Posted on 08/25/2005 4:11:34 AM PDT by CarrotAndStick
NEW DELHI: India unveiled before the international community on Thursday, its revolutionary design of a 'Thorium breeder reactor' that can produce 600 MW of electricity for two years 'with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres.'
Designed by scientists of the Mumbai-based Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the ATBR is claimed to be far more economical and safer than any power reactor in the world.
Most significantly for India, ATBR does not require natural or enriched uranium which the country is finding difficult to import. It uses thorium -- which India has in plenty -- and only requires plutonium as 'seed' to ignite the reactor core initially.
Eventually, the ATBR can run entirely with thorium and fissile uranium-233 bred inside the reactor (or obtained externally by converting fertile thorium into fissile Uranium-233 by neutron bombardment).
BARC scientists V Jagannathan and Usha Pal revealed the ATBR design in their paper presented at the week-long 'international conference on emerging nuclear energy systems' in Brussels. The design has been in the making for over seven years.
According to the scientists, the ATBR while annually consuming 880 kg of plutonium for energy production from 'seed' rods, converts 1,100 kg of thorium into fissionable uranium-233. This diffrential gain in fissile formation makes ATBR a kind of thorium breeder.
The uniqueness of the ATBR design is that there is almost a perfect 'balance' between fissile depletion and production that allows in-bred U-233 to take part in energy generation thereby extending the core life to two years.
This does not happen in the present day power reactors because fissile depletion takes place much faster than production of new fissile ones.
BARC scientists say that the ATBR with plutonium feed can be regarded as plutonium incinerator and it produces the intrinsically proliferation resistant U-233 for sustenance of the future reactor programme.
They say that long fuel cycle length of two years with no external absorber management or control manoeuvres "does not exist in any operating reactor."
The ATBR annually requires 2.2 tonnes of plutonium as 'seed'. Although India has facilities to recover plutonium by reprocessing spent fuel, it requires plutonium for its Fast Breeder Reactor programme as well. Nuclear analysts say that it may be possible for India to obtain plutonium from friendly countries wanting to dismantle their weapons or dispose of their stockpiled plutonium.
Of course they do. But your comment was that they violated INDIAN safety rule.
"The Union Carbide which operated in Bhopal was not exactly well known for their "fantastic" safety standards."
Prove it.
No, no! Batteries probably weighed less after usage, if they did so, because of escape of gases of reactions and the like. Nuclear energy produced is very obedient to the law E = mc^2. E is the energy produced, m is the ever so tiny change in mass, c is a large constant whose magnitude is the same as the value of the velocity of light, all in SI units.
If they could avoid, they would. Capitalism is very adaptive to change. Either you are wise and the corporations are idiots for doing it ever more so , or the vice-versa.
By the way, Indian stocks are booming. Why don't you try peddling your 'advice' to the ones who are outsourcing to India, and see if they'll listen? Lately, if you haven't heard, the American economy is booming, unlike any other developed economy. Did you miss the band?
Safe as mother's milk.
stolarstorm Occupation: Software Developer
'nuf said.
So is the energy produced by flashlight batteries. Just because the quantity is small doesn't mean it is any less obedient. Yes, mass change from outgassing, or even from dust accumulation would be far greater. That doen't mean there isn't also a mass change from energy conversion.
I don't know where you got that information from. Can you lead me to a reputable link on the same? I'd be grateful.
Electromagnetic repulsion is the reason why the fragments have the velocity in the first place. They are moving away from each other.
Loook at post #43. There is an equation there, E=mc^2. That equation says that if a battery has an energy change, there is also a mass change, no matter how small.
No.
Mass is not consumed in the electrochemical reaction that takes place in a battery.
The E=mc^2 equation applies to a closed system.
What happened to the energy that the battery no longer has once its depleted?
Batteries are chemical-reaction energy systems. No destruction of mass in any way, is what I am aware of. I want you to give me a link on how batteries use up mass to give energy. I am pretty confident there is no nuclear reaction happening in an electrolytic battery.
That energy went through the wires to light up a bulb, rotate the shaft of a motor, power up electronic circuits, pump out music from a speaker, and so on...
True
No destruction of mass in any way, is what I am aware of.
Energy has mass. There is energy that is no longer in the battery once it's been used.
Sorry, but this simply isn't true. The energy comes from the mass difference due to the fission of the isotope, nothing else. There is no guarantee, even, that the two particles have the same sign of charge, depending on which one gets more or less of the original fissioned atom's electrons.
Look dude, my PhD minor subject area was Nuclear Science, this is kindergarten type nuclear knowledge.
Right and that energy has mass.
Nope, if you are suggesting that the electrons have mass, sure they do, but the same number of electrons returned to the battery after flowing about the circuit, through the return path of the circuit.
The electrons play no significant role in nuclear (hence the term nuclear) fission. It is the splitting of the nucleus that matters, and all the resulting fragments are going to have positive charge.
What about beta particles then? They have a negative charge!
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