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Barry Brook
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Karma: 103 |  | IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Thread Started on Oct 23, 2012, 9:16pm » | ![[Quote]](http://images.proboards.com/buttons/quote.gif "[Quote]") |
A new post has been published on BraveNewClimate. Link here: http://bravenewclimate.com/the-case-for-....al-fast-reactor
Here we present a white paper, written by the Berkeley Conferees and SCGI, for the 2012 Dubai World Energy Forum. The focus is expediting the commercial demonstration of the Integral Fast React - a generation IV design which safely recycles nuclear waste to create abundant zero-carbon electricity.
This BNC Discussion Forum thread is for the comments related to this BNC post.
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There's no 'silver bullet' for solving the climate and energy crises. The bullets are made of depleted uranium and thorium... |
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Edward Greisch
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| | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #1 on Oct 23, 2012, 10:33pm » | |
Ed: Deleted - not sufficiently relevant to this post, and was clearly pre-prepared text. Please create your own thread on the energy boards for this.
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Douglas Wise
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| | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #2 on Oct 23, 2012, 10:37pm » | |
I accept that I'm already to be numbered among the converted. Nevertheless, I felt the need to state that I thought the White Paper to be succinct and very well written
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Barry Brook
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Karma: 103 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #3 on Oct 23, 2012, 10:58pm » | |
Thanks Douglas - that's good to know. It went through a number of iterations and got good feedback from most people. It will be interesting to see how it is received at the WEF tomorrow.
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There's no 'silver bullet' for solving the climate and energy crises. The bullets are made of depleted uranium and thorium... |
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trag
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Karma: 2 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #4 on Oct 24, 2012, 1:49am » | |
Oct 23, 2012, 10:37pm, Douglas Wise wrote:| I accept that I'm already to be numbered among the converted. Nevertheless, I felt the need to state that I thought the White Paper to be succinct and very well written |
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I liked it too. It makes some complex points in a quick and clear manner.
What is the potential pathway to get this in front of the people who have the power to finance this idea?
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engineerpoet
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Karma: 0 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #5 on Oct 24, 2012, 11:05am » | |
I have bookmarked the parent post as a very useful intro for the uninitiated... though I may be setting the bar for "uninitiated" rather high compared to the average person.
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PaulQ
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| | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #6 on Oct 24, 2012, 11:29am » | |
Sorry to be Capt. Negative, but I thought I'd offer a suggestion.
The intro has this in one the first lines:
We advocate a hastened timetable for commercial demonstration of Generation IV nuclear technology,
As we all know, there is a lot of fear in the nuclear debate. The two emphasised words in the same sentence are likely to draw instant negativity.
P.S. Really like the paper and good luck!
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seth
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| | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #7 on Oct 25, 2012, 4:21am » | |
The Russians have had a BN600 running for years, a BN800 coming up next year, and several proposed for China.
India's new unit is firing up next year at $1.5B/Gw first of 5 to 2020.
Korea is trying to persuade the US to let it us pyroprocessing.
The GE Prism is likely too little too late.
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engineerpoet
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Karma: 0 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #8 on Oct 25, 2012, 8:50am » | |
Oct 25, 2012, 4:21am, seth wrote:The Russians have had a BN600 running for years, a BN800 coming up next year, and several proposed for China.
The GE Prism is likely too little too late. |
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I wouldn't be too sure about that. The BN reactors use lead-bismuth coolant (corrosive, and produces radio-polonium) and oxide fuel. The PRISM's metallic fuel has unique advantages, if it can be brought to market in time.
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Anon
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Karma: 9 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #9 on Oct 25, 2012, 12:59pm » | |
I was pretty sure the BNs used Na coolant (though the Soviets did deploy some Pb-Bi reactors on submarines and Russia has proposed them again).
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David B. Benson
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Karma: 6 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #10 on Oct 25, 2012, 1:49pm » | |
EngineerPoet & Anon --- The BN600 is sodium cooled. A different two letter prefix is used for the Russian Pb cooled designs.
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Tom Blees
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Karma: 1 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #11 on Oct 25, 2012, 5:54pm » | |
Metal fuel is a key difference between the PRISM and all these other designs. The Koreans are hip to it and intend to build metal-fueled fast reactors. India intends to switch to metal eventually, and the Russians have talked about it as their intention too. This is one reason it behooves GE to get the PRISM up and running, otherwise they'll definitely be late to the party.
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engineerpoet
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Karma: 0 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #12 on Oct 25, 2012, 7:31pm » | |
Ye gods, I have to sit through a COMMERCIAL to get a security code now? And any trifling error in the process requires me to repeat everything?
I will NOT be back.
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Edward Greisch
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| | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #13 on Oct 25, 2012, 8:41pm » | |
Recycling of nuclear fuel was done for Generation 2 reactors. I almost took a job at a nuclear fuel recycling plant in 1968. The same type of recycling is still done in France, Russia and Japan.
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davidl
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Karma: 0 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #14 on Oct 26, 2012, 12:42am » | |
Sorry to be a bit negative as I'm certainly in favor of the IFR system getting a fair chance to prove itself but there are some somewhat dubious claims floating around out there. My research specialty is Molten Salt Reactors and I certainly know some in the associated thorium community tend to stretch the facts as well (which I try to correct when possible).
The main technical point I wish to bring up is the often repeated claim that running IFR's will mean only a waste stream of fission products because all transuranics (Np,Pu etc) are recycled. Thus, the logic goes, after 300 years for fission products to mostly stabilize you are back to radiation levels in the original ore. First minor point is the "original ore" quote refers to comparing to the radiotoxicity of 200 tonnes of natural uranium that would used by a LWR per GWe year. The real issue I have though is that the IFR pyroprocessing was never shown to be extremely effective at avoiding Pu and other tranuranics slipping past into the waste stream. This review by Los Alamos quotes 1% loss, whereas the PUREX process (with its many negatives such as cost) can obtain as low as 0.01% loss.
ADVANCED NUCLEAR FUEL
PROCESSING OPTIONS
FINAL REPORT
October 6, 1997
LA-UR-98-2773
I don't have a reference handy but I've heard from many sources that typical losses in practice were up to 3% and 0.5% was thought likely the best obtainable. To crunch those numbers, if an IFR is processing on site 2000kg of transuranics per GWe year then 0.5% loss would be 10 kg per year. Doesn't sound like much and this is indeed about a 25 fold improvement over PWR Once Through (250 kg) but that 10 kg of mainly Pu will be roughly 1000 times more radiotoxic than the associated fission products after the 300 year mark and about still 20 times higher than fission products after 10,000 years. These log log graphs of PWR Once Through actinides radiotoxicity vs fission products are shown many places, sorry for no reference.
So in my view IFR can really not claim to be that drastically changing the waste profile. Also, I've never been able to find out where that waste Pu ends up. If it is mixed in with tonnes of other process residues it may represent and even greater problem for long term disposal.
I'm sure at least a few IFR advocates will claim the process can be made more efficient with time and maybe that's true but keep in mind, billions were already spent developing pyroprocessing which had an early goal of 0.1% transuranic losses which they clearly came no where near obtaining.
My other slight pet peeve is the usual quote that fast breeders are needed because PWRs only use 1% of the available energy of uranium (thorium community does the same). OK, well if I could show you practical D-D fusion at a low cost would someone then say, sorry we don't want it because you are only using a tiny fraction of water's available energy? No, it has to come down to fuel costs and resource sustainability. Even current LWRs converter reactors could likely supply the world's energy as long as the price of uranium rose somewhat to allow mining of lower grade ores (but I'd completely agree we should try to do better). And of course to end with shameless self promotion, running Molten Salt Reactors as simple converter reactors without processing to remove fission products (just using the salt in multi-year batches) could replace all fossil fuel derived electricity without increasing uranium production or enrichment as they are 4 to 6 times more efficient on uranium use than LWRs (up to 10 times with more optimization).
ORNL TM 7207 (Conceptual design characteristics of a Denature Molten Salt Reactor with Once Through Fueling, 1980)
Molten Salt Reactors: A new beginning for an old idea Nuclear Engineering and Design 240 (2010) 1644–1656
David LeBlanc
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jagdish
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Karma: 1 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #15 on Oct 26, 2012, 1:31am » | |
Metallic fuel and pyroprocessing of used fuel are good points. Sodium coolant is something else. Development of fast reactors was halted in the US, France, UK and Japan due to sodium fires. Working fast reactors in France, Russia, China and India are also sodium cooled.
A safer coolant in form of salt or metal eutectic will be a great positive step in fast reactors.
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David B. Benson
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Karma: 6 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #16 on Oct 26, 2012, 11:46am » | |
David LeBlanc --- Pyroprocessing is electrochemistry and if indeed about 1% goes to the wrong 'ode' (cathode, anode) then it is mixed in with all the fission products. The volume is rather small, about 1 part in 14.5 by weight (see the article for this thread).
Rather than bury in vitrified form, it would surely be possible to run the waste stream through some chemical process to separate the Pu from the fission products. Possibly just pyroprocess the waste stream alone. Assuming there is still 1% going the wrong way, the resulting waste stream would have but 10^(-4) = 0.01% of the total Pu.
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Alberto R
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| | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #17 on Oct 27, 2012, 7:22am » | |
Oct 26, 2012, 12:42am, davidl wrote: And of course to end with shameless self promotion, running Molten Salt Reactors as simple converter reactors without processing to remove fission products (just using the salt in multi-year batches) could replace all fossil fuel derived electricity without increasing uranium production or enrichment as they are 4 to 6 times more efficient on uranium use than LWRs (up to 10 times with more optimization).
David LeBlanc |
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Ok David, I'm sold. Really. I saw your TEAC4 video on Youtube.
Any chance to see it soon?
(an educated guess would suffice).
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edireland
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Karma: 4 | | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #18 on Oct 27, 2012, 9:15am » | |
With regards to transuranics leaking into the fission product stream.
If this is a problem you could dissolve the accumulated pyroprocessing salt into water (since it is a mix of alkali and alkali earth halides) and then run it through PUREX, except now the fissile content of the waste stream is rather lower than in the original fuel, and thus your criticality issues go away.
And since it doesn't contain any of the Uranium the mass of material to be processed is drastically reduced.
Could do pyroprocessing on site and ship the salt for processing at a central facility that is better equipped to do PUREX.
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roger clifton
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| | Re: IFR White Paper at Dubai
« Reply #19 on Oct 31, 2012, 7:15pm » | |
where is source of this Pu leak - rumour?
it doesnt seem necessary on theoretical grounds. The operator sets the voltage to draw down Pu from the chloride melt and yawns till the current vanishes - no more Pu in the melt. Perhaps the production guys got on top of the quality guys again!
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