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

1. Introduction 2

2. Argonne National Laboratory 7

3. National Nuclear Power Development 11

4. Beginnings: The Early History of Argonne and Argonne Reactor Development 16

5. Fast Breeder Reactor Technology at Argonne: The Early Years, 1946 to 1964 20

6. Argonne in the “Shaw Years” of Reactor Development, 1965-1973 29

7. The Decade of FFTF and CRBR 34

8. Summary 36

CHAPTER 2 THE INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR INITIATIVE 39

1. Beginnings 39

2. The Integral Fast Reactor Initiative 41

3. Assembling the Pieces 44

4. Termination of the IFR Program 47

5. Accomplishments and Status of the Integral Fast Reactor Initiative 49

6. Summary 51

CHAPTER 3 THE ARGONNE EXPERIENCE 52

1. The Argonne Experience (Till) 52

2. The Argonne Experience (Chang) 69

3. Summary 76

CHAPTER 4 IN THE BACKGROUND 78

1. Introduction 78

2. Energy Today 83

3. National Energy Considerations 85

4. The Relative Rarity of Carbon-Based Resources 86

5. Uranium Is the Key to an Orderly Transition 91

6. The Importance of China in All Such Discussions 95

7. The Energy Picture in Total 97

8. Summary 100

CHAPTER 5 CHOOSING THE TECHNOLOGY 102

1. Aims and Considerations 102

2. The Fuel Choice 104

3. The Coolant Choice 108

4. The Reactor Configuration Choice 109

5. The Spent Fuel Processing Choice 111

6. Summary 114

CHAPTER 6 IFR FUEL CHARACTERISTICS, DESIGN, AND EXPERIENCE 115

1. What Makes a Good Fast Reactor Fuel? 116

2. What Are the Candidate Fuel Types? 118

3. The Basis of Metal Fuel Development 120

4. Irradiation Experience: A Very Long Burnup Fuel 123

5. Understanding the Long Burnup Fuel Behavior 125

6. Testing the Effects of Remaining Variants in Fuel Design: Diameter and Length ... 129

7. Testing the Effects of Transient Variations in Reactor Power 130

8. Operation with Failed Fuel; Testing the Effects 131

9. Minor Actinide Containing Fuel 132

10. Other Characteristics 133

11. Summary 134

CHAPTER 7 IFR SAFETY 138

1. Safety Goals for All Reactors: Defense in Depth 139

2. Safety in the IFR: Introducing New Characteristics 140

3. Significance to Regulatory Requirements 141

4. Evolution of Fast Reactor Safety: Treatment of Severe Accidents 142

5. Safety Through Passive Means: Inherent Safety 144

6. Handling Severe Accidents: Accidents Where the Reactor Shutdown Systems Fail145

7. Experimental Confirmations: The EBR-II Demonstrations 147

8. Factors Determining Inherent Safety Characteristics 149

9. Passive Mitigation of Severe Accidents of Extremely Low Probability 153

10. Experimental Confirmations of Limited Damage in the Most Severe Accidents .. 155 7.11 Licensing Implications 159

12. Sodium Reaction with Air and Water 160

13. Summary 164

CHAPTER 8 THE PYROPROCESS 167

1. Earliest Experience with Pyroprocessing: EBR-II in the 1960s 168

2. Summary of Pyroprocessing 170

3. The Fuel Conditioning Facility 172

4. EBR-II Spent Fuel Treatment 180

5. Waste Streams in Pyroprocessing 182

6. Summary 187

CHAPTER 9 THE BASIS OF THE ELECTROREFINING PROCESS 189

1. Electrorefining Spent Fuel 189

2. Energy Transfer: The Thermodynamics of the Process 190

3. Kinetics of the Reactions 193

4. The Power of Equilibria 193

5. Actinide Saturation in Liquid Cadmium: Adequate Plutonium Depositions 196

6. Effect of Saturation on Chemical Activity 198

7. The Plutonium Recovery Experiments 200

8. Summary 203

CHAPTER 10 APPLICATION OF PYROPROCESSING TO LWR SPENT FUEL 209

1. Background 209

2. Electrolytic Reduction Step 211

3. Electrorefining Scaleup 217

4. Pre-Conceptual Design of Pyroprocessing Facility for LWR Spent Fuel 219

5. Pyroprocessing Activities in Other Countries 221

6. Summary 222

Chapter 11 IMPLICATIONS OF THE IFR PYROPROCESS ON WASTE MANAGEMENT 226

1. Legislative Background 227

2. Repository Regulatory Background 228

3. Radioactive Life of Spent Fuel 231

4. Actinide Transmutation 236

5. he Long-Lived Low-Energy Radioactive Isotopes: Technetium and Iodine 238

6. ghly Radioactive Medium-Term Fission Products: Cesium and Strontium 240

11.7 Summary 242

1. Introduction 245

2. History 247

3. The International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation 249

4. Present Policies 251

5. The Subject of Plutonium 252

6. Plutonium and the IFR 254

7. History of the Use of Fissile Material for Weapons 258

8. Monitoring of Processes Always Necessary 263

9. Weapons Undesirability: Attributes of IFR Fuel Product—Inherent Self Protection

.......................................................................................................................................263

10. Usability of Pyroprocessing to Acquire Pure Plutonium 265

11. feguardability 266

12. The IFR Safeguards and Proliferation Resistant Properties 267

13. ummary 271

CHAPTER 13 ECONOMICS 274

1. Fast Reactor Capital Cost 274

2. LWR Fuel Cycle Cost 280

3. Fast Reactor Fuel Cycle Closure 287

4. IFR Fuel Cycle Cost 291

5. Application of Pyroprocessing to LWR Spent Fuel 293

6. System Aspects 295

7. Summary 297

CHAPTER 14 IFR DESIGN OPTIONS, OPTIMUM DEPLOYMENT AND THE NEXT STEP

1. What Will an IFR Look Like? 301

2. Coolant Choice Revisited 302

3. Physics Principle of Breeding 306

4. Core Design Principles and Approaches 308

5. Considerations for Burner vs. Breeder 317

6. Design Principles of Long-Life Core 320

7. Worldwide Fast Reactor Experience and Current Status 323

8. Typical Deployment Scenarios 326

9. How to Deploy Pyroprocessing Plants? 329

10. Path Forward on Deployment 330

11. ummary 332

AFTERWORD 337

1. ntroduction 343

2. lectrorefining Is an Electrochemical Process—But What Does That Mean Exactly?

....................................................................................................................................... 344

3. Principles of Electrorefining: What Are the Basic Phenomena Here? What Is Fundamental? 346

4. “Redox Reaction” Is the Basis of All Electrochemical Phenomena 349

5. ther Phenomena Play a Part 350

6. hermodynamics Enter in this Way 351

7. inetics and Activation Energies 356

8. nderstanding Important Basic Behavior: The Power of Equilibria 357

9. ctinide Saturation in Liquid Cadmium: A Key to Enhanced Plutonium Depositions

....................................................................................................................................... 362

10. alculation of the Important Criteria 369

11. dding to Understanding of the Process by a Brief Description of its Development

....................................................................................................................................... 374

12. lectrorefining Results: Measurements and Experimental Observations 375

ACRONYMS 389

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

1. 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.

2. Tom Blees, Prescription for the Planet: The Painless Remedy for our Energy and Environmental Crises, 2008. http://www.prescriptionfortheplanet.com.

3. Joseph M. Shuster, Beyond Fossil Fools: The Roadmap to Energy Independence by

2040

4. Richard Rhodes, Nuclear Renewal: Common Sense About Energy, Whittle Books, 1993.

5. Ira Chernus, Eisenhower‟s Atoms for Peace, TAMU Press, 2002.

6. Proc. First U.N. International Conferences on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Geneva, 1955.

7. Proc. Second U.N. International Conferences on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy,

Geneva, 1958.

8. George Quester, ―More Nuclear Nations: Can Proliferation Now Be Stopped,‖ Foreign Affairs, Council on Foreign Relation, October 1974.

9. Jack M. Holl, Argonne National Laboratory: 1946-96, University of Chicago Press,

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10. 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

11. Shippingport Atomic Power Station: A Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. http://files.asme.org/ASMEORG/Communities/History/Landmarks/5643.pdf.

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