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4. D. W. Dees and J. P. Ackerman, ―Three-Electrode Metal Oxide Reduction Cell,‖ U.S. Patent No. 6911134B2, June 28, 2005. 5. S. D. Herrmann, S. X. Li, M. F. Simpson, and S. Phongikaroon, ―Electrolytic Reduction of Spent Nuclear Oxide Fuel as Part of an Integral Process to Separate and Recover Actinides from Fission Products,‖ Separation Science and Technology, 41, 1965-1983, 2006. 6. S. D. Herrmann, S. X. Li, D. A. Sell, and B. P. Westfall, ―Electrolytic Reduction of Spent Nuclear Oxide Fuel—Effects of Fuel Form and Cathode Containment Materials on Bench-Scale Operations,‖ Proc. Global 2007, Advanced Nuclear Fuel Cycles and Systems, Boise, Idaho 2007. 7. V. Skiba, et al, ―Development and Operation Experience of the Pilot Plant for Fuel Pin and Assembly Production based on Vibropac Uranium-Plutonium Oxide Fuel,‖ International Conference on Fast Reactors and Related Fuel Cycles, Kyoto, Japan, October 28-November 1, 1991. 8. Y. Sagayama, ―Feasibility Study on Commercialized Fast Reactor Cycle Systems: Current Status of the Phase II Study,‖ Proc. GLOBAL-2005, Tsukuba, Japan, October 9-13, 2005. 9. A. Frigo, D. R. Wahlquist and J. L. Willit, ―A Conceptual Advanced Pyroprocess Recycle Facility,‖ Proc. GLOBAL 2003, New Orleans, November 2003. 10. S. W. Park, ―Why South Korea Needs Pyroprocessing,‖ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 26, 2009. http://thebulletin.org/node/7982. 11. H. Lee, et al., ―Development of Pyroprocessing Technology at KAERI,‖ Proc. Global 2009, 908-911, Paris, France, September 6-11, 2009. 12. E. H. Kim, et al., ―A New Approach to Minimize Pyroprocessing Waste Salts through a series of Fission Product Removal Process,‖ Nucl. Technol., 162, 208, 2008. 13. K. C. Song, et al., ―Status of Pyroprocessing Technology Development in Korea,‖ Nucl. Eng. and Technol., 42, 131, 2010. 225
CHAPTER 11 IMPLICATIONS OF THE IFR PYROPROCESS ON WASTE MANAGEMENT It is a commonplace that radioactive waste management is an issue of first importance in the acceptance of nuclear power. The “back end” of the fuel cycle was identified early by the organized anti-nuclear community as being vulnerable to attack through extended legal wrangling, demonstrations, and finally legislation. A repository—of some kind—is necessary; spent fuel must not be allowed to keep on piling up at reactor sites around the country forever. Indeed, the very purpose of the anti-nuclear attacks on waste disposal is to choke off nuclear power by making it increasingly difficult to deal sensibly with the waste products. Yet the need for nuclear power is becoming more obvious day by day, as explained in Chapter 4. Nuclear waste has to be dealt with, and it should be possible to do it in a sensible way. For fuel sustainability, the fast reactor is mandatory if nuclear is to play the role it must in the future energy mix. Waste management advantages, such as a waste lifetime drastically reduced from millions of years to a few hundred years, and much enhanced repository capacity utilization, are attendant bonuses of fast reactor introduction. If nuclear capacity expands to replace the current role of fossil fuels, fast reactors will be needed primarily to conserve the uranium resource, but will solve the waste disposal problem simultaneously. Reprocessing of LWR spent fuel becomes economic simply due to the recovery of valuable actinides. The long-lived waste component is eliminated automatically. One thing follows from the other. But the present situation is very different. Reflecting the very different goals of proponents and opponents, there is a long and tangled legislative history of repository licensing. It has given standards for radiological release, legally binding, but still under litigation. Meeting the standards makes the licensing of Yucca Mountain, or indeed any repository, very uncertain indeed. The action of the present (Obama) administration in withdrawing the license application of the Yucca Mountain repository, of course, very much compounds the uncertainty surrounding the issue. 226
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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
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A few weeks later, the mid-term ele
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2.6 Summary In late 1983, the line
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Argonne would be. My Ph.D. at Imper
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I had worked at the United Kingdom
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hadn‘t bothered us with it. But t
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But I had gone over and over the on
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laboratories.‖ Incidentally, late
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Argonne by this time was one of sev
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3.1.2 Life at the Laboratory in the
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An anecdote: In the cooperative arr
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Cycle Facility‖ went. We pushed i
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(LMFBR), which assumed a very rapid
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the pool was a settled issue; it wa
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During the early stage of the IFR p
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scientific work, not on non-essenti
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e generally held, even as facts inc
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cf per day from Canada via pipeline
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serious, and it is made more seriou
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global economy. The LWR, and the Ad
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supply 11%, and one, the world‘s
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Fatih Birol, has recently been quot
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gas production of little use in the
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expenditures during a decade starti
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thousand tonnes in one large increm
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But the principal line of developme
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Tar sands and oil shale recovery ar
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14. W. H. Ziegler, C. J. Campbell,
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Argonne had been a part of the deve
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Breaches or holes in the fuel cladd
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waste. For efficiency in uranium us
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Further, as a metal, sodium does no
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to the boundaries and many leak fro
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is debatable, it remains our belief
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CHAPTER 6 IFR FUEL CHARACTERISTICS,
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To do this, an extraordinarily simp
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Further cementing the decision was
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the AEC, but the reactor operation
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hands-on access needed to accomplis
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temperature. However, a very substa
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It turned out that the high-plutoni
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In the column ―Pu content % heavy
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40 start-ups and shutdowns 5 15% ov
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During casting, a partial vacuum (1
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is in fact a new fuel. Plutonium-ba
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8. G. L. Hofman and L. C. Walters,
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characteristics necessary for this.
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exchangers, and the steam generator
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experiments, as mentioned; this has
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sufficient to allow radioactive rel
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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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Page 188 and 189: into the receiver crucible. The hea
Page 190 and 191: In the final step, the pins are arr
Page 192 and 193: Spent Fuel Processed, kg effective
Page 194 and 195: products, highly radioactive and se
Page 196 and 197: its own bayonet-style partial inter
Page 198 and 199: If the bond sodium along with the s
Page 200 and 201: CHAPTER 9 THE BASIS OF THE ELECTROR
Page 202 and 203: Whether or not a given reaction can
Page 204 and 205: 9.3 Kinetics of the Reactions Chemi
Page 206 and 207: The exponential exp((E f -E b )/RT)
Page 208 and 209: The electrorefining process brings
Page 210 and 211: cathode operation. Once the solutio
Page 212 and 213: Table 9-2. Measured data and calcul
Page 214 and 215: All four measurements show that eve
Page 216 and 217: The free energy of the reaction of
Page 218 and 219: 2. At an actinide chloride ratio of
Page 220 and 221: CHAPTER 10 APPLICATION OF PYROPROCE
Page 222 and 223: 10.2 Electrolytic Reduction Step 10
Page 224 and 225: The pyrochemical process simply sup
Page 226 and 227: Figure 10-1. Electrolytic reduction
Page 228 and 229: The distribution of fuel constituen
Page 230 and 231: an electrorefiner with a 5001,000 k
Page 232 and 233: aqueous reprocessing plant. The eco
Page 234 and 235: Li metal at the cathode. Lithium me
Page 238 and 239: Our intent for the IFR technology w
Page 240 and 241: dose to any member of the public mu
Page 242 and 243: IFR process, as we shall see, does
Page 244 and 245: Relative Radiological Toxicity uran
Page 246 and 247: doses from Tc-99 and I-129 equilibr
Page 248 and 249: Fraction of Initial Actinide, % pro
Page 250 and 251: long-lived fission products and tra
Page 252 and 253: to decay to the point where they co
Page 254 and 255: References 1. ―Nuclear Waste Poli
Page 256 and 257: 12.1 Introduction Assessment of a p
Page 258 and 259: History provides empirical evidence
Page 260 and 261: program offered nations help with n
Page 262 and 263: Other nations are recycling their s
Page 264 and 265: uranium-233 cycle has been half-hea
Page 266 and 267: electrorefiner salt. And this, of c
Page 268 and 269: those concentrations in making the
Page 270 and 271: chance of ―pre-ignition‖ leadin
Page 272 and 273: It is now known that the plutonium
Page 274 and 275: 12.8 Monitoring of Processes Always
Page 276 and 277: [18] In it he shows that with a spo
Page 278 and 279: Such a system tracks the quantity a
Page 280 and 281: weapons grade plutonium. Levels of
Page 282 and 283: 12.13 Summary In IFR technology the
Page 284 and 285: 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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