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14.7 Worldwide Fast Reactor Experience and Current Status In earlier chapters the fast reactor experience in the U.S.—EBR-I, EBR-II, Fermi-1, FFTF—has been discussed. After the very early success of fast reactor development in the U.S., fast reactor construction was undertaken elsewhere as well. Including the U.S. reactors, almost twenty fast reactors have been built and operated around the world. The experience is summarized in Table 14-7. [14-17] Table 14-7. Summary of Fast Reactor Operations Country Reactor MWth/MWe EBR-I 1/0.2 U.S. EBR-II 62.5/20 Fermi-1 200/61 FFTF 400/0 Russia France BR-5/10 BOR-60 BN-350 BN-600 Rapsodie Phenix SuperPhenix 8/0 60/12 1000/150 1470/600 40/0 590/250 3000/1240 Operation Period 1951-63 1964-94 1965-72 1980-92 1958-02 1969- 1973-99 1980- 1967-83 1974-99 1985-97 1978- 1994- 1963-77 1976-94 Japan Joyo Monju 140/0 714/300 DFR 72/15 UK PFR 600/270 Germany KNK-II 58/21 1972-91 India FBTR 42.5/12 1985- China CEFR 65/20 2011- A few early fast reactors that were somewhat outside of the main line of development toward commercial power reactors are not listed in Table 14-7. The sodium-cooled fast reactor was used to power the submarine Seawolf from 1957 to ‗58. Atomics International operated the 6.5 MWe Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) from 1957 to ‗64. The Los Alamos Molten Plutonium Reactor Experiment (LAMPRE) was a homogeneous reactor with molten plutonium fuel and sodium coolant, which operated at 1 MWth from 1961 to ‗63. A 20 MWth Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) in Arkansas was operated by General Electric from 1969 to ‗72. Then there were sodium-cooled fast reactors that were constructed but never operated: Italy cancelled the 120 MWth PEC at an advanced stage of construction 323
in 1987; Germany completed the construction of SNR-300 (762 MWth/327 MWe) in 1985 but never operated it; and the U.S. cancelled the Clinch River Breeder Reactor (1,000 MWth/380 MWe) while its NRC licensing process was nearing a satisfactory completion. Fast reactors listed in Table 14-7 have had a mixed record of operation. Largely these were first-of-kind demonstration plants built in each country. Design mistakes were made occasionally; there were component failures, particularly in the nonnuclear portion of plants, a few sodium leaks and fires, and, in EBR-I and Fermi-1, the partial core meltdowns we have described earlier. On the other hand, the decades-long success of EBR-II, operating on a shoestring budget, and the lessons taken from the mistakes made elsewhere, lend confidence that fast reactors, when properly designed and operated, and with the experience accumulated by a more mature industry, should be safe, reliable, and easy to operate and maintain. Sodium difficulties included various leaks (mainly in the secondary systems and in the steam generator systems), contamination of the coolant itself, and the effects of aerosol deposits. Sodium leaks in the secondary system piping are easily detected and the resulting smokes or fires are extinguished without undue difficulty or consequence. As discussed in Chapter 7, the largest sodium fire was in the Japanese demonstration reactor, Monju. There was a long delay in restart. It was not technical in nature. An unrelated fire in a low-level waste plant at Tokai, an unrelated criticality accident in a subcontractor‘s operation, a high court ruling nullifying the original licensing base, opposition of local communities, and so on, compounded over the years to delay restart for a prolonged interval. Monju finally restarted its operation in May 2010. A few reactors were plagued with leaks in steam generators during the early years of their operation. Most leaks were at the tube-to-tube sheet welds, a significant fraction due to manufacturing (welding) defects. Some were due to material defects and lack of post-weld heat treatment. Manufacturing techniques are as important as material selection to reliable components. Some of the component failures were due to the selection of advanced materials that had little testing in sodium at elevated temperature. Early steam generators of stainless steel experienced stress corrosion cracking. To date, 2-1/4Cr-1Mo has been the dominant choice for steam generators and has had a very satisfactory operating experience. The 9Cr-1Mo is thought to be an improvement over 2-1/4Cr-1Mo for future applications and has received the ASME code qualification. For the primary system, both stainless steel types 316 and 304 have been successfully used. For fuel assemblies, ferritic HT-9 has proven to be the most reliable, low-swelling material for cladding and hexagonal ducts. EBR-II stands out in all of this as a well-designed reactor which operated very successfully for a long time, and could have gone on operating with no identifiable 324
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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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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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Page 294 and 295: $/lb Uranium Price, $/lb U3O8 the f
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Page 306 and 307: 13.6 System Aspects The previous se
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Page 310 and 311: 5. S. C. Chetal, ―India‘s Fast
Page 312 and 313: capacity over this century, in a sy
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Page 322 and 323: Table 14-3. Effects of fuel pin dia
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Page 340 and 341: 14.9 How to Deploy Pyroprocessing P
Page 342 and 343: construction projects. They may see
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Page 346: 5. Federation of American Scientist
Page 349 and 350: Supporting the reactor design and c
Page 352 and 353: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In beginning this
Page 354 and 355: APPENDIX A DETAILED EXPLANATION OF
Page 356 and 357: The actinide metals (uranium, pluto
Page 358 and 359: As noted above, the interactions ri
Page 360 and 361: 3. Equilibrium coefficients give th
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Page 364 and 365: proceed spontaneously. If the magni
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Page 368 and 369: increases with increasing temperatu
Page 370 and 371: Equilibrium in a chemical system is
Page 372 and 373: Exp(-ΔG o /RT) = [ U / Pu ] [ U /
Page 374 and 375: ―in solution.‖ More Pu added to
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Page 378 and 379: A.9.5 The Second Cathode Regime: On
Page 380 and 381: in the real world. Uranium dendrite
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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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