Are New Types of Reactors Needed for the U.S. Nuclear Renaissance?

February 19, 2010 | 7 comments

Are New Types of Reactors Needed for the U.S. Nuclear Renaissance?

Ongoing problems with nuclear waste might resurrect plans for reactors that would leave less of it

By David Biello

On February 16, President Barack Obama announced loan guarantees totaling more than $8 billion for http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-energy-lanham-maryland">two new light-water reactors in Georgia, part of an initiative to restart the nuclear power industry in the U.S. Just three weeks earlier, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu had announced the http://www.energy.gov/news/8584.htm">formation of a Blue-Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to resolve what to do with the waste produced by those future reactors—as well as the 2,000 metric tons a year produced by the 104 reactors currently in operation in the U.S. After all, the Obama administration has halted plans to store spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada—a geologic repository that never opened.

Such struggles to find a permanent resting place for nuclear waste has prompted some to resurrect an idea that stretches back to the Manhattan Project: so-called http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf98.html">fast-neutron reactors that can consume nuclear waste through fission. Whether it is billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates touting a new design for a http://intellectualventureslab.com/?p=687">traveling-wave reactor or the South Korean government promoting spent fuel reprocessing and fast breeder reactors, observers and governments seem to think it is time to reconsider fast reactors—despite the fact that the designs have a mixed track record. Since the 1950s, roughly $100 billion has been spent on the research and development of such reactors around the world, yet there is currently only one producing electricity—the BN-600 reactor in Russia, operational since 1980.

The U.S. "is at an impasse over disposing of nuclear waste," noted physicist Frank von Hippel of Princeton University and co-chair of the http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/pages_us_en/about/about/about.php">International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), during a February 17 conference call with reporters that included several physicists, his co-authors on a new report on such fast-neutron reactors. "The interest in these reactors is that fast-neutron reactors are more efficient at fissioning long-lived isotopes…...fissioning long-lived isotopes will minimize the waste problem."

Going fast with sodium

The most prevalent type of http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-fast-breeder-react">fast-neutron reactor, so-called because the neutrons used to initiate the fission chain reaction are traveling faster than neutrons moderated by water in conventional nuclear reactors, operate at temperatures as high as 550 degrees Celsius and use liquid sodium instead of water as a coolant. Sodium burns explosively when exposed to either air or water, necessitating elaborate safety controls. Nevertheless, as far back as 1951 at Idaho National Laboratory, such a sodium-cooled fast-neutron reactor produced electricity.

...

NEWS ALERT (17 February 2010, 1:30 p.m. EST)

NEW IPFM REPORT: UNSUCCESSFUL "FAST BREEDER" IS NO SOLUTION FOR LONG-TERM REACTOR WASTE DISPOSAL ISSUES

After Over $50 Billion Spent by US, Japan, Russia, UK, India and France, No Commercial Model Found; High Cost, Unreliability, Major Safety Problems and Proliferation Risks All Seen as Major Barriers to Use. Hopes that the “fast breeder” -- a plutonium‑fueled nuclear reactor designed to produce more fuel than it consumed -- might serve as a major part of the long-term nuclear waste disposal solution are not merited by the dismal track record to date of such sodium-cooled reactors in France, India, Japan, the Soviet Union/Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to a major new study from the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM).

Read the http://www.ipfmlibrary.org/ipfmnews100217.pdf">press release and http://www.ipfmlibrary.org/rr08.pdf">download the full report.

An audio stream of the press conference is available http://www.hastingsgroupmedia.com/021710IPFMfastbreederreactorevent.mp3">here.

...

Titled “Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status,” the IPFM report concludes: “The problems (with fast breeder reactors) ... make it hard to dispute Admiral Hyman Rickover’s summation in 1956, based on his experience with a sodium-cooled reactor developed to power an early U.S. nuclear submarine, that such reactors are ‘expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair.’”

Plagued by high costs, often multi-year downtime for repairs (including a 15-year reactor restart delay in Japan), multiple safety problems (among them often catastrophic sodium fires triggered simply by contact with oxygen), and unresolved proliferation risks, “fast breeder” reactors already have been the focus of more than $50 billion in development spending, including more than $10 billion each by the U.S., Japan and Russia. As the IPFM report notes: “Yet none of these efforts has produced a reactor that is anywhere near economically competitive with light-water reactors ... After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them have been steadily cut back in most countries.”

The new IPFM report is a timely and important addition to the understanding about reactor technology. Today, with increased attention being paid both to so-called “Generation IV” reactors, some of which are based on the fast reactor technology, and a new Obama Administration panel focusing on reprocessing and other waste issues, interest in some quarters has shifted back to fast reactors as a possible means by which to bypass concerns about the long-term storage of nuclear waste.

Frank von Hippel, Ph.D., co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, and professor of Public and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, said: “The breeder reactor dream is not dead but it has receded far into the future. In the 1970s, breeder advocates were predicting that the world would have thousands of breeder reactors operating by now. Today, they are predicting commercialization by approximately 2050. In the meantime, the world has to deal with the legacy of the dream; approximately 250 tons of separated weapon-usable plutonium and ongoing — although, in most cases struggling — reprocessing programs in France, India, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom.”

Mycle Schneider, Paris, international consultant on energy and nuclear policy, said: “France built with Superphénix, the only commercial-size plutonium fueled breeder reactor in nuclear history. After an endless series of very costly technical, legal and safety problems it was shut down in 1998 with one of the worst operating records in nuclear history.”

Thomas B. Cochran, nuclear physicist and senior scientist in the Nuclear Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said: “Fast reactor development programs failed in the: 1) United States; 2) France; 3) United Kingdom; 4) Germany; 5) Japan; 6) Italy; 7) Soviet Union/Russia 8) U.S. Navy and 9) the Soviet Navy. The program in India is showing no signs of success and the program in China is only at a very early stage of development. Despite the fact that fast breeder development began in 1944, now some 65 year later, of the 438 operational nuclear power reactors worldwide, only one of these, the BN-600 in Russia, is a commercial-size fast reactor and it hardly qualifies as a successful breeder. The Soviet Union/Russia never closed the fuel cycle and has yet to fuel BN-600 with plutonium.”

...

To explore these issues, our study postulates a global growth scenario that by
mid-century would see 1000 to 1500 reactors of 1000 megawatt-electric
(MWe) capacity each deployed worldwide, compared to a capacity equivalent
to 366 such reactors now in service.

Thus our most important recommendation is:

For the next decades, government and industry in the U.S. and elsewhere
should give priority to the deployment of the once-through fuel cycle,
rather than the development of more expensive closed fuel cycle
technology involving reprocessing and new advanced thermal or fast
reactor technologies.

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/index.html

While all 17 members of the committee concluded that the GNEP R&D program, as currently planned, should not be pursued, 15 of the members said that the less-aggressive reprocessing research program that preceded the current one should be. However, if DOE returns to the earlier program, called the Advance Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI), it should not commit to a major demonstration or deployment of reprocessing unless there is a clear economic, national security, or environmental reason to do so.

http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2007/10/national_academy_of_science_re.php