PLENTIFUL ENERGY

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CONTENTS FOREWORD ........................................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER 1 ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY AND THE INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR ......1 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Argonne National Laboratory ...................................................................................... 7 1.3 National Nuclear Power Development ...................................................................... 11 1.4 Beginnings: The Early History of Argonne and Argonne Reactor Development ....... 16 1.5 Fast Breeder Reactor Technology at Argonne: The Early Years, 1946 to 1964 ......... 20 1.6 Argonne in the "Shaw Years" of Reactor Development, 1965-1973 ......................... 29 1.7 The Decade of FFTF and CRBR ................................................................................... 34 1.8 Summary .................................................................................................................... 36 CHAPTER 2 THE INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR INITIATIVE .................................................. 39 2.1 Beginnings .................................................................................................................. 39 2.2 The Integral Fast Reactor Initiative ............................................................................ 41 2.3 Assembling the Pieces ............................................................................................... 44 2.4 Termination of the IFR Program ................................................................................ 47 2.5 Accomplishments and Status of the Integral Fast Reactor Initiative......................... 49 2.6 Summary .................................................................................................................... 51 CHAPTER 3 THE ARGONNE EXPERIENCE ....................................................................... 52 3.1 The Argonne Experience (Till) .................................................................................... 52 3.2 The Argonne Experience (Chang) .............................................................................. 69 3.3 Summary .................................................................................................................... 76 CHAPTER 4 IN THE BACKGROUND ................................................................................ 78 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 78 4.2 Energy Today ............................................................................................................. 83 4.3 National Energy Considerations ................................................................................ 85 4.4 The Relative Rarity of Carbon-Based Resources ........................................................ 86 4.5 Uranium Is the Key to an Orderly Transition ............................................................. 91 4.6 The Importance of China in All Such Discussions ...................................................... 95 4.7 The Energy Picture in Total ........................................................................................ 97 4.8 Summary .................................................................................................................. 100 CHAPTER 5 CHOOSING THE TECHNOLOGY.................................................................. 102 5.1 Aims and Considerations ......................................................................................... 102 5.2 The Fuel Choice ........................................................................................................ 104 5.3 The Coolant Choice .................................................................................................. 108 5.4 The Reactor Configuration Choice ........................................................................... 109 5.5 The Spent Fuel Processing Choice ........................................................................... 111 5.6 Summary .................................................................................................................. 114 v
CHAPTER 6 IFR FUEL CHARACTERISTICS, DESIGN, AND EXPERIENCE ............................ 115 6.1 What Makes a Good Fast Reactor Fuel? .................................................................. 116 6.2 What Are the Candidate Fuel Types? ...................................................................... 118 6.3 The Basis of Metal Fuel Development ..................................................................... 120 6.4 Irradiation Experience: A Very Long Burnup Fuel .................................................... 123 6.5 Understanding the Long Burnup Fuel Behavior ...................................................... 125 6.6 Testing the Effects of Remaining Variants in Fuel Design: Diameter and Length ... 129 6.7 Testing the Effects of Transient Variations in Reactor Power ................................. 130 6.8 Operation with Failed Fuel; Testing the Effects....................................................... 131 6.9 Minor Actinide Containing Fuel ............................................................................... 132 6.10 Other Characteristics ............................................................................................. 133 6.11 Summary ................................................................................................................ 134 CHAPTER 7 IFR SAFETY .............................................................................................. 138 7.1 Safety Goals for All Reactors: Defense in Depth...................................................... 139 7.2 Safety in the IFR: Introducing New Characteristics ................................................. 140 7.3 Significance to Regulatory Requirements ................................................................ 141 7.4 Evolution of Fast Reactor Safety: Treatment of Severe Accidents .......................... 142 7.5 Safety Through Passive Means: Inherent Safety ..................................................... 144 7.6 Handling Severe Accidents: Accidents Where the Reactor Shutdown Systems Fail145 7.7 Experimental Confirmations: The EBR-II Demonstrations ....................................... 147 7.8 Factors Determining Inherent Safety Characteristics .............................................. 149 7.9 Passive Mitigation of Severe Accidents of Extremely Low Probability .................... 153 7.10 Experimental Confirmations of Limited Damage in the Most Severe Accidents .. 155 7.11 Licensing Implications ............................................................................................ 159 7.12 Sodium Reaction with Air and Water .................................................................... 160 7.13 Summary ................................................................................................................ 164 CHAPTER 8 THE PYROPROCESS .................................................................................. 167 8.1 Earliest Experience with Pyroprocessing: EBR-II in the 1960s ................................. 168 8.2 Summary of Pyroprocessing .................................................................................... 170 8.3 The Fuel Conditioning Facility .................................................................................. 172 8.4 EBR-II Spent Fuel Treatment .................................................................................... 180 8.5 Waste Streams in Pyroprocessing ........................................................................... 182 8.6 Summary .................................................................................................................. 187 CHAPTER 9 THE BASIS OF THE ELECTROREFINING PROCESS ........................................ 189 9.1 Electrorefining Spent Fuel ....................................................................................... 189 9.2 Energy Transfer: The Thermodynamics of the Process ........................................... 190 9.3 Kinetics of the Reactions ......................................................................................... 193 9.4 The Power of Equilibria ............................................................................................ 193 9.5 Actinide Saturation in Liquid Cadmium: Adequate Plutonium Depositions ............ 196 9.6 Effect of Saturation on Chemical Activity ................................................................ 198 9.7 The Plutonium Recovery Experiments ..................................................................... 200 9.8 Summary .................................................................................................................. 203 vi
Page 1 and 2: PLENTIFUL ENERGY The Story of the I
Page 3 and 4: Copyright © 2011 Charles E. Till a
Page 8 and 9: CHAPTER 10 APPLICATION OF PYROPROCE
Page 10 and 11: FOREWORD On a breezy December day i
Page 12 and 13: CHAPTER 1 ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATO
Page 14 and 15: even now is straining the limits of
Page 16 and 17: with events and time. Till saw the
Page 18 and 19: it, I saw how a national laboratory
Page 20 and 21: Figure 1-2. West stands of the Stag
Page 22 and 23: development of nuclear power for ci
Page 24 and 25: depended on U.S. ability to maintai
Page 26 and 27: construction funding kept increasin
Page 28 and 29: faced a nightmarish combination of
Page 30 and 31: concept in the next decade.) In sti
Page 32 and 33: was based on EBR-I experience, but
Page 34 and 35: Figure 1-9. Experimental Breeder Re
Page 36 and 37: Figure 1-11. Rendering of the EBR-I
Page 38 and 39: performance. But the decision had b
Page 40 and 41: its shakedown in early years it jus
Page 42 and 43: sense primarily a commercial power
Page 44 and 45: without electrical generation, the
Page 46 and 47: Its purpose was to demonstrate the
Page 48 and 49: of each period, which the managemen
Page 50 and 51: CHAPTER 2 THE INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR
Page 52 and 53: A line had been pursued that the re
Page 54 and 55: 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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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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