Breeding Ratio
One measure of a reactor's performance is the "breeding ratio" (the average number of fissile atoms created per fission event). Historically, attention has focused on reactors with low breeding ratios, from 1.01 for the Shippingport Reactor running on thorium fuel and cooled by conventional light water to over 1.2 for the Russian BN-350 liquid-metal-cooled reactor. Theoretical models of breeders with liquid sodium coolant flowing through tubes inside fuel elements ("tube-in-shell" construction) show breeding ratios of at least 1.8 are possible. The breeding ratios of ordinary commercial non-breeders are lower than 1; however, industry trends are pushing breeding ratios steadily higher, blurring the distinction.
Read more about this topic: Breeder Reactor
Famous quotes containing the words breeding and/or ratio:
“Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good breeding, as it is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good breeding of the place which he is at.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (16941773)
“Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framed on the ratio of owners and of owning.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)