space exploration? Ughh! get out!

@@Raffael-Tausend Yes, you know that thing beyond the glass dome...

To extract Am and Np out of the Purex stream(if you do that allready anyway) should be barley a problem,(an Make gray-rods out of the Np237 for further transmutation to Pu238) but I 'fear' that we don't need that much RTGs,.. as we have Np237 and Am in the spent fuels anyway. ;)

yeppppppppppp... and pm-147 for betavoltaics and strontium-90 RTGs

Hello can I talk to you.. I have few question..please reply..

This is only half true. Fast breeders (Th Reactors) were built in Germany but the technology has been abandoned because the technological challenges could not be mastered. The Russians still have a Lage scientific Thorium reactor up and running. The only problem the Thorium reactor solves is the shortage of fuel. It is by no means less dangerous or less toxic. This is, unfortunately, Internet propaganda.

Watch this for example: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fmfQmapjeLOrl6c

@@flugschulerfluglehrer .....are these molten salt? This is also applicable to fast spectrum reactors. Alvin Weinberg was not wrong.

@@flugschulerfluglehrer Yea, saw it long time ago. Thorium in a water cooled reactor is sub par idea.

Cqwet Dbdfte Yes. In Germany it was molten salt. For any Thorium reactor you need a non moderating coolant. This is either a liquid metal or a molten salt reactor. Effectively you are breeding U238 and Pl239 from the Thorium blanket. You then have to refine the metals in the blanket and fission is sustained by the fuel rods made of Plutonium and Uranium. If you reprocess depleted fuel rods you have effectively the same fuel. France, Japan, Germany, the UK amongst others reprocesse their fuel rods. The US does not because it is not cost effective. There is absolutely no benefit in Thorium reactors.

If you calculate value of this waste Energy, is not worth to build Plant to recover it.

Alweg Fan France and Russia have large reprocessing plants that also reprocess fuel for foreign customers. The UK has also been reprocessing nuclear fuel for over half a century, but they will stop reprocessing in 2020. Japan will open a large reprocessing plant in 2021. So as you can see, reprocessing nuclear fuel is neither unusual, nor is it unsafe.

Trying to get weapons grade Plutonium for nuclear weapons out of spent or used nuclear fuel is a lot harder than most people think. Yes it is easy to separate Plutonium chemically from nuclear fuel once it was dissolved in concentrated nitric acid, BUT only one isotope is of any use for nuclear weapons, and that is Plutonium-239. Plutonium 238, 240, 241 and 242 are not usable, they either fission too quickly or otherwise poison the chain reaction. So even if terrorists managed to get used fuel from MOST nuclear reactors and managed to separate plutonium from it, they have to do the same process to enrich Uranium for nuclear reactors, and that requires a large facility that is impossible to hide. Most reactors create Plutonium as the Uranium-235 fissions, and towards the end of the life of the fuel, Plutonium generates more and more power in the reactor. There are fast breeder reactors, and unlike others they do generate almost exclusively Plutonium-239 and if that fuel is stolen, a state actor supporting a terror movement could furnish them a nuclear weapon because they can simply chemically separate it from the fuel. In all cases though, spent nuclear fuel is intensely, and lethally radioactive from dozens of very unstable isotopes. However, two isotopes make nuclear fuel deadly for generations for anyone near it without shielding, and that is Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, which emit intense gamma radiation as well as beta rays. They make it suicidal to steal nuclear fuel. However, burying it underground means after 300 years, the fuel turns into what amounts to a uranium and plutonium mine.

@@admiralxxx7906 There's more to 'value' than just the market price for the kilowatt. Imagine spent fuel ponds incorporated a sterling engine or a bank of peltiers as part of their heat dissipation systems. Now imagine a tsunami hits and takes out your diesel generators and your connection to the grid.. You've got a thermo-electric generator or a thermo-mechanical engine right in your reactor building, exactly where you need it. That little bit of 'Waste Energy' becomes a priceless asset when you need to run a circulator pump doesn't it?

@Alweg Fan According to the World Heath Organization, burning fossil fuels kills around 3 million people per year just due to the air quality effects. More folks die to accidents every year in the Oil and Gas industry than have ever credibly died to any kind of nuclear power accident. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency; all reprocessing accidents and near misses have resulted in only 3 deaths and 18 injuries (of which only one was considered 'severe'). Which tech do the facts say is dangerous? We need to quit being hysterical, put on our big-boy pants and move on from burning ancient dead stuff we dig up. It's time to take the lessons we've learned, build safer reactors and reprocessing facilities, dump the idiotic Linear no-threshold model, and get on with our lives.

Still no part 2?

@@MrDube999 still…