atomfullerene t1_j19qxu4 wrote on December 22, 2022 at 6:34 PM

Reply to comment by Nescio224 in How do fusion scientists expect to produce enough Tritium to sustain D-T fusion (see text)? by DanTheTerrible

Don't breeders produce fissile materials that could be used in weapons? I thought proliferation concerns were the main thing keeping them from being more widely adopted.

Nescio224 t1_j19ufka wrote on December 22, 2022 at 6:56 PM

Yes, but that depends on the specific breeder design. Besides, if someone really wants nuclear weapons, there are a thousand different paths. Just look at north korea. The wikipedia article on breeder reactors states the reason why there is not more interest in breeder in the first paragraph: >Breeders were at first found attractive because they made more complete use of uranium fuel than light water reactors, but interest declined after the 1960s as more uranium reserves were found,[2] and new methods of uranium enrichment reduced fuel costs.

Breeders could extract 100 times more energy from the same fuel rod than an LWR can, but even at 1% efficiency LWR's are efficient enough that fuel cost is not an issue. That's just how OP the energy density of the fuel is.

[deleted] t1_j1bp9jc wrote on December 23, 2022 at 2:55 AM

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RobusEtCeleritas t1_j1agwgi wrote on December 22, 2022 at 9:25 PM

If you can breed fuel for a reactor, you can inherently breed fuel for a weapon too. Any spent fission fuel can in theory be reprocessed, and have material diverted for weapons purposes.

But that's why organizations like the IAEA closely monitor fuel cycles for proliferation concerns.