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 the United Kingdom.

             In the mid 1970s, even with the many problems that plagued the Prototype Fast Reactor project (PFR), the Atomic Energy Agency was still pushing for a fleet of breeder reactors. The AEA had been lobbying the British government for permission to build a fuel scale fast breeder reactor with over a gigawatt capacity referred to as the Commercial Fast Reactor (CFR). By 1976, the AEA was spending over a hundred million British pounds a year on research, development for the CFR.

              In 1976, the Flowers Commission called for a clear distinction between a full scale commercial fast breeder reactor and a demonstration breeder reactor. The commission was concerned about all the problems that the DFR and PFR revealed with respect to fast breeder reactor design. A Royal Commission also questioned the wisdom of moving to what Glenn Seaborg called a “plutonium economy.” These commissions were in direct opposition to the rapid development of a fleet of fast breeder reactors.

             In May 1977, at the Dounreay site on the coast of Scotland, a variety of discarded materials were stuffed down a tunnel dug under the seabed to dispose of waste. The sodium-potassium coolant mixed with the other waste  generated hydrogen gas which resulted in an explosion that blew of the five ton lid on the tunnel. Debris from the tunnel was scattered over a wide area. This accident happened less than a month before a public hearing on the proposed Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at the Windscale facility. THORP was designed to reprocess plutonium from the fleet of fast breeder reactor power stations envisioned by the AEA.

            Despite the skepticism of the previous commissions with respect to the construction of a full scale fast breeder power reactor, there were still calls for a single demonstration fast breeder reactor. The AEA however wanted to build a commercial reactor rather than an experimental reactor because if they  built a power reactor, it would be paid for by the electrical utilities and not the AEA. The Central Electricity Generation Board said that they would make land available and let the AEA hook up the new reactor to the national grid but they would not pay for it. There had been a softening of demand for electricity since the oil crisis of 1974 and national utilities already had excess capacity. In 1978, the British government shifted support from fast breeder reactors to pressurize water reactors for power generation.

            The election of Margret Thatcher in 1979 resulted in renewed support for fast breeders. The official position was that the UK was a leader in fast breeder research and that fast breeders were important because of their ability to breed more fissile material for fuel. Critics said that the money being poured into  worldwide research into fast breeder reactors was difficult to justify because of the complexity and cost of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

            In 1984, a government report was issued that stated over two hundred and forty million British pounds had been spent on fast breeders so far and that another hundred and thirty billion would need to be spent to commercialize fast breeder reactors by 2015. The report was not enthusiastic about expending such huge sums of money for a program that might bear fruit in thirty years.

            In 1985, just as the AEA was promoting the construction of a European Demonstration Reprocessing Plant for the fast breeder reactor at Dounreay, the Thatcher government cut funding for fast breeder development. The disaster at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986 shocked the whole world and cast a pall over nuclear energy development in general.

              In 1988, the British government slashed funds for fast breeder development from one hundred million pounds to ten million pounds annually. Work on the PFR was to end in 1994 and work on reprocessing was to end in 1997. The vision of powering the UK with fast breeder reactors was abandoned.

Prototype Fast Reactor building at Dounreay:

A settlement approved by Florida regulators Thursday has established how Duke Energy will spread the costs of the failed Crystal River steam generator replacement and an abandoned project to build new reactors in Levy County. nuclearstreet.com

Southern California Edison (SCE) has formally started arbitration action with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) against Mitsubishi, which it claims supplied defective steam generators for its now-shut San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). world-nuclear-news.org

Have nuclear talks been more successful for Iran than the West? cnn.com

The United States and South Korea signed a new pact to deter North Korea’s potential use of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction amid growing threats from Pyongyang, their defense chiefs said on Wednesday. worldnews.nbcnews.com

Ambient office = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Orange bell pepper from Top Foods =  88 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 67 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. I have been covering the history of United States breeder reactor research and development in the past several posts. Today I am going to briefly review the history and current status of breeder reactors in the United Kingdom.

             Around 1950, the British were seriously talking about breeder reactors because uranium was scarce and expensive. Early on, researchers were skeptical about the feasibility of creating full scale breeder reactors but work did begin in 1955 on an experimental breeder reactor at Dounreay (DFR) on the coast of Scotland under the new Atomic Energy Authority (AEA). The reactor started operation at the end of 1959. The reactor utilized a molten sodium-potassium alloy for cooling which resulted in many problems. They did actually manage to supply power from the reactor to the national grid in 1962.

            With the successful operation of the DFR, there were enthusiastic projections for the creation of gigawatt fast breeder reactors by 1975. There were estimates that the cost of such reactors would be similar to the cost of conventional nuclear power reactors. Design work was carried out for a demonstration project called the Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR). In 1968, the AEA said that it wanted to have at least fifteen gigawatts of breeder reactor power generation online by 1986. Although they were still having problems with the DFR, in 1970, the AEA said that they were confident that a commercial fast breeder reactor with more than a gigawatt of capacity could be online by 1974. Work on the PFR kept falling farther behind schedule and the optimistic 1974 date for commercial power generation had to be abandoned.

           In 1973, the AEA, undaunted by the problems at the DFR and the delay in the PFR, predicted commercial breeder reactors would begin construction around 1976 with the first coming online in 1981. This was thought by some to be too optimistic with only a five year construction schedule but the AEA was confident with their new plan. Just before hosting an international conference on fast breeder reactors in March 1974, the AEA finally managed to turn on the PRF for the first time. At the conference, a paper from the Central Electricity Generation Board was skeptical about the AEA plans. The paper pointed out that safety and reliability were important and fast breeder research had shown many design difficulties. Cost savings were anticipated to be small for a fast implementation of fast breeder power generation. The paper concluded that no fast breeder reactors would be ordered before 1978. Later in 1974, the PFR was only operating at ten percent of full capacity and was having a variety of problems with the cooling system. As of 1976, the PRF was still not up to full capacity and a number of components had to be replaced. in 1977, the PRF was turned off permanently. Even with all the problems the AEA still pushed for a commercial breeder reactor to be built by 1986.

Dounreay AEA facility in 2006:

Nuclear report warns of apocalyptic scenario at Fukushima in weeks ahead. enenews.com

Typhoon appears to have affected Fukushima Daiichi plant. enenews.com

A small leak in the bottom of a Palo Verde reactor pressure vessel will cost its owners between $10 million and $15 million in repairs while adding extra weeks to the unit’s refueling outage. nuclearstreet.com

Chinese companies will be allowed to take a stake in the UK’s next generation of nuclear power plants following the signing of a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) on nuclear cooperation by the two countries. world-nuclear-news.org

Ambient office = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Celery from Top Foods =  184 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 75 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 70 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. I have been covering the history of United States breeder reactor research and development in the past several posts. My previous post told about how the some U.S. lost interest in breeder reactors in the 1980s. Today, I am going to deal with efforts to sustain and revive research into breeder reactors up to the present day.

             In 2001, the United States invited other countries interested in nuclear power to join a new international program called the Generation IV International Forum (also known as Gen IV Forum). Gen IV Forum supports collaboration in the design of a new generation of nuclear reactors which are projected to be available after 2030. Six different types of reactor design were selected for research and development. Three fast breeder reactor concepts were included with three different coolants; liquid sodium, liquid lead-bismuth alloy and helium. This collaboration has focused on “coordinating and pooling national research on reactor design, safety, proliferation resistance, fuel fabrication technologies, material development, and other topics.”

            In addition to the Gen IV Forum collaboration, a second international nuclear organization was created by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This program was named the International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO). Part of the reason for this second attempt at collaboration was the fact that the Gen IV Forum, initiated by the U.S. excluded countries such as Russia that the U.S. did not have nuclear cooperation agreements with. INPRO has issued a document that provides guidance in evaluating new nuclear technologies as well as a number of manuals to assist in implementing the processes outlined in the first document. INPRO members are currently working on research projects.

       The Bush Administration proposed a new program called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) in 2006. The stated purpose of this program is to expand the use of nuclear power in the U.S. and other countries while working against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In addition, GNEP was also intended to work towards a permanent geologic storage facility for nuclear waste. Part of the GNEP proposal was to give up on the once through nuclear fuel process with the necessity of burying spent nuclear fuel. The alternative that was proposed was to develop a closed fuel cycle based on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and burning it in fast breeder reactors to produce more energy and reduce the really hot and long lived transuranic elements. The breeder reactors would be designed to not breed more fissile materials than they consumed.

         In mid-2009, the domestic portion of GNEP was cancelled by the U.S. DOE as instructed by the Obama Administration. An effort by the U.S. Department of Energy to move to commercialization of breeder technology in the near future was also abandoned. The position of the Obama Administration is that the U.S. will not pursue domestic commercial reprocessing. The future of breeder reactors in the U.S. is not bright.

Morale at Fukushima is plummeting as nuclear cleanup takes its tool.  theguardian.com

Forecasts shows Fukushima may get the eye wall of Typhoon Wipha. enenews.com

Massachusetts’ Pilgrim nuclear plant shut down automatically and relied on its diesel generators for backup power Monday after an offsite power disruption brought about its third unplanned outage in as many months. nuclearstreet.com

A former supervising chemist at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan pleaded guilty Wednesday morning to federal charges after he was accused of falsifying diesel-fuel sample test data at the plant in an apparent attempt to keep it from shutting down. lohud.com

Ambient office = 99 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 72 nanosieverts per hour

Crimini Mushrooms from Top Foods =  89 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 70 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. I have been covering the history of United States breeder reactor research and development in the past several posts. My previous post told about how the U.S. lost interest in breeder reactors in the 1980s. Today, I am going to deal with efforts to sustain and revive research into breeder reactors up to the present day.

             Although the liquid metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBR) were the main focus of the U.S. breeder program, other designs for breeder reactors were explored. One design utilized helium gas to cool the reactor. Other designs relied on moderated or thermal neutrons and used either ordinary water or a molten salt as a coolant. These thermal neutron reactors were intended to breed U-233 from thorium. In the molten salt design, the fuel was mixed with the molten salt. The solution was circulated through the core of the reactor and then through a heat exchanger. The molten salt reactor was considered as a possible power plant for a nuclear aircraft carrier. Several of these molten salt reactors were built and tested at Oak Ridge in the 1950 and 1960s. Plans were drawn up for a demonstration reactor called the Molten Salt Breeder Experiment but the LMFBR reactors were the main focus of the AEC and consumed the majority of the funding available. The molten salt breeder reactors were not as efficient as the LMFBR reactors. The molten salt research programs were shut down in the early 1970s as was research into the other alternate breeder reactor designs.

              Since the mid 1980 when the breeder reactors programs were cancelled, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and the Nuclear Energy program in the U.S. Department of Energy (NEDOE) have worked to reignite interest in breeder reactors. One design that was heavily promoted is called the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR). This facility would include a fast breeder plutonium reactor and a spent fuel reprocessing section that would utilize pyroprocessing and electro-refining to separate the plutonium and other transuranics from the spent fuel so they can be used as fuel again. The goals of the ANL and NEDOE were to come up with a breeder reactor facility that would be environmentally safe, produce power economically and would not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately for that last one, it would actually be fairly easy for a country with such a facility to separate pure plutonium for nuclear weapons from the output of the reprocessing.

            ANL and NEDOE managed to get some funding to pursue the IFR concept though the 1980 and into the 1990 but the program was finally cancelled by President Clinton and Congress in 1994. NEDOE managed to keep the IFR alive to reprocess the left over nuclear fuel and sodium mixtures from earlier LMFBR experiments. About one third of the waste was reprocessed and in 2006, the DOE came up with an estimate of the cost of reprocessing the remaining two thirds for two hundred and thirty four million dollars. Tomorrow I will discuss current U.S. research on breeder reactors and participation in international organizations dedicated to the development of advanced reactor designs including fast breeders.

Diagram of Molten Salt Reactor Experiment:

 

MSRE plant diagram: (1) Reactor vessel, (2) Heat exchanger, (3) Fuel pump, (4) Freeze flange, (5) Thermal shield, (6) Coolant pump, (7) Radiator, (8) Coolant drain tank, (9) Fans, (10) Fuel drain tanks, (11) Flush tank, (12) Containment vessel, (13) Freeze valve. Also note Control area in upper left and Chimney upper right.