all anyone seems to care about.

[cps]

Small correction -- Pu-239 is fissile like U-235, not fissionable. U-238 is fissionable. Slightly different meanings but still an important distinction.

[antonnym]

Thank you. This is very nice reporting! It is super-encouraging that these wasteburner reactors are actually being built. All good wishes.

[FlorentHenry]

Any prototype is expensive to develop; as a rule of thumb, they're on average PI-factor over budget. However, building them in series considerable lower their cost, mostly because you span the cost of tooling over many pieces instead of one.

[codaalive]

BN-800 reactor is interesting. It already works at 880MWe, while Brunswick is not built yet and will be small modular reactor if finished. Hope they do it, i want to see economics of this small, safe reactors because industry says only bigger really make sense from financial standpoint.

[jrtstrategicapital]

We used to work on breeder reactor designs back in the late 70s and early 80s until all funding and research was dropped….thanks to Jane Fonda at the time…we lost decades in important research.