PLENTIFUL ENERGY

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Tar sands and oil shale recovery are constrained by shortages of gas and water for processing. The rates of extraction will always be limited. Biofuels have low net energy gains (and so require vast areas to be devoted to biomass crops) and require substantial quantities of fresh water. Other renewables, which now produce only tiny amounts of energy—solar, wind, tidal, wave, and geothermal—have some potential for increase; however, there is no credible scenario in which these could grow enough to offset projected declines in any one of the three principal fossil fuels, much less all three together. The ten quads each year must come from nuclear expansion. It is routinely and airily stated that expansion of nuclear power is problematic given future constraints in the availability of uranium. Properly managed, with the right reactor deployment, this statement is completely false. Cost issues are always brought up by opponents who have, through their campaigns, sought to drive the costs up. This issue is a red herring as well—the costs of nuclear plants are in keeping with other construction, and they pay off in reliable electricity over the many decade lifetime of the nuclear plant. The findings of the 2005 DOE-funded Hirsch report [15] regarding society‘s vulnerability to peak oil apply also to peak coal: time will be needed in order for society to adapt proactively to a resource-constrained environment. A failure to begin now to reduce reliance on coal will mean much greater economic hardship when the peak arrives. World fossil energy will begin to decline very soon, and there is no perfect substitute. The climate modelers and anti-nuclear activists will always point to policies with mandatory energy curtailment and societal adjustment to lower consumption levels. Policies such as these impact everything—agriculture, transport, trade, urban design, and national electrical grid systems—and everything dependent on them, including global telecommunications. Substitution of nuclear for fossil fuels is perfect for electricity. For transportation, agriculture, and other motive usages it is not—but electricity is energy and energy can be used in any number of innovative ways. No energy is no option. Will America willingly return to the simple agrarian ways dreamed of by many in the environmental movement? This idea is influential in thinking today, while all forms of energy at least in this country are abundant, but will it withstand real scarcity? An America willingly retreating into the Middle Ages for lack of energy, while China builds itself in to an industrial powerhouse. Does this seem even remotely likely? Those who project with apparent satisfaction very limited nuclear power for America while all depleting resources show an increasing inability to sustain their historical role often have real political influence They must face these facts. Will they? 99
4.8 Summary The outlook for the continued fossil fuel supplies necessary for a prosperous economy, indeed for civilization itself, is not comforting. All will peak in the coming decades: free-flowing oil already has, and the others will follow. The only real questions are the imminence of the peaks and the rate of post-peak decline. Nuclear is the only non-fossil source of energy that has the necessary magnitude on which to base our civilization as fossil supplies dwindle. One type of nuclear reactor is not bound by uranium supply. The fast breeder reactor in effect creates its own fuel. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) was almost completed when its development was cancelled by a political decision. We now come to the main chapters of this book, where we describe the IFR and the underlying technical basis of its characteristics. References 1. Daniel Yergin, ―Ensuring Energy Security,‖ Foreign Affairs, March-April 2006. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85206/daniel-yergin/ ensuring-energysecurity.html. 2. National Petroleum Council, ―Facing the Hard Truths about Energy,‖ A report of Advisory Council to the Secretary of Energy on America‘s oil and natural gas position to 2030, July 2007. 3. International Energy Agency, ―World Energy Outlook 2010,‖ OECD/IEA, 2011. http://www.iea.org/work/2011/Roundtable/WEO_Moscow_2feb11.pdf. 4. ―High Oil Prices Here To Stay,‖ Huffington Post, March 11, 2011. http://www. huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/02/high-oil-prices_n_830166.html. 5. ―Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding,‖ the Keystone Center, June 2007. 6. C. J. Campbell, ―Open Letter to the Guardian,‖ November 2009. http://www. peakoil.net/Campbell. 7. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2008, OECD/IEA 2008. 8. OECD/NEA and IAEA, Uranium 2009: Resources, Production and Demand, 2010. 9. K. S. Deffeyes and I. D. MacGreger, "World Uranium Resources" Scientific American, 242, 66-76, January 1980. 10. C. MacDonald, ―Rocks to Reactors: Uranium Exploration and the Market,‖ Proceedings of World Nuclear Association Symposium, 2001. 11. Canadian Nuclear Society, ―Uranium Mining in Northern Saskatchewan,‖ http://www.cna.ca/curriculum/cna_can_nuc_hist/uranium. 12. Word Nuclear Association, ―Nuclear Power in China,‖ updated September 15, 2011. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf63.html. 13. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), Newsletter No. 74, February 2007. http://www.energiekrise.de/e/aspo_news/aspo/newsletter074.pdf. 100
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PLENTIFUL ENERGY The Story of the I
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Copyright © 2011 Charles E. Till a
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CONTENTS FOREWORD .................
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CHAPTER 10 APPLICATION OF PYROPROCE
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FOREWORD On a breezy December day i
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CHAPTER 1 ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATO
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even now is straining the limits of
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with events and time. Till saw the
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it, I saw how a national laboratory
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Figure 1-2. West stands of the Stag
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development of nuclear power for ci
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depended on U.S. ability to maintai
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construction funding kept increasin
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faced a nightmarish combination of
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concept in the next decade.) In sti
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was based on EBR-I experience, but
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Figure 1-9. Experimental Breeder Re
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Figure 1-11. Rendering of the EBR-I
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performance. But the decision had b
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its shakedown in early years it jus
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sense primarily a commercial power
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without electrical generation, the
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Its purpose was to demonstrate the
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of each period, which the managemen
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CHAPTER 2 THE INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR
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A line had been pursued that the re
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The IFR refining process also produ
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director of Argonne a year or two b
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eporting on nuclear power developme
Page 60 and 61: A few weeks later, the mid-term ele
Page 62 and 63: 2.6 Summary In late 1983, the line
Page 64 and 65: Argonne would be. My Ph.D. at Imper
Page 66 and 67: I had worked at the United Kingdom
Page 68 and 69: hadn‘t bothered us with it. But t
Page 70 and 71: But I had gone over and over the on
Page 72 and 73: laboratories.‖ Incidentally, late
Page 74 and 75: Argonne by this time was one of sev
Page 76 and 77: 3.1.2 Life at the Laboratory in the
Page 78 and 79: An anecdote: In the cooperative arr
Page 80 and 81: Cycle Facility‖ went. We pushed i
Page 82 and 83: (LMFBR), which assumed a very rapid
Page 84 and 85: the pool was a settled issue; it wa
Page 86 and 87: During the early stage of the IFR p
Page 88 and 89: scientific work, not on non-essenti
Page 90 and 91: e generally held, even as facts inc
Page 92 and 93: cf per day from Canada via pipeline
Page 94 and 95: serious, and it is made more seriou
Page 96 and 97: global economy. The LWR, and the Ad
Page 98 and 99: supply 11%, and one, the world‘s
Page 100 and 101: Fatih Birol, has recently been quot
Page 102 and 103: gas production of little use in the
Page 104 and 105: expenditures during a decade starti
Page 106 and 107: thousand tonnes in one large increm
Page 108 and 109: But the principal line of developme
Page 112 and 113: 14. W. H. Ziegler, C. J. Campbell,
Page 114 and 115: Argonne had been a part of the deve
Page 116 and 117: Breaches or holes in the fuel cladd
Page 118 and 119: waste. For efficiency in uranium us
Page 120 and 121: Further, as a metal, sodium does no
Page 122 and 123: to the boundaries and many leak fro
Page 124 and 125: is debatable, it remains our belief
Page 126 and 127: CHAPTER 6 IFR FUEL CHARACTERISTICS,
Page 128 and 129: To do this, an extraordinarily simp
Page 130 and 131: Further cementing the decision was
Page 132 and 133: the AEC, but the reactor operation
Page 134 and 135: hands-on access needed to accomplis
Page 136 and 137: temperature. However, a very substa
Page 138 and 139: It turned out that the high-plutoni
Page 140 and 141: In the column ―Pu content % heavy
Page 142 and 143: 40 start-ups and shutdowns 5 15% ov
Page 144 and 145: During casting, a partial vacuum (1
Page 146 and 147: is in fact a new fuel. Plutonium-ba
Page 148 and 149: 8. G. L. Hofman and L. C. Walters,
Page 150 and 151: characteristics necessary for this.
Page 152 and 153: exchangers, and the steam generator
Page 154 and 155: experiments, as mentioned; this has
Page 156 and 157: sufficient to allow radioactive rel
Page 158 and 159: In the IFR, this loss of the coolin
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Figure7- 2. Reactor outlet temperat
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for thermal expansion of heavy stru
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power to shut down power is basical
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criticality. The debris is in the f
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7.10.2 The EBR-I Partial Meltdown T
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7.11 Licensing Implications What ar
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The sodium flowing into the steam g
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[15] Provisions are also made to co
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disassembly comes, it is with a rea
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CHAPTER 8 THE PYROPROCESS In the ne
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EBR-II purposes, and it established
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valuable fuel constituents, uranium
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and materials and it had been renam
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The first operation is done in the
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into the receiver crucible. The hea
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In the final step, the pins are arr
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Spent Fuel Processed, kg effective
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products, highly radioactive and se
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its own bayonet-style partial inter
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If the bond sodium along with the s
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CHAPTER 9 THE BASIS OF THE ELECTROR
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Whether or not a given reaction can
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9.3 Kinetics of the Reactions Chemi
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The exponential exp((E f -E b )/RT)
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The electrorefining process brings
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cathode operation. Once the solutio
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Table 9-2. Measured data and calcul
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All four measurements show that eve
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The free energy of the reaction of
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2. At an actinide chloride ratio of
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CHAPTER 10 APPLICATION OF PYROPROCE
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10.2 Electrolytic Reduction Step 10
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The pyrochemical process simply sup
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Figure 10-1. Electrolytic reduction
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The distribution of fuel constituen
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an electrorefiner with a 5001,000 k
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aqueous reprocessing plant. The eco
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Li metal at the cathode. Lithium me
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4. D. W. Dees and J. P. Ackerman,
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Our intent for the IFR technology w
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dose to any member of the public mu
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IFR process, as we shall see, does
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Relative Radiological Toxicity uran
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doses from Tc-99 and I-129 equilibr
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Fraction of Initial Actinide, % pro
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long-lived fission products and tra
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to decay to the point where they co
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References 1. ―Nuclear Waste Poli
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12.1 Introduction Assessment of a p
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History provides empirical evidence
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program offered nations help with n
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Other nations are recycling their s
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uranium-233 cycle has been half-hea
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electrorefiner salt. And this, of c
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those concentrations in making the
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chance of ―pre-ignition‖ leadin
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It is now known that the plutonium
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12.8 Monitoring of Processes Always
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[18] In it he shows that with a spo
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Such a system tracks the quantity a
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weapons grade plutonium. Levels of
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12.13 Summary In IFR technology the
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12. T. P. McLaughlin, et al., ―A
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The earliest fast reactors designed
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India, too, has successfully operat
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levels, actually higher than the di
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for the backend of the fuel cycle,
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$/lb Uranium Price, $/lb U3O8 the f
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the once-through fuel cycle. Howeve
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$/kg 1200 1000 $1000/kg Rep Cost Pu
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Table 13-7. Summary Comparison of F
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fabrication. This, along with a low
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Fissile Cost, $/gm-fissile Fuel Cyc
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13.6 System Aspects The previous se
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waste streams have no long-term dec
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5. S. C. Chetal, ―India‘s Fast
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capacity over this century, in a sy
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thermal properties of NaK—the boi
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It is suspected that the lead corro
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Neutron Yield, Eta Value A = number
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to maintain a hard spectrum, the fu
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Table 14-3. Effects of fuel pin dia
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Fuel Volume Fraction have a large e
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neutron leakages from the core are
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like breeding, does increase such d
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substantial advantage to start with
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Doubling Time, yrs the reactivity c
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14.7 Worldwide Fast Reactor Experie
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limit to its life. The ingenuity of
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Nuclear Capacity, GWe the replaceme
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14.9 How to Deploy Pyroprocessing P
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construction projects. They may see
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inferior to sodium in their thermal
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5. Federation of American Scientist
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Supporting the reactor design and c
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In beginning this
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APPENDIX A DETAILED EXPLANATION OF
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The actinide metals (uranium, pluto
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As noted above, the interactions ri
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3. Equilibrium coefficients give th
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ion is created at the anode. Bulk t
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proceed spontaneously. If the magni
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product chlorides are highly stable
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increases with increasing temperatu
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Equilibrium in a chemical system is
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Exp(-ΔG o /RT) = [ U / Pu ] [ U /
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―in solution.‖ More Pu added to
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appropriate values are used for the
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A.9.5 The Second Cathode Regime: On
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in the real world. Uranium dendrite
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This is the significant number. The
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For those who are curious, the elec
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of concentration of uranium chlorid
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agreement with the measured ratio w
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eference 7. The important calculati
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as well. The numbers were obtained
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Run3: Plutonium isn’t, Uranium is
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The final actinide chloride ratios
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values of several of the constants
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HCDA HFEF HM HWR HTR IAEA ICRP IEA
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Dr. CHARLES E. TI
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PLENTIFUL ENERGY

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