Talk:Energy amplifier

MYRRHA
MYRRHA, sounds like this kind of system to me, perhaps more info can be gathered from the website: http://myrrha.sckcen.be/en/MYRRHA/ADS

Objectives of Myrrha http://ipnweb.in2p3.fr/MAX/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.118.147.168 (talk) 12:33, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Larger is less power?
Something seems wrong here!! Last paragraph seems to suggest that larger designs would produce LESS net power. Of course no one would make a larger design if it made less net power (unless it reprocesses fuel faster). At least some clarification is needed.Logicnazi 03:58, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Why must we assume that "bigger is better" ?? So what if a bigger design would give less net power?  That doesn't compromise the utility of the idea.  It just means that you would build a whole bunch of them around the countryside, instead of one large one in the center of a major metro area.  KeyStroke

If you looked at that paragraph carefully, you see that a larger version gives higher gains, so the numbers must be a typo or slip. Maybe the author meant percentages, or numbers morethan the given.lysdexia 05:09, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * I think that the numbers "30 to 60" refer to the amount of "energy amplification" (what a terrible name!). That is, if you built a bigger cyclotron, you'd get out 30-60 times the energy to run the cyclotron.  I assume this is because you could feed in higher-energy protons. Andrew 05:52, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

This article needs references

 * Reference added. I am looking for a less technically detailed article more accessable to the layman. Peter Maggs 08:36, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I have removed the information for which I am skeptical (from my modest knowledge of the subject):

-I think that 233U might also be used effectively in nuclear bombs -I doubt such a reactor would be easy to operate (cyclotron, lead coolant...) -No (or few) CO2 emission is not an advantage over conventionnal reactors -The technical power information needs some reference

--Philipum 1 July 2005 09:08 (UTC)

Is it just me or does this sound like perpetual energy? "n which an energetic particle beam is used to stimulate a reaction, which in turn releases enough energy to power the particle accelerator and leave an energy profit for power generation." --asm2750

Not at all. Thorium is fissioned leaving radioactive fission products. It is more like a furnace that you have to keep relighting to keep going. Safer because it goes out if you stop relighting it. pstudier 03:02, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Again: I think that 233U (necessarily present in the waste of the energy amplifier) can wery well be used as nuclear weapon material; and, again, the limited fossil fuel needs are not an advantage over conventional nuclear power. --Philipum 08:44, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I reverted your edits. I don't know where you are getting the information that this technology is not proliferation resistant. But I would check your sources. DV8 2XL 17:21, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Could you explain why the energy amplifier should be proliferation resistant, or give me a reference to explain it? My own reference is limited: it is just my common sense from what I know about nuclear power technology. My reasoning is the following: the energy amplifier breeds thorium to produce 233U, and, as all nuclear reactors, it does not burn the toatality of it; thus, a certain amount of 233U should remain in the spent fuel, and potentially can be chemically separated from the rest. And I think that 233U casn potentially be used as nuclear weapon material. It is possible that 233U turns out to be a poor material for doing bombs, but such is also the case for reactor-grade plutonium which is produced in conventional nuclear power plants. Thus, I believe that the energy amplifier does not present advantages over conventional nuclear power as far as proliferation or CO2 emmissions are concerned, thus I want to remove these advantages to the list, if you agree. --Philipum 14:08, 25 November 2005 (UTC) New reference added, which treats the proliferation problem more thoroughly; I have changed the statements a bit, and removed (again) the statement about fossile fuels which I still believe is out of place. --Philipum 15:29, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The term “proliferation resistant” does not imply a claim of “proliferation proof”. In this case several features of the design allow this claim. First, burn-up while indeed not complete, is sufficient to reduce the recoverable weapon usable material to the point that the volume of spent fuel that would have to be processed would be significantly greater than from other designs. Also the level of technical sophistication required to effect separation of partially irradiate fuel is again significantly greater, given the intensity of the radioactivity of the material. DV8 2XL 16:41, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
 * P.S. FYI, uranium 233 is found only in very small quantities in nuclear warheads, because it is more difficult and more expensive to produce than uranium 235 and plutonium 239. Moreover, it is more radioactive than uranium 235 and can complicate the construction of weapons. It can make nuclear weapons less reliable. But these characteristics would not stop uranium 233 from being used by people wanting to fabricate a nuclear device secretly. Also I forgot to say that I agree with the removal of the statement about fossile fuels. DV8 2XL 17:02, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The proliferation 'resistance' in U-233 lies in contamination by U-232, whose decay products release large amounts of gamma radiation. Such radiation would not only make the Uranium more difficult to handle, it would also fry the electronics of any bomb mechanism.  Yes, there are methods available that could potentially seperate the U-232 from the U-233, but, and here the key difference between 'standard' uranium fuels lie, there would be no need to build such a seperation plant.  To use U-235 as a fuel, you first have to build an enrichment facility to increase the percentage of U-235 present in the U-238/U-235 mixture.  This same enrichment plant could be used to make weapons grade material.  There is no need to remove the U-232 from U-233 for it to be used as a fuel, so there is no need for a seperation plant. Will D. Webster (talk) 21:51, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Heinlein story
THis sounds like the device in a very early heinlein story. I had not realised it was a serious proposal as well. Midgley 06:29, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Protons vs. Neutrons
I saw the wording of one sentence go from neutrons to protons and back again. There is nothing trivial or non-trivial about this, there is a RIGHT answer, as in, which is the proposal for? the second "reference" cited says this: Any accelerator driven system consists of a subcritical core containing fissile material, which should not be able to sustain a chain reaction on its own. It will therefore need an external neutron source, produced by a beam of high energy protons (of the order of 1 GeV) hitting a target of heavy metal thereby producing a large number of neutrons by spallation reactions. I have never read about a design that uses a neutron accelerator. All proposals for a sub-critical nuclear reactor use protons or electrons that make some nuclei fission thus producing neutrons. I'll change it sometime here and put references, but I think it's clear that what's written in the article isn't reliable either way. theanphibian 17:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm a little confused regarding your above post. The Energy Amplifier design utilizes a Proton accelerator, which sends Protons into a Spallation Target (typically lead.) This causes the release of neutrons (about 20-30 per incident proton). It is these neutrons that will go on to cause fission in the fissionable fuel. It is not the protons that cause the fission and, as you correctly say, it is not a neutron accelerator that is used. But both protons and neutrons are involved, as the quote you use correctly states (although perhaps being slightly ambiguous in where the neutrons and protons are used. Is this where you disagreement lies?) Will D. Webster (talk) 21:41, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Electrons and protons can be accelerated by quickly alternating an electromagnetic field; you cannot accelerate neutrons that easily because they have no net electrical charge. Does everything make sense now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.206.230.223 (talk) 00:21, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

No fundamental research ...
I was fine with this until near the bottom where it says that "no synchrotron of sufficient power has ever been built."

Whether this would require "fundamental research" or just "engineering" is likely a matter of degree. If existing synchrotrons are 90% of the way there, I'd say "engineering". If it's 10%, I'd say "research". It's hard to tell here, since there's very little quantitative info here, but I'd guess the latter. -Dmh 21:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I have a different problem with this last statement. Fermilab has a sychrotron that is three orders of magnitude more powerful than the one required for this design and The Large Hadron Collider is planned to be seven times more powerful than that. 1 GeV synchrotrons have been around since the late 1940s. I would like to know what is meant by this statement. JaseXavier 23:29, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Power and energy are two different things. One Gev of energy means that each protons has the same energy as if accelerated by a 1 billion volt battery. Power is getting enough of them per second. The reference cited  mentions 12MW of power, which is a current of 12mA.  The Spallation Neutron Source is the most powerful pulsed beam neutron source in the world only delivers 1.4MW.   Hope this helps. Paul Studier 23:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Right, although the nominal external power the beam generates is Pext = 12.5 MW. The peak power density in the beam window is 113 W/cm2 = 1.13 MW/m2.

I repeat my Radioactive_Waste's post here.
Obviously, thank you for your precious work!

Take care of this link about how to use radioactive waste to produce precious metals. It is from a forum of an italian national television:

http://www.la7.it/community/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=14133&start=1

It was a topic on Mondial Corruption and Poverty. It links the production of precious metals (from another Wikipedia page: Synthesis of noble metals) and burning of radioactive waste with particle accelerators of 2007.

In the same topic there is also the description of how to produce artificial diamants of 10 carats and "above" of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C. so reducing the wars for the diamonds (do you remember an Hollywood movie about it?).

In short, precious metals can be produced from radioactive waste, and the new 2006-2007 tabletop particle accelerators of two Universities could do the rest.

The project to burn nuclear waste was also promoted by the Nobel Price Carlo Rubbia, and to produce precious metals is a byproduct of this method of nuclear burning with a linear particle accelerator.

Many posts are in English.

And I think you must give an eye on this too. Carlo Ceballos obtains PhD on shorter life-span of radioactive waste 05 February 2007 by TNWToday | M&C

http://www.tnw.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=57ba3c4a-4b79-4474-820d-2c1237876169&lang=en

A more general view on this process with a bit of history about particle accelerators for this project (2002?):

http://www.neutron.kth.se/publications/conference_papers/W_Gudowski_FR202_1.PDF

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Radioactive_waste [modified]

Link to approach which seems resolves problems with current accelerators
see http://faculty.physics.tamu.edu/mcintyre/research/index.html Accelerator-driven thorium-cycle fission power entry. It points to http://faculty.physics.tamu.edu/mcintyre/accelerator_physics/thorium_cycle.pdf paper but, unfortunately I cannot access it.

So in case someone has more information - it seems important to add a mention to the work at the page.

SergeyKurdakov (talk) 22:34, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

LIFE concept
there is a similar concept

https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/missions/energy_for_the_future/life/benefits_challenges.php

which uses thermonuclear lazer-driven ignition to run reactor

there are two possiblities one is to cover the approach here, as a separate entry or to create a new article ( checked - no article on the subject so far ). —Preceding unsigned comment added by SergeyKurdakov (talk • contribs) 15:52, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * the article is here already http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion-fission_hybrid SergeyKurdakov (talk) 16:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I propose that the article Accelerator-driven_sub-critical_reactor is merged into this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidkelliher (talk • contribs) 09:50, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

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