Integral fast reactor

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Experimental Breeder Reactor II, which served as the prototype for the Integral Fast Reactor

The integral fast reactor (IFR, originally

electrorefining
at the reactor site.

The

US Congress in 1994, three years before completion.[1]

The proposed

fast reactors
.

S-PRISM (from SuperPRISM), also called PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module), is the name of a nuclear power plant design by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) based on the IFR.[2]
In 2022, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and TerraPower began exploring locating 5 Natrium sodium fast reactors based nuclear power plant design incorporating a PRISM reactor based on the IFR plus Terrapower's Traveling Wave design with a molten salt storage system in Kemmerer, Wyoming.[3][4]

History

Research on IFR reactors began in 1984 at

U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratory system, and currently operated on a contract by the University of Chicago
.

The Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR II)

Argonne previously had a branch campus named "Argonne West" in

Idaho Falls, Idaho that is now part of the Idaho National Laboratory. In the past, at the branch campus, physicists from Argonne West built what was known as the Experimental Breeder Reactor II
(EBR-II). In the meantime, physicists at Argonne designed the IFR concept, and it was decided that the EBR-II would be converted to an IFR. Charles Till, a Canadian physicist from Argonne, was the head of the IFR project, and Yoon Chang was the deputy head. Till was positioned in Idaho, while Chang was in Illinois.

Cancellation

With the election of President

Secretary of Energy, there was pressure from the top to cancel the IFR.[5] Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and O'Leary led the opposition to the reactor, arguing that it would be a threat to non-proliferation efforts, and that it was a continuation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project that had been canceled by Congress.[6]

Simultaneously, in 1994 Energy Secretary O'Leary awarded the lead IFR scientist with $10,000 and a gold medal, with the citation stating his work to develop IFR technology provided "improved safety, more efficient use of fuel and less radioactive waste."[7]

IFR opponents also presented a report[8] by the DOE's Office of Nuclear Safety regarding a former Argonne employee's allegations that Argonne had retaliated against him for raising concerns about safety, as well as about the quality of research done on the IFR program. The report received international attention, with a notable difference in the coverage it received from major scientific publications. The British journal Nature entitled its article "Report backs whistleblower", and also noted conflicts of interest on the part of a DOE panel that assessed IFR research.[9] In contrast, the article that appeared in Science was entitled "Was Argonne Whistleblower Really Blowing Smoke?".[10]

Despite support for the reactor by then-Rep. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and U.S. Senators Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) and Paul Simon (D-IL), funding for the reactor was slashed, and it was ultimately canceled in 1994, at a greater cost than finishing it. When this was brought to President Clinton's attention, he said "I know; it's a symbol."[citation needed]

Since 2000

In 2001, as part of the Generation IV roadmap, the DOE tasked a 242-person team of scientists from DOE, UC Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, ANL, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Toshiba, Westinghouse, Duke, EPRI, and other institutions to evaluate 19 of the best reactor designs on 27 different criteria. The IFR ranked #1 in their study which was released April 9, 2002.[11]

At present, there are no Integral Fast Reactors in commercial operation. However, the BN-800 reactor, a very similar fast reactor operated as a burner of plutonium stockpiles, became commercially operational in 2014.[citation needed]

Technical overview

The IFR is cooled by liquid sodium and fueled by an alloy of uranium and plutonium. The fuel is contained in steel

liquid sodium
filling in the space between the fuel and the cladding. A void above the fuel allows helium and radioactive xenon to be collected safely[citation needed] without significantly increasing pressure inside the fuel element,[citation needed] and also allows the fuel to expand without breaching the cladding, making metal rather than oxide fuel practical.[citation needed] The advantages of liquid sodium coolant, as opposed to liquid metal
corrosive (via dissolution) to common steels, and creates essentially no radioactive neutron activation byproducts. The disadvantage of sodium coolant, as opposed to lead coolant, is that sodium is chemically reactive, especially with water or air. Lead may be substituted for the eutectic alloy of lead and bismuth as used for coolant in Soviet Alfa-class submarines
' reactors.

Basic design decisions

Metallic fuel

Metal fuel with a sodium-filled void inside the cladding to allow fuel expansion has been demonstrated in EBR-II. Metallic fuel makes pyroprocessing the reprocessing technology of choice.[citation needed]

Fabrication of metallic fuel is easier and cheaper than ceramic (oxide) fuel, especially under remote handling conditions.[12][citation needed]

Metallic fuel has better

heat conductivity and lower heat capacity than oxide, which has safety advantages.[12][citation needed
]

Sodium coolant

The use of liquid metal coolant removes the need for a pressure vessel around the reactor. Sodium has excellent nuclear characteristics, a high heat capacity and heat transfer capacity, low density, low viscosity, a reasonably low melting point and a high boiling point, and excellent compatibility with other materials including structural materials and fuel.[citation needed] The high heat capacity of the coolant and the elimination of water from the reactor core increase the inherent safety of the core.[12][citation needed]

Pool design rather than loop

Containing all of the primary coolant in a pool produces several safety and reliability advantages.[12][citation needed]

Onsite reprocessing using pyroprocessing

Reprocessing is essential to achieve most of the benefits of a fast reactor, improving fuel usage and reducing radioactive waste by several orders of magnitude.[12][citation needed]

Onsite processing is what makes the IFR integral. This and the use of pyroprocessing both reduce proliferation risk.

better source needed
]

Pyroprocessing (using an electrorefiner) has been demonstrated at EBR-II as practical on the scale required. Compared to the PUREX aqueous process, it is economical in capital cost, and is unsuitable for the production of weapons material, again unlike PUREX which was developed for weapons programs.[citation needed]

Pyroprocessing makes metallic fuel the fuel of choice. The two decisions are complementary.[12][citation needed]

Summary

The four basic decisions of metallic fuel, sodium coolant, pool design, and onsite reprocessing by

electrorefining, are complementary and produce a fuel cycle that is proliferation-resistant and efficient in fuel usage, and a reactor with a high level of inherent safety, while minimizing the production of high-level waste. The practicality of these decisions has been demonstrated over many years of operation of EBR-II.[12]

Advantages

Breeder reactors (such as the IFR) could in principle extract almost all of the energy contained in uranium or thorium, decreasing fuel requirements by nearly two orders of magnitude compared to traditional once-through reactors, which extract less than 0.65% of the energy in mined uranium, and less than 5% of the enriched uranium with which they are fueled. This could greatly dampen concern about fuel supply or energy used in mining.

What is more important today is why fast reactors are fuel-efficient: because fast neutrons can

better source needed] The fact that 4th generation reactors are being designed to use the waste from 3rd generation plants
could change the nuclear story fundamentally—potentially making the combination of 3rd and 4th generation plants a more attractive energy option than 3rd generation by itself would have been, both from the perspective of waste management and energy security.

"Integral" refers to on-site reprocessing by electrochemical pyroprocessing. This separates spent fuel into 3 fractions: 1. Uranium, 2. Plutonium isotopes and other Transuranium elements, and 3. Nuclear fission products. The uranium and transuranium elements are recycled into new fuel rods, and the fission products are eventually converted to glass and metal blocks for safer disposal. Because fractions 2 and 3 (the combined transuranium elements and the fission products) are highly radioactive, fuel-rod transfer and reprocessing operations use robotic or remote-controlled equipment. This is also claimed to be a feature; not a bug; since fissile material that never leaves the facility (and would be lethal to handle if it did) greatly reduces the proliferation potential of possible diversion of fissile material.

Safety

In traditional

light water reactors (LWRs) the core must be maintained at a high pressure to keep the water liquid at high temperatures. In contrast, since the IFR is a liquid metal cooled reactor, the core could operate at close to ambient pressure, dramatically reducing the danger of a loss-of-coolant accident. The entire reactor core, heat exchangers and primary cooling pumps are immersed in a pool of liquid sodium or lead, making a loss of primary coolant extremely unlikely. The coolant loops are designed to allow for cooling through natural convection
, meaning that in the case of a power loss or unexpected reactor shutdown, the heat from the reactor core would be sufficient to keep the coolant circulating even if the primary cooling pumps were to fail.

The IFR also has

temperature coefficient of reactivity. Most LWRs also have negative reactivity coefficients; however, in an IFR, this effect is strong enough to stop the reactor from reaching core damage without external action from operators or safety systems. This was demonstrated in a series of safety tests on the prototype. Pete Planchon, the engineer who conducted the tests for an international audience quipped "Back in 1986, we actually gave a small [20 MWe] prototype advanced fast reactor a couple of chances to melt down. It politely refused both times."[17]

Liquid sodium presents safety problems because it ignites spontaneously on contact with air and can cause explosions on contact with water. This was the case at the Monju Nuclear Power Plant in a 1995 accident and fire. To reduce the risk of explosions following a leak of water from the steam turbines, the IFR design (as with other sodium-cooled fast reactors) includes an intermediate liquid-metal coolant loop between the reactor and the steam turbines. The purpose of this loop is to ensure that any explosion following accidental mixing of sodium and turbine water would be limited to the secondary heat exchanger and not pose a risk to the reactor itself. Alternative designs use lead instead of sodium as the primary coolant. The disadvantages of lead are its higher density and viscosity, which increases pumping costs, and radioactive activation products resulting from neutron absorption. A lead-bismuth eutectate, as used in some Russian submarine reactors, has lower viscosity and density, but the same activation product problems can occur.

Efficiency and fuel cycle

Medium-lived
fission products[further explanation needed]
t½
(year
)
Yield
(%)
keV
)
βγ
155Eu
4.76 0.0803 252 βγ
85Kr 10.76 0.2180 687 βγ
113mCd
14.1 0.0008 316 β
90Sr 28.9 4.505   2826 β
137Cs 30.23 6.337   1176 βγ
121mSn
43.9 0.00005 390 βγ
151Sm
88.8 0.5314 77 β

The goals of the IFR project were to increase the efficiency of uranium usage by

fast neutrons
, designed to allow any transuranic isotope to be consumed (and in some cases used as fuel).

Compared to current light-water reactors with a once-through fuel cycle that induces fission (and derives energy) from less than 1% of the uranium found in nature, a breeder reactor like the IFR has a very efficient (99.5% of uranium undergoes fission[citation needed]) fuel cycle.[15] The basic scheme used pyroelectric separation, a common method in other metallurgical processes, to remove transuranics and actinides from the wastes and concentrate them. These concentrated fuels were then reformed, on-site, into new fuel elements.

The available fuel metals were never separated from the

better source needed] and therefore relatively difficult to use in nuclear weapons. Also, plutonium never had to leave the site, and thus was far less open to unauthorized diversion.[18]

Another important benefit of removing the long

Tc-99) and more; plus any activation products
from the non-fuel reactor components.

Comparisons to light-water reactors

Buildup of heavy actinides in current thermal-neutron fission reactors,[19] which cannot fission actinide nuclides that have an even number of neutrons, and thus these build up and are generally treated as Transuranic waste after conventional reprocessing. An argument for fast reactors is that they can fission all actinides.

Nuclear waste

IFR-style reactors could produce much less waste than LWR reactors, and could even utilize other waste as fuel.

The primary argument for pursuing IFR-style technology today is that it provides the best solution to the existing nuclear waste problem because fast reactors can be fueled from the waste products of existing reactors as well as from the plutonium used in weapons, as is the case in the operating, as of 2014, BN-800 reactor. Depleted uranium (DU) waste can also be used as fuel in fast reactors.

The waste products of IFR reactors either have a short half-life, which means that they decay quickly and become relatively safe, or a long halflife, which means that they are only slightly radioactive. Due to pyroprocessing the total volume of true waste/

high level waste/fission products("FP") left over from reprocessing out the TRU fuel, is less radiotoxic(in Sieverts) than natural uranium(in a gram to gram comparison) within 400 years, and it continues its decline following this.[16][20]
better source needed
]

Edwin Sayre has estimated that a ton of fission products(which also include the very weakly radioactive

Palladium-107 etc.) reduced to metal, has a market value of $16 million.[22]

The two forms of IFR waste produced, contain no plutonium or other

better source needed
]

The on-site reprocessing of fuel means that the volume of high-level nuclear waste leaving the plant is tiny compared to LWR spent fuel.

medium-lived fission products
is about the same per unit power from any kind of fission reactor, limiting early repository emplacement.

The potential complete removal of plutonium from the waste stream of the reactor reduces the concern that presently exists with spent nuclear fuel from most other reactors that arises with burying or storing their spent fuel in a geological repository, as they could possibly be used as a

Long-lived fission products
)

Efficiency

IFRs use virtually all of the energy content in the uranium fuel whereas a traditional light water reactor uses less than 0.65% of the energy in mined uranium, and less than 5% of the energy in enriched uranium.

Carbon dioxide

Both IFRs and LWRs do not emit CO2 during operation, although construction and fuel processing result in CO2 emissions, if energy sources which are not carbon neutral (such as fossil fuels), or CO2 emitting cements are used during the construction process.

A 2012

life cycle assessment emissions from nuclear power determined that:[27]

"The collective LCA literature indicates that life cycle GHG [ greenhouse gas ] emissions from nuclear power are only a fraction of traditional fossil sources and comparable to renewable technologies."

Although the paper primarily dealt with data from

light water reactors ] and purports to consume little or no uranium ore
.

Actinides[28] by decay chain Half-life
range (a)
Fission products of 235U by yield[29]
4n
4n + 1
4n + 2
4n + 3
4.5–7% 0.04–1.25% <0.001%
228
Ra
4–6 a
155
Euþ
244
Cmƒ
241Puƒ
250
Cf
227
Ac
10–29 a
90Sr 85Kr
113m
Cdþ
232Uƒ 238Puƒ
243
Cmƒ
29–97 a
137
Cs
151
Smþ
121m
Sn
248Bk[30]
249
Cfƒ
242m
Amƒ
141–351 a

No fission products have a half-life in the range of 100 a–210 ka ...

241Amƒ
251Cfƒ[31]
430–900 a
226Ra
247
Bk
1.3–1.6 ka
240Pu
229
Th
246
Cmƒ
243
Amƒ
4.7–7.4 ka
245
Cmƒ
250
Cm
8.3–8.5 ka
239Puƒ 24.1 ka
230
Th
231
Pa
32–76 ka
236
Npƒ
233Uƒ 234U 150–250 ka 99Tc
126
Sn
248
Cm
242Pu 327–375 ka 79Se
1.53 Ma
93
Zr
237
Npƒ
2.1–6.5 Ma
135
Cs
107
Pd
236U
247
Cmƒ
15–24 Ma 129I
244Pu 80 Ma

... nor beyond 15.7 Ma[32]

232Th 238U 235Uƒ№ 0.7–14.1 Ga
(thermal neutron capture cross section greater than 3k barns)

Fuel cycle

low enriched uranium
used in LWRs. The
spent fuel, decommissioned nuclear weapons, or other sources. During operation, the reactor breeds more fissile material from fertile material, at most about 5% more from uranium, and 1% more from thorium
.

The fertile material in fast reactor fuel can be

spent fuel from traditional light water reactors,[15] and even include nonfissile isotopes of plutonium and minor actinide
isotopes. Assuming no leakage of actinides to the waste stream during reprocessing, a 1GWe IFR-style reactor would consume about 1 ton of fertile material per year and produce about 1 ton of
fission products
.

electrorefining) does not need to produce pure plutonium free of fission product radioactivity as the PUREX process is designed to do. The purpose of reprocessing in the IFR fuel cycle is simply to reduce the level of those fission products that are neutron poisons
; even those need not be completely removed. The electrorefined spent fuel is highly radioactive, but because new fuel need not be precisely fabricated like LWR fuel pellets but can simply be cast, remote fabrication can be used, reducing exposure to workers.

Like any fast reactor, by changing the material used in the blankets, the IFR can be operated over a spectrum from breeder to self-sufficient to burner. In breeder mode (using U-238 blankets) it will produce more fissile material than it consumes. This is useful for providing fissile material for starting up other plants. Using steel reflectors instead of U-238 blankets, the reactor operates in pure burner mode and is not a net creator of fissile material; on balance it will consume fissile and fertile material and, assuming loss-free reprocessing, output no

activation products
. The amount of fissile material needed could be a limiting factor to very widespread deployment of fast reactors, if stocks of surplus weapons plutonium and LWR spent fuel plutonium are not sufficient. To maximize the rate at which fast reactors can be deployed, they can be operated in maximum breeding mode.

Because the current cost of

thermal reactor over the expected operating lifetime of the plant are offset by increased capital cost. (Currently in the United States, utilities pay a flat rate of 1/10 of a cent per kilowatt hour to the Government for disposal of high level radioactive waste by law under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. If this charge were based on the longevity of the waste, closed fuel cycles might become more financially competitive. As the planned geological repository in the form of Yucca Mountain is not going ahead, this fund has collected over the years and presently $25 billion has piled up on the Government's doorstep for something they have not delivered, that is, reducing the hazard posed by the waste.[33]

Reprocessing nuclear fuel using pyroprocessing and electrorefining has not yet been demonstrated on a commercial scale, so investing in a large IFR-style plant may be a higher

light water reactor
.

IFR concept (color), an animation of the pyroprocessing cycle is also available.[34]
IFR concept (Black and White with clearer text)

Passive safety

The IFR uses metal alloy fuel (uranium/plutonium/zirconium) which is a good conductor of heat, unlike the LWR's (and even some fast breeder reactors') uranium oxide which is a poor conductor of heat and reaches high temperatures at the center of fuel pellets. The IFR also has a smaller volume of fuel, since the fissile material is diluted with fertile material by a ratio of 5 or less, compared to about 30 for LWR fuel. The IFR core requires more heat removal per core volume during operation than the LWR core; but on the other hand, after a shutdown, there is far less trapped heat that is still diffusing out and needs to be removed. However, decay heat generation from short-lived fission products and actinides is comparable in both cases, starting at a high level and decreasing with time elapsed after shutdown. The high volume of liquid sodium primary coolant in the pool configuration is designed to absorb decay heat without reaching fuel melting temperature. The primary sodium pumps are designed with flywheels so they will coast down slowly (90 seconds) if power is removed. This coast-down further aids core cooling upon shutdown. If the primary cooling loop were to be somehow suddenly stopped, or if the control rods were suddenly removed, the metal fuel can melt as accidentally demonstrated in EBR-I, however the melting fuel is then extruded up the steel fuel cladding tubes and out of the active core region leading to permanent reactor shutdown and no further fission heat generation or fuel melting.[35] With metal fuel, the cladding is not breached and no radioactivity is released even in extreme overpower transients.

Self-regulation of the IFR's power level depends mainly on thermal expansion of the fuel which allows more neutrons to escape, damping the chain reaction. LWRs have less effect from thermal expansion of fuel (since much of the core is the neutron moderator) but have strong negative feedback from Doppler broadening (which acts on thermal and epithermal neutrons, not fast neutrons) and negative void coefficient from boiling of the water moderator/coolant; the less dense steam returns fewer and less-thermalized neutrons to the fuel, which are more likely to be captured by U-238 than induce fissions. However, the IFR's positive void coefficient could be reduced to an acceptable level by adding technetium to the core, helping destroy the long-lived fission product technetium-99 by nuclear transmutation in the process.[26]

IFRs are able to withstand both a loss of flow without

EBR-II.[1]
The ultimate goal is that no radioactivity will be released under any circumstance.

The flammability of sodium is a risk to operators. Sodium burns easily in air, and will ignite spontaneously on contact with water. The use of an intermediate coolant loop between the reactor and the turbines minimizes the risk of a sodium fire in the reactor core.

Under neutron bombardment,

magnesium-24
. Half-life is only 15 hours, so this isotope is not a long-term hazard. Nevertheless, the presence of sodium-24 further necessitates the use of the intermediate coolant loop between the reactor and the turbines.

Proliferation

IFRs and

reactor grade plutonium, and even at high burnups remains weapons usable,[36] but the IFR fuel cycle has some design features that would make proliferation more difficult than the current PUREX recycling of spent LWR fuel. For one thing, it may operate at higher burnups and therefore increase the relative abundance of the non-fissile, but fertile, isotopes plutonium-238, plutonium-240 and plutonium-242.[37]

Unlike PUREX reprocessing, the IFR's electrolytic reprocessing of

Pu-240
than MOX.

An advantage of the IFRs actinides removal and burn up (actinides include plutonium) from its spent fuel, is to eliminate concerns about leaving the IFRs spent fuel or indeed conventional, and therefore comparatively lower

geological repository(or the more common dry cask storage) which then might be mined sometime in the future for the purpose of making weapons."[24]

Because reactor-grade plutonium contains isotopes of plutonium with high

spent fuel
.

Therefore, proliferation risks are considerably reduced with the IFR system by many metrics, but not entirely eliminated. The plutonium from

fusion boosting
.

The U.S. government detonated a nuclear device in 1962 using then defined "

Plutonium produced in the fuel of a breeder reactor generally has a higher fraction of the isotope

Pu-239 quality, containing very little Pu-240, making it highly attractive for weapons use.[40]

"Although some recent proposals for the future of the ALMR/IFR concept have focused more on its ability to transform and irreversibly use up plutonium, such as the conceptual PRISM (reactor) and the in operation(2014) BN-800 reactor in Russia, the developers of the IFR acknowledge that it is 'uncontested that the IFR can be configured as a net producer of plutonium'."[41]

As mentioned above, if operated not as a burner, but as a breeder, the IFR has a clear proliferation potential "if instead of processing spent fuel, the ALMR system were used to reprocess irradiated fertile (breeding) material (that is if a blanket of breeding U-238 was used), the resulting plutonium would be a superior material, with a nearly ideal isotope composition for nuclear weapons manufacture."[42]

Reactor design and construction

A commercial version of the IFR,

S-PRISM, can be built in a factory and transported to the site. This small modular
design (311 MWe modules) reduces costs and allows nuclear plants of various sizes (311 MWe and any integer multiple) to be economically constructed.

Cost assessments taking account of the complete life cycle show that fast reactors could be no more expensive than the most widely used reactors in the world – water-moderated water-cooled reactors.[43]

Liquid metal sodium coolant

Unlike reactors that use relatively slow low energy (thermal) neutrons,

fissile
. The core must also be compact and contain the least amount of neutron moderating material as possible. Metal sodium (Na) coolant in many ways has the most attractive combination of properties for this purpose. In addition to not being a neutron moderator, desirable physical characteristics include:

  • Low melting temperature
  • Low vapor pressure
  • High boiling temperature
  • Excellent thermal conductivity
  • Low viscosity
  • Light weight
  • Thermal and radiation stability

Other benefits:

Abundant and low-cost material. Cleaning with chlorine produces non-toxic table salt. Compatible with other materials used in the core (does not react or dissolve stainless steel) so no special corrosion protection measures needed. Low pumping power (from lightweight and low viscosity). Maintains an oxygen (and water) free environment by reacting with trace amounts to make sodium oxide or sodium hydroxide and hydrogen, thereby protecting other components from corrosion. Lightweight (low density) improves resistance to seismic inertia events (earthquakes.)

Drawbacks:

Extreme fire hazards with any significant amounts of air (oxygen) and spontaneous combustion with water, rendering sodium leaks and flooding dangerous. This was the case at the Monju Nuclear Power Plant in a 1995 accident and fire. Reactions with water produce hydrogen which can be explosive. Sodium activation product (isotope) 24Na releases dangerous energetic photons when it decays (however it has a very short half-life of 15 hours). Reactor design keeps 24Na in the reactor pool and carries away heat for power production using a secondary sodium loop, adding costs to construction and maintenance.

Study released by University of Chicago, Argonne[44]


See also

References

  1. ^ a b The IFR at Argonne National Laboratory, www.ne.anl.gov, accessed 1 November 2022
  2. ^ "GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Encourages Congress to Support Development of Recycling Technology to Turn Used Nuclear Fuel into an Asset – GE Energy press release". Genewscenter.com. 2009-06-18. Archived from the original on 2013-12-03. Retrieved 2014-01-24.
  3. ^ "Natrium". NRC Web. Retrieved 2022-10-28.
  4. ^ Patel, Sonal (2022-10-27). "PacifiCorp, TerraPower Evaluating Deployment of Up to Five Additional Natrium Advanced Reactors". POWER Magazine. Retrieved 2022-10-27.
  5. ^ "Dr. Charles Till | Nuclear Reaction | FRONTLINE". PBS. 2014-01-16. Retrieved 2014-01-24.
  6. ^ "ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT OF 1995 (Senate – June 30, 1994)". 103rd Congressional Record. Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 10 January 2016. Retrieved 16 December 2012.
  7. ^ "Ax Again Aimed at Argonne (Chicago Tribune – Feb 8, 1994)". Chicago Tribune. 8 February 1994. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
  8. ^ Report of investigation into allegations of retaliation for raising safety and quality of work issues regarding Argonne National Laboratory's Integral Fast Reactor Project, Report Number DOE/NS-0005P, 1991 Dec 01 OSTI Identifier OSTI ID: 6030509,
  9. ^ Report backs whistleblower, Nature 356, 469 (9 April 1992)
  10. ^ Science, Vol. 256, No. 5055, 17 April 1992
  11. ^ Generation IV roadmap. Evaluation Summaries. 2002 18 slides – some illegible
  12. ^ , p.114
  13. ^ a b c "Roger Blomquist of ANL (Argonne National Lab) on IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) @ TEAC6 . Stated at ~ 19–21 minutes". YouTube.
  14. ^ Nucleus-4-2007 pg 15 see SV/g chart, www.stralsakerhetsmyndigheten.se
  15. ^ a b c d e "An Introduction to Argonne National Laboratory's INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR (IFR) PROGRAM". 2007-10-09. Archived from the original on September 15, 2008. Retrieved 2014-01-24.
  16. ^ a b c "Roger Blomquist of ANL (Argonne National Lab) on IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) @ TEAC6 . Stated at ~ 13 minutes". YouTube.
  17. ^ "Passively safe reactors rely on nature to keep them cool". Ne.anl.gov. 2013-12-13. Retrieved 2014-01-24.
  18. ^ a b c "Roger Blomquist of ANL (Argonne National Lab) on IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) @ TEAC6 . Stated at ~ 17:30". YouTube.
  19. .
  20. ^ Professor David Ruzic. "Dealing with the Used Fuel (Reprocessing)". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12.
  21. ^ a b Janne Wallenius (2007-04-01). "Återanvändning av lång sluten bränslecykel möj" (PDF). Nucleus: 15. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-05-19.
  22. ^ Value of 1 Metric ton of used fuel.pdf[dead link]
  23. MWe
    plant operating at 70% capacity at 1700 pounds/year.
  24. ^ , page 30
  25. ^ Radioactivity and its associated dangers are roughly divided by an isotope's half-life. For example, Technetium-99's 213,000-year half-life combines with the IFR's 1/20 volume reduction to produce about 1/4,000,000 of the radiotoxicity of light water reactor waste. The small size (about 1.5 tonnes per gigawatt-year) permits expensive disposal methods such as insoluble synthetic rock. The hazards are far less than those from fossil fuel wastes or dam failures.
  26. ^ a b Reduction of the Sodium-Void Coefficient of Reactivity by Using a Technetium Layer page 2
  27. ^ Plus radium (element 88). While actually a sub-actinide, it immediately precedes actinium (89) and follows a three-element gap of instability after polonium (84) where no nuclides have half-lives of at least four years (the longest-lived nuclide in the gap is radon-222 with a half life of less than four days). Radium's longest lived isotope, at 1,600 years, thus merits the element's inclusion here.
  28. thermal neutron fission of uranium-235, e.g. in a typical nuclear reactor
    .
  29. .
    "The isotopic analyses disclosed a species of mass 248 in constant abundance in three samples analysed over a period of about 10 months. This was ascribed to an isomer of Bk248 with a half-life greater than 9 [years]. No growth of Cf248 was detected, and a lower limit for the β half-life can be set at about 104 [years]. No alpha activity attributable to the new isomer has been detected; the alpha half-life is probably greater than 300 [years]."
  30. sea of instability
    ".
  31. ^ Excluding those "classically stable" nuclides with half-lives significantly in excess of 232Th; e.g., while 113mCd has a half-life of only fourteen years, that of 113Cd is nearly eight quadrillion years.
  32. ^ Matthew L. Wald, Energy Dept. Told to Stop Collecting Nuclear Waste Fee, The New York Times, November 20, 2013, p. A20 (retrieved April 2, 2014)
  33. ^ "Historical video about the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) concept. Uploaded by – Nuclear Engineering at Argonne". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12.
  34. ISBN 978-1466384606. Archived from the original
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Further reading

External links