Comparison of hybrid reactor

                In my last blog, I described my design for a nuclear reactor core that would, in my opinion, be superior to the current design in multiple ways. In this blog, I will be comparing my reactor design to the design of modern day fission reactors.

                The first point of comparison is safety. This reactor would have a much higher operating temperature than current reactors. This makes a meltdown sound much more dangerous, but in fact it would be less of a problem, because any explosion that would occur would simply be caused by too much heat or pressure, not an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction. The likelihood of a meltdown is also drastically reduced because of the plethora of failsafe mechanisms and intrinsic safety of the reactions.

                The second point of comparison is the production of nuclear waste. This nuclear reactor would produce only short half-life radioisotopes that could be used in simpler power plants as fuel because they would produce large amounts of heat from radiation that could be used to generate electricity, or possibly even for other uses such as industrial heating. This reactor would also be able to consume long half-life nuclear waste as fuel, solving many of the storage and environmental concerns that are usually associated with nuclear waste.

                The last point of comparison is the availability, sustainability, and economic feasibility of fuel. This reactor would take two types of fuel, one with relatively large atoms and one with relatively small atoms. The small atom fuel, for the fusion reactor component, would be produced in the reactor from the cooling water. The neutrons used to produce this would come mostly from the splitting of the larger fuel. This larger fuel could be nuclear waste as mentioned above, or it could be thorium or natural uranium. This would mean that there would be no need for processing, and would theoretically last us millions to billions of years. This means that it would be considered a renewable resource.

                In comparison to current nuclear reactors, or worse, coal plants, in my opinion, this would win by a landslide. So what would this all mean for you, the average person? The main thing that it would mean is dirt cheap electricity. This would cause an increase in the use of electric vehicles. This increased use of electric vehicles coupled with the zero emissions from the power plant would remove the top two sources of greenhouse gasses. Overall, I think that the benefits of this would be massive and cause good effects across almost everything indirectly economically or environmentally.