Nuclear Energy

can't catch anything else, and there is hardly any money coming in at the moment. We don't have
any choice.” dli
Part VI: India’s Fast Breeder Reactor Program
The Worldwide Experience with Fast Breeders
Ever since the dawn of the nuclear age, nuclear energy advocates have dreamed of a reactor
that would yield more fuel than it consumes. In the sixty years since then, seven countries – the US,
UK, France, Germany, the USSR, Japan and India – established plutonium breeder reactor
programs. However, their efforts have failed to produce a reactor that is economically competitive
with conventional light water reactors. The capital cost per kilowatt of generating capacity of a
demonstration sodium cooled fast breeder reactor (FBR) has typically been twice as much as a
LWR of comparable capacity. dlii Additionally, plutonium which is the basic fuel for fast breeders is
extracted by chemically treating highly radioactive spent fuel at reprocessing plants, and this is also
an expensive process. This further increases the cost of electricity from fast breeders. dliii
But more important than the economical aspect is the safety aspect. While all nuclear
reactors are susceptible to catastrophic accidents, FBRs are even more so. There are several reasons
why accidents involving fast breeders are both more likely and could cause greater damage to
public health. One problem arises from the use of liquid (molten) sodium as the coolant. Plutonium
reactors need fast moving neutrons, and so cannot use water as coolant since water is a moderator.
To date, all fast breeders have used liquid sodium as a coolant. But sodium has serious drawbacks.
It is highly reactive; it burns when exposed to air and reacts violently with water. Therefore sodium
cannot be exposed to air or water, which means operating these reactors is going to be very difficult
as even a minor leak can be dangerous. In fact, building and operating even test reactors has been
very difficult. A large fraction of the demonstration fast breeder reactors that have been built have
been shut down for long periods due to sodium-water fires caused by leaks. dliv
Another fear of a FBR is that unlike a water cooled reactor, which ceases operation if there
is a loss of coolant (a safety feature), fast reactors become even more reactive if there is loss of the
sodium coolant. This can result in a core meltdown and a small nuclear explosion. There are fears
that if this happens, it can lead to a Chernobyl type release of radioactivity into the environment.
Repairing a FBR is also more time consuming and difficult as compared to LWRs, as air has
to be prevented from coming into contact with sodium coolant. dlv
Even if success is achieved in building a test reactor, building larger fast breeder reactors
will be much more difficult and dangerous as the above problems will multiply in magnitude as the
reactor is bigger.
Another kind of problem that plagues fast reactors arises from the use of MOX (mixed-
uranium and plutonium oxide) fuel in the FBR. Because plutonium is about 30,000 times more
radioactive than uranium-235, huge safety precautions are required during fabrication of fuel, which
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