Japanese Government Officials say that land is contaminated out to 250 kilometers from Fukushima plant  and all of Japan is at risk for serious contamination of food and water. enenews.com

Nuclear engineer say that there are so many different ways to destabilize the Fukushima reactor buildings and melted cores, that it is hard to predict exactly which one will occur. enenews.com

Last week the U.S. Department of Energy acknowledged it will most likely miss three deadlines laid out in a 2010 legal settlement. nuclearstreet.com

Iranian nuclear negotiators will off a new proposal on Tuesday that is intended to persuade world powers that the country’s nuclear program has only peaceful aims. nytimes.com

Ambient office = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 76 nanosieverts per hour

Bartlett pear from Top Foods =  76 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

2 years and 7 months later It is still not known exactly what happened in Fukushima’s Unit 2 reactor on March 11, 2013. fukushima-diary.com

Nearly half of Fukushima’s 350 contaminated water tanks can’t even last for 5 years.  fukushima-diary.com

Britain ‘extremely close’ to nuclear plant deal with France’s EDF to build first new nuclear plant since 1995. uk.reuters.com

Threat to Britain’s nuclear program as Treasury blocks new reactors at Sellafield. thetimes.co.uk

Ambient office = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 76 nanosieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from Top Foods =  76 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

The head of the U.N. nuclear agency urged Japan on Thursday to work harder to address international concerns about leaks of contaminated water at its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant and said his agency will jointly monitor radiation levels in the nearby ocean. theepochtimes.com

Doctors warn about radioactive substances from Fukushima coming to West Coast in 2014. enenews.com

As South Korea seeks new export markets for its nuclear technology, an application for design certification of its Advanced Pressurized Reactor-1400 (APR-1400) has been submitted to the US nuclear regulator. world-nuclear-news.org

One hundred people have been indicted for their part in falsifying safety documents affecting South Korean nuclear power plants, the country’s government has announced. world-nuclear-news.org

Ambient office = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 98 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Hass avacado from Top Foods =  58 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

           My recent posts have been about breeder reactors which generate more fissile material than they consume. There is renewed interest in breeder reactors for the production of nuclear fuel and the destruction of nuclear waste. Today will the second part of my review of the history of breeder reactors in the United States.

           Yesterday, I talked about the experimental breeder reactors developed during the 1950s and early 1960s in the US. They had serious problems and reduced US enthusiasm for breeder reactors.

            In 1956, ground was broken at a site about thirty miles from Detroit, Michigan on the shores of Lake Erie for the most ambitious US breeder reactor up to that time. It was dubbed the Enrico Fermi Breeder Reactor Project and thirty four companies were involved in the project under the umbrella of the Power Reactor Development Corporation. (PRDC) The Fermi 1 reactor was a sodium cooled reactor fueled with highly enriched uranium. It was a two loop design with the sodium that cooled the core transferring its heat to a secondary sodium cooling system. It began operating in 1963. In late 1966, there was a partial core meltdown caused by a blockage of the sodium flow through the core. Two rods melted down but no radiation was released into the environment. It took four years to repair the reactor and it was put back into operation in 1970. It generated a small fraction of its rated power output in 1971 and the PRDC decided that it was not a practical source of electrical power. The reactor was turned off in 1972 and subsequently decommissioned.

           All the early fast breeder used metal fuels. In the 1960s, research began on fast breeder reactor designs that would be fueled with ceramic pellets containing a mixture of plutonium oxide and uranium oxide. The Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor was built near Strickler, Arkansas to test MOX fuel in breeder reactors. It started operation in 1969 and was shut down in 1972 after verifying that MOX had advantages over metal fuel.

          Despite all these problems, the Atomic Energy Commission focused on developing commercial fast breeder reactors for generating electricity during the 1960s. They poured money and manpower into research and promotion of fast breeder reactors. They hoped that government subsidies would entice utilities to adopt the breeder reactors. In 1968, the AEC issued a 10 volume program plan for liquid metal fast breeder reactors. The development of LMFBRs became a national priority. The AEC hoped to see the development of a robust commercial LMFBR industry in the US starting in 1984. The AEC produced some projections of decreasing costs for fast breeder reactors and increasing profitability for these new reactors. Unfortunately, these projections turned out to be far too optimistic. In the next article in this series, we will deal with the rise and fall of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor which was to be a demonstration of the potential of the AEC LMFBRs.

Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor:

 

 

 

 

Former top U.S. nuclear official says that it may be impossible to remove melted fuel at Fukushima. new.livestream.com

Fukushima disaster might make 2020 Tokyo Olympics impossible. rt.com

The Air Force said Friday it fired the two-star general in charge of its nuclear missiles in response to an investigation into alleged personal misbehavior. foxnews.com

The head of Ontario’s provincial government has set aside plans to build two new reactors, saying the current demand for power does not justify the expense. nuclearstreet.com

Ambient office = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Redleaf lettuce from Top Foods =  107 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 90 nanosieverts per hour

 

 

 

           My recent posts have been about breeder reactors which generate more fissile material than they consume. There is renewed interest in breeder reactors for the production of nuclear fuel and the destruction of nuclear waste. Today I am  going to delve into the history of breeder reactors in the United States.

           Scientists who worked on the first atomic bombs for the U.S. military during World War II considered the availability of uranium and decided that there needed to be a better way to obtain plutonium for future weapons. They developed the theory of breeder reactors where more fissile material could be created than was burned by the reactor.

           The first fast neutron breeder reactor in the world was called Clementine. It was cooled with mercury. Construction started at Los Alamos in 1946 and the reactor went into full production in 1949. Plutonium metal was inserted into steel rods with natural uranium slugs as end caps. A set of rods were placed in a cage with mercury circulating between the rods. There was a shell of natural uranium around the core to act as a reflector. Clementine was shut down in 1950 because of a control rod malfunction. It was fixed and restarted but then a fuel rod exploded. It was subsequently dismantled.

           Concerned with the danger of building experimental nuclear reactors near population centers, the U.S. government opened a new nuclear laboratory called the Nuclear Reactor Testing Station near Arco, Idaho. The Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-1). The ERB-I used sodium-potassium as a coolant. They had to be very careful that there were no leaks because the coolant would spontaneously burst into flame if it came into contact with water or air. It was fueled with uranium enriched to ninety four percent U-235. The EBR-I went into operating in 1951 and was the first reactor to generate electricity. As the power output was increased, the reaction increase creating a positive feedback loop. During tests in 1955, forty percent of the core melted down. The reactor was repaired and operated until 1963.

           Admiral Hyman Rickover initiated research on fast neutron reactors for submarine propulsion. The S1G was built by General Electric at the Knolls Atomic Laboratory in New York state. It was fuel with highly enriched uranium and began operating in 1955. It had problems with leaks in its steam turbine system and was shut down in 1957. Rickover dropped the idea of fast neutron reactors for submarine propulsion citing the turbine problem, the complexity and the expense of such reactors.

            LAMPRE-I was built at Los Alamos. It was fueled with molten plutonium and was cooled with sodium. It began operating in 1961 and ran until 1963. The operating level had to be reduced because the researched found that they did not know enough about the temperatures that would be generated. It was shut down and funding for a more advanced design never materialized.

 Clementine, the world’s first fast breeder reactor: