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There are CANDU reactors which burn U238 and are used to produce energy.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 07:52:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Unless the Wikipedia article is missing something, no they don't...

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 08:02:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Running on natural uranium, they start-up with the U235 in it, but during the cycle between fwo refuelling, they do turn a lot of the u238 in p239 (that's called having a "high breeding ratio", all reactors have a breeding ratio, they're not call breeders unless it's >1, self-sustained cycles if ~1, and vanilla if <1. In a PWR, something like 25% of the energy at the end of the life of the rods is from p239=from the original u238. The future EPR will have a breeding ratio of 0.7, so it will be even higher than that.)

Candu reactors have high breeding ratios with uranium and thorium, unfortunately the uranium side makes them proliferation friendly (I have a canadian science paper on this I should deconstruct one day).

Pierre
by Pierre on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 at 04:18:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]
They use natural (unenriched) uranium, not U-238 if I remember correctly.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 08:07:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
True.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 27th, 2006 at 08:09:07 PM EST
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