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To: Nateman

Fun fact is a 1GWe reactor needs 1.5-2 billion cubic meters of seawater for condenser cooling while rejecting 2000 megawatt hours of waste heat per hour of operation.

This is enough heat to desal 130,000,000 gallons per day using rapid spray evaporation desalination.

2*10^9(m^3) of seawater holds 6,600kg of uranium in it.

The Chinese have a electrode that grabbed 100% from the south China Sea in testing and the cost was $83 / kg for the yellow cake you could see it in the carbon fiber membrane it was so caked pun intended up.

6,600kg of uranium in a fast IFR type reactor is 541,200terajoules worth of energy.

At 33% thermal to electricity it’s 49,500,000 kWh or 5.56 gigawatt years electric.

In other words the seawater coolant is carrying 5.56 times the electrical output in uranium mass flows. You can fuel 5 GWe of reactors of a single GWe coolant flows.

This only holds for fast spectrum reactors if you can only use the 0.7% U235 isotope then you need 150 plus tonnes per year of uranium so you can strip out that tiny fraction and enrich it to 4.5% U235 it’s criminal to do this when we have fast reactor tech ready to use.


72 posted on 05/04/2026 1:16:11 PM PDT by GenXPolymath
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To: GenXPolymath
"rejecting 2000 megawatt hours of waste heat per hour of operation."
73 posted on 05/04/2026 1:24:26 PM PDT by TexasGator (T11..)
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To: GenXPolymath

Late in uranium thermal reactor cycles, Pu is producing about 40% of the heat.


74 posted on 05/04/2026 1:50:12 PM PDT by TexasGator (T11..)
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To: GenXPolymath
...At 33% thermal to electricity...

Your guess was too high. More like 25%. Did you know the U-235 fissile loses 10% of its energy in the form of neutrinos ? If you had some method of detecting those ghostly particles our submarines would shine like mega spotlights.

78 posted on 05/04/2026 3:05:27 PM PDT by Nateman (Democrats did not strive for fraud friendly voting merely to continue honest elections.)
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