The team led by Waseda University Prof. Yoshiaki Oka devised a new fuel assembly, where fuel rods are closely packed to reduce reactor coolant to a fraction of fuel volume for high breeding.
During the research, Prof. Oka successfully completed high plutonium breeding by light-water cooling through computational analysis, reported New Straits Times.
Prof. Oka said that fast breeder reactors (FBRs) create more fissile material than consuming while producing electric power.
It is a "dream of nuclear power", Prof. Oka added.
The main line of FBR development has been liquid metal cooled fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs), however, it is not commercialized because of the complexity of a plant due to the use of liquid sodium as a coolant.
Under the conceptual design, the breeding performance or the compound system doubling time is 40 years.
