It’s tempting to think reactors, massive creatures as they are, are roughly the same size when comparing one design to another. I mean, a reactor is a machine enclosing the magic of fission, right? And fission doesn’t vary between one design and another, right? That isn’t correct, though, as this 1957 public speech by England’s John Cockcroft (the prestigious Boyle lecture) revealed. (Mind you, as Cockcroft’s words imply, no one quite knew whether larger meant better or worse.)
The [US LWRs’] proportion of U235 must be about 50 per cent above the normal content. So the uranium fuel costs rather more than three times the cost of natural uranium. The cost of sheathing in zirconium alloy is also high. So fuel costs are at present very high—about equal to our total power costs at the present time. They are, however, expected to be reduced by metallurgical development. The capital costs of this kind of nuclear power station are likely to be appreciably lower than those of our first electricity authority power stations, because they are smaller; the reactor drum is 10 ft in diameter instead of the 35 ft of Calder Hall.
Cockcroft, John. 1957. “The development of nuclear power: The 1957 Boyle Lecture of the Oxford University Scientific Club, Mar. 5, 1957.” Journal of the British Institution of Radio Engineers 17 (May): 245–52.
