Talk:Traveling wave reactor

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Hi folks. This reactor was featured in the September 2009 edition of Nuclear News, the trade magazine of the American Nuclear Society. It's generating lots of buzz, so there's a new version of this page up now. Check it out. Ntouran (talk) 01:32, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please expand/rewrite this stub. I would expect much public interest in the topic in the coming weeks. Traveling wave nuclear reactors were presented to the American Nuclear Society this year, and they were in the news last week (see my references). The concept is not new, but I found no Wikipedia entry mentioning them. It could be made a subsection of Breeder_reactor. I'm no expert on nuclear, so someone else will need to write the entry. Thanks. DuBois (talk) 01:38, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This article is based on rather promotional and speculative theoretical discussions and a "preliminary design" of a reactor by a commercial entity that has never been constructed or tested. The "technology" is not a technology because it doesn't exist, and has all the credibility of cold fusion research at Utah universities of a few years ago. It is unclear that this is sufficiently notable to warrant an article in Wikipedia. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 01:59, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Its theoretical existence and publication before a working prototype has been developed may be a means of extorting license fees rather than actually furthering the state of the art. The company carrying the patent has been described as a patent troll. As such, although the invention may not work in reality, it may work as a chilling effect on breeder reactors.Kgrr (talk) 16:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gravity waves

"The traveling wave reactor is proposed for the generation of gravitational waves with nuclear reactions" I don't believe that the TWR and the apparatus described in this article have anything in common except for their name. I going to be bold and will remove it from the article.

Here is what I cut: The traveling wave reactor is proposed for the generation of [[gravitational wave]]s with nuclear reactions<ref>[http://www.drrobertbaker.com/docs/AIP;%20HFGW%20Nuclear%20Generator.pdf Generation of Gravitational Waves with Nuclear Reactions]</ref>.

Kgrr (talk) 16:41, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Press Release?

IMO, the majority of this article reads more like a press release from Intellectual Ventures than an encyclopedia articles, particularly the following:

... These problems are mostly accepted as a given, but not by a group of researchers at Intellectual Ventures, an invention and investment company in Bellevue, WA. The scientists there have come up with a preliminary design for a reactor that requires only a small amount of enriched fuel--that is, the kind whose atoms can easily be split in a chain reaction. And while government researchers intermittently bring out new reactor designs, the traveling-wave reactor is noteworthy for having come from something that barely exists in the nuclear industry: a privately funded research company.

As it runs, the core in a traveling-wave reactor gradually converts nonfissile material into the fuel it needs. Nuclear reactors based on such designs "theoretically could run for a couple of hundred years" without refueling, says John Gilleland, manager of nuclear programs at Intellectual Ventures.

Wave of the future: Unlike today’s reactors, a traveling-wave reactor requires very little enriched uranium, reducing the risk of weapons proliferation ...

--68.115.172.154 (talk) 14:16, 25 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Those four paragraphs were copied verbatim from the Technology Review article linked to in the references section. I've reverted them accordingly. — Xaonon (Talk) 17:50, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nuclear reactions

The article is lacking any hint on what the reactions and material would be that would provide the fission process. Plutonium 239? How could it be processed _inside_ the reactor with enough purity to enable the continuation of fission? Looks like a science fake to me. --Edoe (talk) 08:56, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is what Bill Gates invested in...

Right? 99.32.60.170 (talk) 21:22, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Speculative Technology

See the following for the first Wikipedia entry on the PS3: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=PlayStation_3&oldid=276259

The Traveling Wave Reactor technology (and the current Wikipedia page about it) is much less speculative... And Traveling Wave is a possible solution to the world's climate and energy problems, so it is certainly more worthy of discussion than an entertainment system. (Oh, and there even is a direct quote from Sony's Marketing) --157.161.33.81 (talk) 11:34, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Problems, Waste

The nature and quantity of the waste material remaining ought to be discussed in more detail. This is a major advantage of this type of design over traditional nuclear plants, but there is still nuclear waste produced. Its nature and quantities and how it would be handled need to be discussed.

Nuclear power with minimal waste and no nuclear proliferation issues? Lower fuel costs? Safer? This plant promises to solve most of the major problems plaguing nuclear power. So what are the problems in moving this from the drawing boards to construction? Do new materials need to be developed? Processes that remain uncertain? What remains to be done? —Preceding unsigned comment added by R Stillwater (talk • contribs) 07:00, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Controlling the Reaction Rate

How is the rate of the reaction controlled once it is started? Does it have to burn until the fuel is exhausted, e.g. over several decades? How can the reaction rate be slowed down or stopped? Can it be speeded up? (Thanks to friend RLP for posing these questions) Lbeaumont (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:31, 25 February 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Re-using their own fuel

At the end of the article is a sentence: "TWRs are also capable, in principle, of reusing their own fuel. The used metal fuel from TWRs will still contain a high fissile content. Recast and reclad into new driver pellets without separations, this recycled fuel could be used to start fission in additional TWRs, thus displacing the need to enrich uranium altogether."

Can someone expand on this? This sounds suspicious, kinda like perpetual motion or something that's in violation of one law of physics. 208.38.1.1 (talk) 19:08, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]