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]]]]]]]]]] NEW BREEDER REACTOR MAY OPERATE MORE SAFELY [[[[[[
By Ron Winslow (12/02/1988)
Staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal
From The Wall Street Journal, 1 December 1988, p. B2:6
[Kindly uploaded by Freeman 10602PANC]
[Note by Freeman 10602PANC: Readers of AtE could tell Mr
Winslow a few things about `radioactive wastes' and the `greenhouse
effect'.]
[Note by Sysop: I'll say they could. Winslow is typical of the
WSJ Reporters: not vicious like the NYT's, but unwilling to do his
home-work. He parrots nonsense not only about wastes and greenhouse
effect, but about "scarcity of uranium" -- an element that is present
EVERYWHERE, though admittedly only at a price. When a country, like
Germany or Israel, is out of oil, it is out of it at ANY price. Not a
terribly important point, but one that can escape only a sloppy
reporter.]
BOULDER, Colo. -- A new type of nuclear reactor under development
at the Argonne National Laboratories can operate much more safely
that the current generation of nuclear plants and might solve the
most troublesome problems of nuclear waste, researchers claim.
The so-called Integral Fast Reactor could be operational by
the turn of the century, its proponents say. Using a different
fuel and reactor coolant than conventional commercial nuclear
plants, the IFR is a breeder reactor using a technology called
electrorefining to recycle spent fuel. In this process, it
returns the longest-lived radioactive wastes to the reactor and
consumes them in the fission process.
If such a process, already developed in small-scale
experiments, proves workable in full-sized reactors, it would
eliminate the need to find repository sites that would remain
stable for the tens of thousands of years required for
radioactive elements to decay safely.
`Revolutionary Change'
The experimental reactor's various advancements ``constitute
revolutionary change'' in nuclear technology, said Charles E.
Till, the associate laboratory director in charge of the Argonne
program. He described the new reactor at the Council for the
Advancement of Science Writing's annual meeting at the University
of Colorado here.
The U.S. nuclear power industry is currently stymied by a
combination of operational shortcomings and political gridlock
that have undermined public and investor confidence in the
technology. But interest in nuclear power is reviving as concern
mounts over the greenhouse effect -- the widely predicted warming
of the Earth. Unlike nuclear power, fossil fuels such as coal,
oil and natural gas -- which together produce most of the
nation's electricity -- yield significant quantities of
pollutants thought to cause the greenhouse effect.
The Argonne reactor faces enormous political and technological
obstacles before it reaches commercial operation. As a breeder
reactor, it produces significant amounts of plutonium, a key
ingredient in nuclear weapons. Critics are certain to argue that
the reactor will tempt U.S. energy officials to use the
technology for military purposes, and that its wide commercial
adoption would increase opportunities for terrorists to obtain
plutonium. Mr. Till said the plutonium would be tainted with
impurities and not readily suited for bombs. In any event, he
said, all plutonium would be recycled and consumed in the
reactor.
Efficiency Saves Scarce Uranium
Despite such concerns, the IFR promises significant advantages
over present nuclear technology. In commercial reactors, just 1%
of the uranium, in the form of uranium oxide, is actually
consumed as the reaction in the core produces heat, Mr. Till
said. The rest is waste. Fuel used in the Argonne reactor,
however, is a metallic alloy of uranium, plutonium and zirconium,
of which 15% to 20% is burned and the rest is recycled until
nearly all useful components are consumed.
Such breeder-induced efficiency is crucial, Mr. Till argued,
because the estimated world-wide supply of uranium isn't
sufficient to ensure that nuclear power can play a long-term role
in mitigating the impact of global warming. Indeed, Mr. Till
said, if current reactors replaced 40% of the world's fossil fuel
capacity, the uranium to power those reactors would last only
about 30 years. ``This is no solution to a long-term global
concern.''
The reactor has already established in an unusual experiment
that it is what scientists describe as ``inherently safe.'' In
April 1986, scientists at the reactor, located in Idaho, provoked
two separate loss-of-coolant accidents of the kind that occurred
at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. In both tests the IFR
reactor's temperature spiked quickly. But, without any
intervention, the chain reaction stopped and temperatures
returned to normal in minutes.
Sodium Coolant, Metallic Fuel
This safety improvement over current reactors is attributed to
the IFR's coolant, liquid sodium, and to its metallic nuclear
fuel. Most commercial reactors circulate water through the
reactor core to extract its heat, and transfer it outside the
reactor where it makes the steam that turns a turbine generator.
But water in the core must be kept under more than 100 times
atmospheric pressure to prevent its boiling away at the reactor's
normal 900-degree operating temperatures. Loss of the water
would allow the core to overheat and melt. Sodium has a boiling
point of 1,650 degrees and readily absorbs the reactor's heat at
normal atmospheric pressure, a safety advantage in itself.
At the same time, the metallic fuel is a far better conductor
of heat than the oxide fuel used in commercial reactors. In any
overheating, the excess heat is quickly conducted to the coolant.
Moreover, as the heat spreads evenly through the fuel, everything
expands, spreading the uranium atoms apart and slowing the
nuclear reactor without any human or mechanical intervention.
Researchers are currently preparing for full-scale testing of
the electrorefining process that both breeds new fuel and
eliminates the worst of the reactor's waste. Under this process,
a combination of high temperatures and electrochemical and
chemical reactions separate the components of the spent fuel.
The useful portions -- including plutonium and other elements
with very long half-lives -- can then be returned to the reactor
as fresh fuel.
The remaining waste would still take about 200 years to become
harmless, posing a disposal problem with a much simpler solution
than waste that must be stored for as much as a million years.
* * *
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