Yale professor says  that all of humanity will be threatened for 1000s of years if spent fuel rods in Fukushima Unit 4 pool touch and have nuclear reactions during the removal process. enenews.com

Young Fukushima girl douses herself with gasoline, then lights it. enenews.com

Unit 3 at the Oconee nuclear plant in South Carolina shut down Thursday after its feedwater system began to malfunction. nuclearstreet.com

French nuclear company Areva has signed an agreement to develop uranium mines in Mongolia and to set up a joint venture company with Mongolian state-owned company MonAtom, with Mitsubishi Corporation as an equity partner. world-nuclear-news.org

Ambient office = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 117 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from Top Foods =  251 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Plutonium from Fukushima is coming from the reactors and not from the spent fuel pools. enenews.com

Japanese Prime Minister Abe supports Japan’s nuclear future. japantimes.co.jp

Top leaders from Japan and Pacific island nations will hold a summit in a city near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2015. my.sports.yahoo.com

Illinois’ distinction as the state with the most nuclear waste worries activist. chicago.cbslocal.com

Ambient office = 67 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 131 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 135 nanosieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from Top Foods =  132 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 81 nanosieverts per hour

TEPCO admits that some of the spent fuel rods in the Fukushima Unit 4 pool are damaged. fukuleaks.org

Human rights experts are criticizing a U.N. scientific report dismissing concerns about the effects of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster on the Japanese public. japantimes.co.jp

An Israeli defense official says a new report claiming Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb in less than a month is further justification for why Israel will take military action before that happens. foxnews.com

Investors may be lured back to nuclear power by recent technological developments including small modular reactors. fool.com

Ambient office = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 99 nanosieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from Top Foods =  189 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 118 nanosieverts per hour

          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 first in a series about the history and current status of breeder reactors in the Soviet Union and Russia.

          The Soviet Union established a fast breeder reactor program at the end of 1949 at the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE). They lacked important technical information about reactor design, core design, cooling systems, damage of components from irradiation and coolant system designs. Coming just after the destruction of World War II, the program faced serious shortages of materials, components and educated staff.

         The fast critical assembly Bystry Reactor 1(BR1) was started up in 1955 at the IPPE fueled with metallic plutonium without a coolant system. It was able to produce eighty percent more fuel than it burned and was excellent proof of the fast breeding concept. The next test reactor, the BR2, was designed with mercury as a coolant.  This test revealed that the plutonium metal fuel was not stable under irradiation and the mercury leaked badly. Eventually, the BR5 went into operation in 1959 with liquid sodium and plutonium oxide fuel. The BR5 was used to produce medical isotopes and also provided neutrons beams for medical treatment.  It continued to operate until 2004.

         In 1961, the IPPE put the BFS-1 into operation. This test reactor allowed the simulation of fast breeder reactors with different ratios of uranium to plutonium in the fuel. The BFS-1 was also able to test different fuel rod and control rod configurations. A BFS-2 was turned on in the late 1960 to allow the simulation of larger cores.

          The BOR-60 test reactor was built and began operation in 1969 at the Institute of Atomic Reactors at Dimitrovgrad to test something called vibro-packed fuel. To create this fuel, granulated oxides of uranium and plutonium are agitated in container with uranium powder.

         While the BP5 was being finished, design work began on the BN-50 which eventually was called BN-350 based on its electrical output. The BN-350 began construction in 1964 on the Mangyshlak peninsula on the Caspian Sea. It was finished in 1972 and turned on. It was tested with enriched uranium fuel and mixed uranium and plutonium oxide fuels referred to as MOX. In addition to generating electricity, the BN-350 was also used to desalinate seawater.

In 1973, there was a major sodium fire at the BN-350 caused by the failure of a steam generator. There had not been enough testing and design work on the steam generators used with the BN-350 reactor and there was not sufficient quality control on the welding in the generators. After repairs, the reactor continued to operate until 1999.

BN-350 Soviet Reactor:

Tetsuya Hayashi went to Fukushima to take a job at ground zero of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl and he lasted less than two weeks. reuters.com

Radiation readings are spiking to record levels all around the Fukushima plant. enenews.com

Greenland’s parliament has voted in favor of lifting the country’s long-standing ban on the extraction of radioactive materials, including uranium. world-nuclear-news.org

A new trade deal between Saskatchewan Province in Canada and the European Union could mean billions for the Canadian uranium industry. yournuclearnews.com

Ambient office = 63 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Hass avacado from Top Foods =  136 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 74 nanosieverts per hour

            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 in a series about the history and current status of breeder reactors in India.

            The Indian Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) started planning for a larger Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) even before the Fast Breeder Test Reactor was started.  The DAE first requested money for the PRBR in 1983 and began expenditures in 1987. It was projected that the new reactor would go online by the year 2000. After missing the year 2000 startup, construction began in late 2004 and the PFBR now was projected to  go online in 2010. In reality as of mid-2013, the PFBR was projected to go online in 2014. During the life of this project the cost has rising by over fifty percent.

            During its development and construction, the safety of the PFBT has been called into question. There is a danger of terrible accidents with explosive energy releases and dispersion on radioactive materials over a large area. The core as designed is not as reactive as it could be. If an accident damaged the fuel rods, the level of the reaction could increase in a positive feedback loop and cause a catastrophe. There is a another potential problem involving the sodium coolant. If the coolant rises above the standard operating level, it will become less dense and the reactivity would increase causing similar problems to those listed above for the fuel rod damage.

           In addition to problems with the fuel rod and sodium coolant reactivity issues, the PFBR also has weak containment. As designed, the containment could only withstand pressures twenty five percent over normal atmospheric pressure. Using a combination of size and containment for comparison, the PFBR containment is weaker than almost all the other demonstration breeder reactors in the world. Containment vessels for light water reactors may be up to ten times better than the PFBR containment. The Indian design team excuses this weak containment on the basis of very optimistic projections about possible accidents that the PFBR may encounter. Less optimistic projections suggest that the containment of the PFBR is far from adequate.

           Indian’s justification for the creation of breeder reactors is that India has very little uranium. Actually, India has a variety of sources of uranium which could be exploited for different costs. India relies on pressurized heavy water reactors for nuclear power.  The Indians have made very optimistic projections about the ability of breeder reactors to produce electricity at roughly the same cost as the pressurized heavy water reactors currently in use. Other countries have found that breeder reactors are much more expensive and difficult to construct and operate safely than the non-breeder reactors that are currently used for power production. The DAE has consistently underestimated the construction costs for all of the existing Indian reactors.

          Cost analysis of uranium and plutonium for use in breeder versus non-breeder reactors reveals that India has plenty of uranium for its convention reactors to last for decades which invalidate that claim that India needs breeder reactors for fuel production. Breeder reactors can also produce weapons grade plutonium. Some observers suspect that what India is really after is a steady source of high grade plutonium for its nuclear weapons program. India has resisted international efforts to constrain the Indian breeder reactors under development to purely civil energy production.

          India has outlined a very aggressive breeder reactor program projecting twenty gigawatts capacity by 2020 and two hundred and seventy five gigawatt capacity by 2052. Declining international restrictions on exporting nuclear fuel to India have given rise to even higher estimates of future breeder reactor capacity in India. Once again, it appears that the DAE is being over-optimistic with estimates of plutonium production that are not realistic even without the inevitable accidents, delays, and under-estimated costs. Given the experience of other countries which have had aggressive breeder reactor programs, it is unlikely that the envisioned bright future for breeder reactors will ever materialize in India.  

Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor: