Dynamic analysis of fusion-fission-systems

Energy scenarios are commonly based on two hypotheses: growing world energy consumption and increasing share of nuclear energy. However, currently known natural resources of fissile fuel are far from supporting light water reactors ''indefinitely'', even if advanced concepts were deployed to reduce fuel consumption. Therefore the abundant resources of fertile fuel have to be tapped by breeders, be it fission, fusion or spallation based ones. It is unlikely that all development directions can be followed simultaneously. Therefore a choice has to be made as to which breeder concept is more desirable. This suggests the need for appropriate figures of merit. It turns out that single valued parameters and the comparison of single breeders as stand-alone-devices or in stationary converter/breeder systems do not offer a full understanding required for sensible policy decisions. It is found to be important that the whole energy production/conversion system is analyzed in its time dependence as imposed by the respective installation strategy, covering the effect of inventories, processing losses, of lag and lead times, and of temporary fissile fuel unavailability