TR News Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant is granted Nuclear status

[Heartbang]

Where do the spent fuel go? It has its uses, yknow?

 

[Angry Turk !!!]

Where do the spent fuel go? It has its uses, yknow?

There is probably a official and an unofficial deal. Just a guess.

 

[Heartbang]

There is probably a official and an unofficial deal. Just a guess.

"Huzzah, the tentpole to boomstick pipeline is alive!"

 

[Nilgiri]

Where do the spent fuel go? It has its uses, yknow?

Since its an IAEA safeguarded reactor, back to Russia for reprocessing as is done with IAEA closed loop agreements till Turkiye has its own IAEA safeguarded reprocessing facility (which makes little sense at this early stage of just a few reactors to provide for it).

Spent Uranium fuel (since this is a VVER reactor) has no real useful route to WMD program anyway given the costs of doing compared to just enriching in dedicated way from raw uranium.

Plutonium its different (something that for example gives Japan options given its plutonium "stockpile"), but its not a plutonium fuel or heavy water (Pu-producer) reactor here.

Akkuyu will play no role in a WMD program. Turkiye will have to do that separately.

 

[Heartbang]

Spent Uranium fuel (since this is a VVER reactor) has no real useful route to WMD program anyway given the costs of doing compared to just enriching in dedicated way from raw uranium.

Isn't Uranium fuel stuck in a positive neutron flow turn into plutonium, which then, depending in its usage time in the reactor, is perfectly usable in plutonium based WMDs?
I think we discussed this before.

 

[Nilgiri]

Isn't Uranium fuel stuck in a positive neutron flow turn into plutonium, which then, depending in its usage time in the reactor, is perfectly usable in plutonium based WMDs?
I think we discussed this before.

Yah but it only becomes economical (reactor side) with heavy water as the moderator.

Heavy water is a sweet spot area for neutron transparency (while still slowing them down enough for fission with the U-235 present), so you can essentially "flash" U-238 (regular bulk uranium) to turn into U-239 which immediately turns into Pu-239.

It can then be extracted (fairly quickly) before too much of the Pu-239 then captures another neutron and turns to Pu-240 (which is a contaminant for a bomb that is not easy to get rid of).

This is how a plutonium breeder works....a good fast conversion rate to Pu-239 from having a intense enough neutron flux due to heavy water (or graphite, but thats lost favour ever since chernobyl).

Light (i.e regular) water by and large absorbs neutrons too easily for breeding to happen feasibly. (The deuterium in heavy water already has a neutron stuck to it and the tritium capture is lot less frequent)

So yes over time you will produce some Plutonium 239 in the fuel rods, but it will be slow process and a bunch will also turn into Pu-240 over that time as well...so the whole thing becomes unfeasible (AFAIK) for breeding compared to heavy water. The neutron flux of regular water just doesnt have the same sweet spot as it absorbs neutrons more readily itself.

VVER in Akkuyu is a Light water reactor.

Heavy water reactors attract lot more IAEA safeguard scrutiny for this very reason as well.

Hence why countries like Iran simply went for centrifuges separately (with the claim this was for just larger expansion of nuclear energy and isotope program etc ) .

They didnt have a Pu generating reactor grandfathered in like say North Korea did with yongbyon using graphite there iirc ....(though the North Koreans have since augmented their fissile production with centrifuges too).

So you generally either need centrifuges and/or the right moderator essentially for fissile production (U-235 and Pu-239 respectively) of any relevant economy/scale/intensity.

 

[Gessler]

Turkish Republic is ready for nuclear war

To the best of my knowledge, the two technologies (reactor & bomb) can be broadly independent of each other.

One tech tree need not necessarily be related to the other.

 

[Rodeo]

It's not Turkiye's power plant. It Russia's. It's built under the term "Yap, İşlet, Sahip Ol." Which means it's Russia's till it's decommissioning. We have guaranteed to buy at least %70 of their production at $0.1235 per kWh which is much more expensive than our average buying rate. Russia is gonna milk us for fifteen years at this price. Considering that energy production costs are going down continuously, I doubt if we made the right decision to bring Russian nuclear powerplants into the heart of Anatolia.

Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I should correct a mistake of this post.

We're not actually required to buy the 70% of the total electricity output of the powerplant. We're obliged to buy the 70% of the supply of the first and second reactor of the powerplant. For the third and fourth reactors we have to buy at least 30% of the output.

 

[dBSPL]

In 2023, the first concrete step can be taken regarding the Sinop NPP. Also The location of the third power plant will probably be finalised. What we know now is that the third power plant will be located in a region close to the Bulgarian border. There is also the SMR issue. There is information that Turkish delegations are in talks with US and UK companies for approximately 20 SMRs, we do not yet know anything about the formula in which it will be integrated into the Turkish energy infrastructure. Perhaps not a third power plant, but a few nuclear power plants with a larger number but a smaller installed capacity.

The difficult part was the commissioning of the first reactor. We are now very close to that point. Especially the decision of the EU acquis on 'green' energy for nuclear energy will accelerate the process in Turkiye as much as possible. Financial instruments will expand. Within 20/25 years, we will supply 25 per cent, maybe more, of the total installed capacity from nuclear energy.

We are already taking giant steps forward in renewable energy. The third point to be underlined off-topic is that the EU has included natural gas cycle power plants too within the scope of green energy. We absolutely need to produce our own cycle turbines. Since the 90s and especially in the 2000s, natural gas cycle power plants have constituted a significant portion of the installed capacity in the country. With the transfer of domestic gas to the system, we see that the existing power plants will remain active and important for the next 30-40 years.

 

[Sanchez]

Especially the decision of the EU acquis on 'green' energy for nuclear energy will accelerate the process in Turkiye as much as possible.

Thanks France, for the first time ever