What are "Breeder Reactors"?

Question

What are breeder reactors? How are they different from regular reactors? And what are the advantages/ disadvantages of them?

Answer 1

A breeder reactor will produce more fuel than it uses. The reactor would consume U-235 laced with lots of U-238. The U-239 absorbs a neutron and goes through two beta decays to form Pu-239.

Big disadvantage? You have to extract the Pu-239 and that produces LOTS of radioactive waste.

BTW, I think Pu-239 is not useful for a reactor, making its only real use that of being in bombs.

Answer 2

Breeder reactors are reactors that produce more fuel, specifically plutonium, by neutron bombardment of 238U. Their big advantage is that the 238U, not just the 235U, gets used, because it is turned into 239Pu, which is fissile and therefore a possible nuclear fuel. Their big disadvantage is that to do this you have to reprocess the fuel, which is not easy.

There is the further problem that this technology makes it all too easy to generate weapons-grade plutonium. Weapons grade material has to be more concentrated than reactor grade, because the chain reaction works much less efficiently at high temperatures that if the neutrons have time to slow down. That is why weapons grade uranium is more heavily enriched in 235U. Enriching in an isotope (concentrating up 235U) is more difficult than that separating out an element (separating 239Pu from the general mix).

Answer 3

these are the special reactors whuch convert a non-fissionable radioactive material to fissionable radio active material .e.g. U-238 is non-fissionable but can be made fissonable with Breeder . U 235 is not available in large amount so some other materials are used as a fuel in Nuclear reactors which are made fit for fission using a breeder . A nuclear reacter can fission a fuel but a beerder makes a non-fissionable material fissionable