Accelerators in nuclear power

Uranium 235 'burns' in NPP pile. Its content in natural uranium equals only 0.71%. To garantee NPP promising character it is necessary to produce nuclear fuel, using 'noncombustible' raw material - uranium 238 and thorium 232. Their reserves are practically inexhaustible. Electronuclear breeding represents the method which doesn't require task development and doesn't use high-toxic tritium. Possibility of electronuclear breeding with the use of proton linear accelerators is shown. Possible design of units for electronuclear breeding is given. Calculations showed that beam of protons, accelerated up to 1 GeV, with 300 mA current in uranium target with 0.3% enrichment would produce 1.85 t of plutonium per year. According to economical estimations for Canadian 1 TeV linear accelerator with 300 mA proton average current the cost of one gram of plutonium-239 equals 80 dollars(up to 100 dollars - after chemical treatment)