Re: Nuclear Power Plants

In regard to the table that went up yesterday for power plants....

First, 5% enrichment is good for commercial electric generating stations
and the efficiency of 36% is good.

However, for any sort of space reactor propulsion, enrichment better go
up to near 60% or even higher depending on the fuel.  For the most part
the extra U-238 is just wasted weight (ok, maybe a little conversion to
plutonium but not much (relatively speaking.))

Also, efficiency for the space reactors is a lot higher than 36%
if you figure just for propulsion.  If you want to make some sort of
black box energy conversion for electrical energy production, I can
see something anywhere from 45 to 60 percent efficient within the next
few hundred years.  We're already looking at 40 percent and
up in some high tech applications today.

Also, this black box conversion from thermal energy to electrical energy
would be the same regardless of the power source, fission or fusion or
antimatter (for a given tech level.)

The "efficiency" better be defined before putting it in table form.  I think
most people are used to efficiency meaning "energy out/energy available"
(to be simplistic.)

The table is a good start (heck, all _I've_ done is criticize...Klaus did the
work!) but there are spots for improvement.

 *-=Carl=-*  INTERNET - [email removed] | In battle, you can do   |
             GEnie - C.FAGO1               | everything right...     |
 Carl Fago   State College, PA             | and _still_ lose!       |