Novel Hyper-Breeder Nuclear Reactor Concept

This webinar will describe a novel hyper-breeder reactor requiring only natural uranium fuel and a breeding ratio of 1.55, which allows the reactor to be started up with some of the depleted uranium fuel. This not only allows operation without uranium enrichment but quickly degrades all plutonium to reactor grade, making it largely attractive from a nonproliferation perspective. The presentation will walk through the reactor physics that enable this to occur and survey the published papers that detail the interesting results from this design.