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Kamikuza said..FormulaNova said..
That link does not go into the detail required to build my own nuclear bomb at home. Please provide additional links to help me achieve this goal.
Seriously though, it sounds like Bill Gates is onto it. Supporting development of a reactor that can use material that is otherwise useless in a conventional reactor and designed to survive cooling accidents. Until this design is commercially available...
Lazy bum!
Reactors are designed to "survive" cooling accidents...
www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1209/ML12093A088.pdf I actually did google it at the time and material for a bomb needs to be something like greater than 90% or 95% of u235, whereas power grade was greater than 5%... or at least thats what I remember from this morning. Any wannabee despots of 3rd world countries that want more info need to google it themselves.
As for existing reactors to survive cooling accidents, I haven't read that article yet, but the doco on the Bill Gates supported reactor said that it was intended to survive on passive cooling alone if things fail... which suggests that other designs need active cooling to avoid meltdown... but I can always be wrong.
The aim of the design was to be able to use a larger amount of the material life before it becomes waste. I think we build one, no three, at Maralinga (sorry native peoples that have moved back, but it might give you better fresh water?) to test it out, build the HVDC interconnects from SA to WA using Macroscien developments, and then we are set to use it for baseload and renewables for the rest.
Of course, the design needs to cater for relatively fast changes in load, and failing that, pump something to somewhere else or turn the extra power into petrol(!!! yeah!!!).