breeder reactor
Sign in to savenuclear reactor generating more fissile material than it consumes
~36 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station, site of the BN-600 and BN-800, the only two commercially operational breeder reactors as of 2026
A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes. These reactors can be fueled with more-commonly available isotopes of uranium and thorium, such as uranium-238 and thorium-232, as opposed to the rare uranium-235 which is used in conventional reactors. These materials are called fertile materials since they can be bred into fuel by these breeder reactors.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “breeder reactor” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.