By the way the density of Uranium is around 19 grams per cubic centimeter or 19 tonnes per cubic meter so an average value of 14 tonnes per cubic meter including shielding etc sounds more reasonable to me than ever.
Seems OK to me also. However, U-235 provides the greatest amount of power averaging about 900 to 1000 MW per cubic meter.
Actually that depends on the fuel used. Some reactors actually use liquid fuel which is much less dense than uranium. Others use ceramic fuels, also less dense that uranium. Others use what is called uranyl salts, again less dense. However, these fuels do not produce as much power averaging about 250 to 600 MW per cubic meter.
Could not get any exact figures on the cost for creating nuclear fission fuel rods. However, I did find many sites that mentioned cost comparisons to getting coal for fuel.
Where the real cost skyrocketer comes from is the safety measures. More money has to be spent on the safety features than all other costs combined. Of course, that is with today's technology.
Here is listed some things I found interesting.
Advantages- Nuclear power costs about the same as coal, so it's not expensive to make.
- Produces huge amounts of energy from small amounts of fuel.
- Produces small amounts of waste.
- Nuclear power is reliable.
Disadvantages - Although not much waste is produced, it is very, very dangerous. It must be sealed up and buried for many thousands to millions of years to allow the radioactivity to die away. For all that time it must be kept safe from earthquakes, flooding, terrorists, and everything else.
- Nuclear power is reliable, but a lot of money has to be spent on safety - if it does go wrong, a nuclear accident can be a major disaster.
In most of the material I found, it seems that producing fissionable fuel cost about 3 times as much as it does to create deuterium and/or tritium. Of course, that is with today's technology. With advanced technology, costs could flucuate, perhaps dropping.
Thus, using the 50,000 per metric ton for deuterium, a metric ton of fissionable material would cost 100,000 to 150,000 per metric ton.
rmfr