PLENTIFUL ENERGY

Table 13-7. Summary Comparison of Fuel Cycle Facility
to Serve 1,400 MWe Fast Reactor
Size and Commodities
Building Volume, ft 3
Volume of Process Cells, ft 3
High Density Concrete, cy
Normal Density Concrete, cy
Capital Cost, $million (2011$)
Facility and Construction
Equipment Systems
Contingencies
Total
Pyroprocessing
852,500
41,260
133
7,970
65.2
31.0
24.0
120.2
Aqueous
Processing
5,314,000
424,300
3,000
35-40,000
186.0
311.0
124.2
621.2
The capital cost of the pyroprocessing-based fuel cycle facility is a factor of five
less than that of an equivalent fuel cycle facility based on aqueous reprocessing.
This large difference is easily understandable in the comparison of the size and
material requirements of the equipment systems, which are reduced by a factor of
ten, and construction commodity amounts reduced by a factor of five to ten. This
comparison was based on significant engineering efforts, on the order of two
hundred man-months. This was the most comprehensive attempt to date comparing
the economic potential of pyroprocessing to aqueous reprocessing. Since then,
several cursory evaluations have been made, but none comes close to this one in
technical detail.
The comparison can be discounted on the basis that the aqueous processing
technology is established whereas the pyroprocessing technology has only partly
been demonstrated at the scale required. However, a distinction should be drawn
between uncertainties in technology details and uncertainties in cost estimates. The
electrorefining step requires further engineering development, and detailed process
parameters, such as current density and applied voltage, may evolve through
optimization. However, these refinements won‘t affect the electrorefining approach,
the equipment size, or the facility layout. Cost estimates will not change by any
appreciable amount. The differences in technology are different in kind, and they
result in large differences in the kind of process equipment, the number of pieces,
and the sizes of it. This point is illustrated in Table 13-8.
Experience with the post-1994 EBR-II spent fuel treatment project lends support
to the likely economic advantage of pyroprocessing over aqueous processing for
fast reactor application. The high concentration of plutonium or actinides, on the
order of 20-30 % of heavy metal, dictates a small-batch or small-vessel operation
for criticality control, a natural fit to the batch operation mode of pyroprocessing.
Further development work will be focused on optimizing the process chemistry
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