PLENTIFUL ENERGY

and residual sodium, all of which result in additional engineering challenges.
Laboratory-scale demonstrations have been conducted at Marcoule in France,
Dounreay in the U.K., and Tokai in Japan. A pilot scale project, TOR (5-10 T/yr),
has been successfully demonstrated at Marcoule. It is clear that the same degree of
economies of scale as contemplated for the LWR reprocessing plants cannot be
achieved for the fast reactor processing plants with oxide fuel. Both the U.K. and
France planned a 60 T/yr throughput rate as a target for the next set of pilot-scale
plants.
Further, remote fabrication of actinide-containing oxide fuel is extremely
difficult. Uranium oxide fabrication is done currently with hands-on operation and
requires precision milling of the pellets. Mixed oxide fabrication is done remotely,
but maintenance also requires hands-on operation. Remotizing both fabrication and
maintenance operations for actinide-containing fuels is a major challenge and
would certainly sharply impact economics.
On the hand, IFR metal fuel easily fabricates remotely using injection casting. It
is compatible with pyroprocessing—both are compact processes. The two could
make improvements in kind in the economics of fast reactor fuel cycle closure.
Although many experts agree on the potential for improvements, exact
quantification is a difficult task because of the difference in technology maturity.
Aqueous reprocessing is much more fully developed, especially for LWR
reprocessing. On the other hand, remote fabrication is better developed for metal
than for oxide fuel. In addition to a large difference in the technology maturity
level, the two processes are too radically different in all aspects to allow a direct
comparison of one to the other.
Conceptual designs for both, under the same ground rules, using a bottom-up
approach, must first be developed. Credible estimates of capital costs can then be
developed. Fortunately, comprehensive conceptual design efforts were carried out
in the mid-1980s to allow such comparison. Argonne National Laboratory
developed a detailed pre-conceptual design of commercial-scale fuel cycle facility
based on pyroprocessing and metal fuel fabrication to serve a 1400 MWe fast
reactor. [17] Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Hanford Engineering
Development Laboratory jointly developed an equivalent fuel cycle facility based
on aqueous reprocessing and mixed oxide fabrication to serve the same size reactor.
[18]
The pyroprocessing-based fuel cycle facility involves only a few processing
steps, and all processing equipment systems are extraordinarily compact. There are
dramatic simplifications and cost reductions in all three areas of reprocessing,
refabrication, and waste treatment. The comparisons of these two facilities are
summarized in Table 13-7.
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