The Integral Fast Reactor - Intro and Chapter 1
(aa1) Charles Till and Yoon Chang, Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois and Idaho, USA - 2011
Source: Word Document provided by Dr. Charles Till for posting on John Shanahan’s websites.
NOTEL A PDF of the entire book is available if you send a request to John Shanahan, email: acorncreek2006@gmail.com
The Experimental Breeder Reactor II
PLENTIFUL ENERGY
The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor
The complex history of a simple reactor technology, with emphasis on its scientific basis for non-specialists
CHARLES E. TILL and YOON IL CHANG
Copyright © 2011 Charles E. Till and Yoon Il Chang All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1466384606
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011918518
Cover design and printing by CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon
DEDICATION
To Argonne National Laboratory and the team of the many hundreds of scientists and engineers and other disciplines and trades who dedicated a substantial portion of their working lives to making real the many benefits arising from and inherent in the technology of the Integral Fast Reactor.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD ix
CHAPTER 1 ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY AND THE INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR 1
Beginnings: The Early History of Argonne and Argonne Reactor Development 16
Fast Breeder Reactor Technology at Argonne: The Early Years, 1946 to 1964 20
Argonne in the “Shaw Years” of Reactor Development, 1965-1973 29
CHAPTER 2 THE INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR INITIATIVE 39
CHAPTER 3 THE ARGONNE EXPERIENCE 52
CHAPTER 4 IN THE BACKGROUND 78
CHAPTER 5 CHOOSING THE TECHNOLOGY 102
CHAPTER 6 IFR FUEL CHARACTERISTICS, DESIGN, AND EXPERIENCE 115
Testing the Effects of Remaining Variants in Fuel Design: Diameter and Length ... 129
Testing the Effects of Transient Variations in Reactor Power 130
Evolution of Fast Reactor Safety: Treatment of Severe Accidents 142
Handling Severe Accidents: Accidents Where the Reactor Shutdown Systems Fail145
Passive Mitigation of Severe Accidents of Extremely Low Probability 153
Experimental Confirmations of Limited Damage in the Most Severe Accidents .. 155 7.11 Licensing Implications 159
CHAPTER 9 THE BASIS OF THE ELECTROREFINING PROCESS 189
CHAPTER 10 APPLICATION OF PYROPROCESSING TO LWR SPENT FUEL 209
Chapter 11 IMPLICATIONS OF THE IFR PYROPROCESS ON WASTE MANAGEMENT 226
he Long-Lived Low-Energy Radioactive Isotopes: Technetium and Iodine 238
ghly Radioactive Medium-Term Fission Products: Cesium and Strontium 240
CHAPTER 14 IFR DESIGN OPTIONS, OPTIMUM DEPLOYMENT AND THE NEXT STEP
Principles of Electrorefining: What Are the Basic Phenomena Here? What Is Fundamental? 346
“Redox Reaction” Is the Basis of All Electrochemical Phenomena 349
nderstanding Important Basic Behavior: The Power of Equilibria 357
ctinide Saturation in Liquid Cadmium: A Key to Enhanced Plutonium Depositions
FOREWORD
On a breezy December day in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, N.C., a great leap forward in the history of technology was achieved. The Wright brothers had at last overcome the troubling problems of ‗inherent instability‘ and ‗wing warping‘ to achieve the first powered and controlled heavier-than-air flight in human history. The
CHAPTER 1
ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY AND THE INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR
Introduction
Our principal purpose is to describe the technical basis of the IFR in adequate detail in a manner that is accessible to the non-specialist. The what, the why, and the how of the Integral Fast Reactor technology is what we try to convey. With a little willingness by the interested reader to accept approximate understandings and go on, a very adequate understanding of the technology should be possible without undue effort.
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory spreads over a pleasantly pastoral site in a still
Figure 1-1. Argonne National Laboratory main campus in southwest suburb of Chicago
Figure 1-2. West stands of the Stagg Field of the University of Chicago, the site of Chicago Pile-1
Figure 1-3. World‘s first reactor Chicago Pile-1
Figure 1-4. Cutaway view of ChicagoPile-1 showing the graphite blocks
Figure 1-5. Argonne at Site A, 1943 to 1946
Figure 1-6. Argonne-West site in Idaho (now merged into Idaho National Laboratory)
National Nuclear Power Development
The likely importance of nuclear power was recognized early. Nuclear electricity can be generated in any amount
Figure 1-7. A scale model of the Experimental Boiling Water Reactor (EBWR) was exhibited in the Argonne booth during the Second Geneva Conference of 1958
Beginnings: The Early History of Argonne and Argonne Reactor Development
In 1984, when Argonne began the IFR development it was with the full knowledge that it was going to be very controversial. The views of the organized anti-nuclear groups dominated the media; by and large, the public had been convinced that nuclear power was both dangerous and unnecessary. Our initiative was going to require extraordinary efforts across a whole range of political and technical fronts and it was going to require resources that would have to be gathered. Most of all, it was going to involve very real risks to the Laboratory. It meant going against interests that had power to damage the Laboratory, and going against a lot of the trends of the time. But in a sense Argonne was used to that; it had been in almost constant conflict right from its beginnings. In one way or another, its early history had involved freedom to pursue the R&D directions the laboratory found the most promising, freedom for its R&D staff to innovate, freedom to ―call its own shots.‖ Sometimes it won its battles, sometimes it didn‘t. But Argonne always took initiatives; Argonne tried. And some pretty amazing things resulted. We‘ll look now at a little of the early history, because that history formed the Laboratory‘s attitudes and practices through all the years that followed.
Figure 1-8. Reactors developed by Argonne
Fast Breeder Reactor Technology at Argonne: The Early Years, 1946 to 1964
The first thing that needs to be said is that the IFR came from a distinguished past. It was based on ideas, concepts, discoveries, developments, and technical approaches that reached back to Argonne‘s earliest days. Argonne‘s first reactor was almost the personal product of Argonne‘s first laboratory director, and a fast breeder reactor as well. It began it all. The Experimental Breeder Reactor Number 1 (EBR-I) was to start the world along the path to develop a commercial breeder technology, and to do it in the earliest years of nuclear development. But the path ended, suddenly, in the mid-sixties, uncompleted, its technology no longer pursued, no longer in fashion. The technology existed, of course, in the minds of those who took part in it, and, if you knew where to look, in papers and proceedings of the conferences of earlier years.
Figure 1-9. Experimental Breeder Reactor-I, designated as National Historic Landmark in 1966
Figure 1-10. EBR-I produced the first electricity from nuclear, supplying power to the reactor control system as well as the building and a machine shop
Figure 1-11. Rendering of the EBR-II Plant and its Fuel Cycle Facility
Figure 1-12. Cutaway View of EBR-II Pool-Type Primary System
Argonne in the “Shaw Years” of Reactor Development, 1965-1973
The changes that came with Milt Shaw and his Reactor Development and Technology Division (RDT) in the AEC in Washington took a little while to be felt at the Lab. The new people had had little experience with fast reactors. They applied their naval light water reactor experience to the fast breeder, in all the major things: the reactor configuration, the choices of materials, the programs to pursue, and how they would be directed. Directing the laboratories as to how they would take part in the fast reactor development, there was to be no straying from the RDT line: the word of the time was ―compliance‖ (with orders from AEC and later DOE headquarters). Other key words included ―disciplined development,‖ which meant a slow step-by-step march along a pre-determined route; ―Quality Assurance‖ (QA), a detailed documentation of every decision, with many-person checking and re- checking, and oversight separate from the engineer or scientist actually doing the work; and ―RDT Standards,‖ a rigid following of specified procedures and requirements that must be developed and then enforced, taking much effort. Time eventually caught up with all of this, but nearly twenty years was to elapse in the meantime.
The Decade of FFTF and CRBR
Shaw‘s departure was greeted with satisfaction at the Laboratory. He had damaged Argonne‘s reactor capabilities. He had driven good, experienced people, still young, out of positions where it was certain they could have done much for the nation. These men had decades of invaluable experience, with proven capability for discriminating judgment on breeder developments, large and small. Several of the very best left the laboratory entirely, pursuing careers outside fast reactor development.
Summary
Argonne National Laboratory came into being on July 1, 1946 as the first in the network of large national laboratories created in the wake of World War Two to investigate the atom and its implications in all aspect of nuclear energy. Argonne‘s experience illustrates very clearly the tension between the political and social trends
References
W. H. Hannum, Ed., ―The Technology of the Integral Fast Reactor and its Associated Fuel Cycle,‖ Progress in Nuclear Energy, 31, nos. 1/2, Special Issue 1997.
Tom Blees, Prescription for the Planet: The Painless Remedy for our Energy and Environmental Crises, 2008. http://www.prescriptionfortheplanet.com.
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Ira Chernus, Eisenhower‟s Atoms for Peace, TAMU Press, 2002.
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Geneva, 1958.
George Quester, ―More Nuclear Nations: Can Proliferation Now Be Stopped,‖ Foreign Affairs, Council on Foreign Relation, October 1974.
Jack M. Holl, Argonne National Laboratory: 1946-96, University of Chicago Press,
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Alvin M. Weinberg, ―Walter Henry Zinn: December 10, 1906 - February 14, 2000,‖ Biographical Memoires, The National Academies Press. http://www.nap.edu/readingroom.php?book=biomems&page=wzinn.html
Shippingport Atomic Power Station: A Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. http://files.asme.org/ASMEORG/Communities/History/Landmarks/5643.pdf.














'Onya John - Thanks for that most interesting historical summary of Nuclear power in the US.
A technology that is the ultimate way forward for all countries but sadly, is denied to those of us Down Under due to flawed legislation & will remain so until such time as we can bring about a change of Govt. Life wasn't meant to be easy, but we sure as Hell don't need to make it more difficult than necessary!