My recent posts have been about breeder reactors which generate more fissile material than they consume. There is renewed global interest in breeder reactors for the production of nuclear fuel and the destruction of nuclear waste. Today's post is the second post in a series about the history and current status of breeder reactors in the France.
In 1976, a French council made the decision to build the Superphénix reactor near Lyon, France. The utilities rushed into planning and construction for the Superphénix before the decision was made public in 1977. Twenty thousand people came out to protest the project in the summer of 1976. Fifty cities and towns opposed the project. Thirteen hundred scientists published an open letter of their concerns to the governments of France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The CEA Chairman remained highly optimistic about the future of fast breeder reactors. He predicted that almost six hundred Superphénix size fast breeder reactors would be in operation world wide by the year 2000 and that there would be almost three thousand by 2025. Actually, there were no such reactors in operation by 2000.
A huge anti-nuclear demonstration took place at the Superphénix construction site with over fifty thousand people in 1977. After the demonstration turned violent, the riot police unleashed grenades which resulted in the death of one demonstration and the mutilation of another. The government refused to alter or delay their plans for the construction of the Superphénix.
In the late 1970s, Europe was concerned with the United States dominance in nuclear technology. The EURODIF uranium enrichment consortium started a plant at Tricastin in 1979 and there was a call for a European plutonium industry. President Carter's concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation dangers from spreading fast breeder technology were dismissed as "totally absurd." France felt that if it could use uranium mined in France to fuel fast breeders, it could be independent of outside energy suppliers such as Saudi Arabia.
Not all the people working of CEA shared the enthusiasm for fast breeder reactors. a two hundred and fifty page report was produced by a CEA engineer in 1982. He concluded that “fast breeder reactors are the most complicated, the most
polluting, the most inefficient and the most ambiguous means that man has
invented to date to reduce the consumption of nuclear fuel”.
The Superphénix was finished and turned on in 1985. It was intended to burn about four thousand pounds of plutonium annually but over its eleven years of operation, it burned less than twelve thousand pounds of plutonium. It experienced a number of technical problems and was shut down about half of the time. It never produced the level of electrical power that was projected in its original design. A major leak of sodium coolant at the end of 1985 was not repaired quickly because the engineering company responsible for the repair had laid off many critical staff because it was losing money. Numerous problems followed and in 1996 a major refurbishing was abandoned and the Superphénix was shut down permanently.
By the mid-1980s, the enthusiasm for fast breeder reactors was fading across the globe. Global construction of reactors had peaked in 1975 at forty and, by 1986, only one reactor was being constructed. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 damaged the reputation of and support for nuclear power. In addition, the price of uranium had dropped by almost two thirds and there was a plentiful supply for global demand. This cut into the argument for the need for breeders to produce fuel.
The French government was undeterred. Massive over construction of nuclear reactors resulted in excess electrical power capacity in the mid-1980s. The La Hague reprocessing plant quadrupled its reprocessing of spent fuel between 1987 and 1997. A great deal of high grade plutonium reprocessed from the French reactors was utilized in the construction of French nuclear weapons. The French government recently renewed its commitment to nuclear power despite the Fukushima disaster and the decision of Germany to totally abandon nuclear power generation. The decades long program for fast breeder reactors was very expensive for the French taxpayers and, other than nuclear weapons, was ultimately unproductive.
Superphénix reactor:
