Integral fast reactor

With the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992, and the appointment of Hazel O'Leary as the 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 greater cost than finishing it. When this was brought to President Clinton's attention, he said "I know; it's a symbol."

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.

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.

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

Metallic fuel has better heat conductivity and lower heat capacity than oxide, which has safety advantages.[12]

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. The high heat capacity of the coolant and the elimination of water from the reactor core increase the inherent safety of the core.[12]

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

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

Onsite processing is what makes the IFR integral. This and the use of pyroprocessing both reduce proliferation risk.[13][12]

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 production of weapons material, again unlike PUREX which was developed for weapons programs.

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

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]

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/fission products is 1/20th the volume of spent fuel produced by a light water plant of the same power output, and is often all considered to be waste. 70% of fission products are either stable or have half lives under one year. Technetium-99 and iodine-129, which constitute 6% of fission products, have very long half lives but can be transmuted to isotopes with very short half lives (15.46 seconds and 12.36 hours) by neutron absorption within a reactor, effectively destroying them (see more Long-lived fission products). Zirconium-93, another 5% of fission products, could in principle be recycled into fuel-pin cladding, where it does not matter that it is radioactive. Excluding the contribution from Transuranic waste(TRU) – which are isotopes produced when Uranium-238 captures a slow thermal neutron in a LWR but does not fission, all the remaining 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] [21][15]

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 actinides. The radioactivity of the waste decays to levels similar to the original ore in about 300–400 years.[21][15][16]

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.[23] In fact, in the U.S. most spent LWR fuel has remained in storage at the reactor site instead of being transported for reprocessing or placement in a geological repository. The smaller volumes of high level waste from reprocessing could stay at reactor sites for some time, but are intensely radioactive from medium-lived fission products(MLFPs) and need to be stored securely, like in the present Dry cask storage vessels. In its first few decades of use, before the MLFP's decay to lower heat producing levels, geological repository capacity is constrained not by volume but by heat generation, and decay heat generation from 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 plutonium mine at some future date.[24] "Despite the million-fold reduction in radiotoxicity offered by this scheme,[25] some believe that actinide removal would offer few if any significant advantages for disposal in a geologic repository because some of the fission product nuclides of greatest concern in scenarios such as groundwater leaching actually have longer half-lives than the radioactive actinides. These concerns do not consider the plan to store such materials in insoluble Synroc, and do not measure hazards in proportion to those from natural sources such as medical x-rays, cosmic rays, or natural radioactive rocks (such as granite). These persons are concerned with radioactive fission products such as technetium-99, iodine-129, and cesium-135 with half-lives between 213,000 and 15.7 million years"[24] Some of which are being targeted for transmutation to belay even these comparatively low concerns, for example 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] (see more Long-lived fission products)

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.

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 Yale University review published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology analyzing CO₂ 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 Generation II reactors, and did not analyze the CO₂ emissions by 2050 of the presently under construction Generation III reactors, it did summarize the Life Cycle Assessment findings of in development reactor technologies.

Theoretical FBRs [ Fast Breeder Reactors ] have been evaluated in the LCA literature. The limited literature that evaluates this potential future technology reports median life cycle GHG emissions... similar to or lower than LWRs[ light water reactors ] and purports to consume little or no uranium ore.

Fast reactor fuel must be at least 20% fissile, greater than the low enriched uranium used in LWRs. The fissile material could initially include highly enriched uranium or plutonium, from LWR 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 depleted uranium (mostly uranium-238), natural uranium, thorium, or reprocessed uranium from 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.

The IFR fuel cycle's reprocessing by pyroprocessing (in this case, 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 actinides but only fission products and activation products. 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 enriched uranium is low compared to the expected cost of large-scale pyroprocessing and electrorefining equipment and the cost of building a secondary coolant loop, the higher fuel costs of a 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 financial risk than a conventional light water reactor.

IFR concept (color), an animation of the pyroprocessing cycle is also available.[34]

IFR concept (Black and White with clearer text)

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 SCRAM and loss of heat sink without SCRAM. In addition to passive shutdown of the reactor, the convection current generated in the primary coolant system will prevent fuel damage (core meltdown). These capabilities were demonstrated in the 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, sodium-24 is produced. This is highly radioactive, emitting an energetic gamma ray of 2.7 MeV followed by a beta decay to form 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.

IFRs and light water reactors (LWRs) both produce 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 spent fuel did not separate out pure plutonium, and left it mixed with minor actinides and some rare earth fission products which make the theoretical ability to make a bomb directly out of it considerably dubious.[13] Rather than being transported from a large centralized reprocessing plant to reactors at other locations, as is common now in France, from La Hague to its dispersed nuclear fleet of LWRs, the IFR pyroprocessed fuel would be much more resistant to unauthorized diversion.[18] The material with the mix of plutonium isotopes in an IFR would stay at the reactor site and then be burnt up practically in-situ,[18] alternatively, if operated as a breeder reactor, some of the pyroprocessed fuel could be consumed by the same or other reactors located elsewhere. However, as is the case with conventional aqueous reprocessing, it would remain possible to chemically extract all the plutonium isotopes from the pyroprocessed/recycled fuel and would be much easier to do so from the recycled product than from the original spent fuel, although compared to other conventional recycled nuclear fuel, MOX, it would be more difficult, as the IFR recycled fuel contains more fission products than MOX and due to its higher burnup, more proliferation resistant 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 burnup, spent fuel – which can contain weapons usable plutonium isotope concentrations in a 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 spontaneous fission rates, and the ratios of these troublesome isotopes-from a weapons manufacturing point of view, only increases as the fuel is burnt up for longer and longer, it is considerably more difficult to produce fission nuclear weapons which will achieve a substantial yield from higher-burnup spent fuel than from conventional, moderately burnt up, LWR spent fuel.

Therefore, proliferation risks are considerably reduced with the IFR system by many metrics, but not entirely eliminated. The plutonium from Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor (ALMR) recycled fuel would have an isotopic composition similar to that obtained from other high burnt up spent nuclear fuel sources. Although this makes the material less attractive for weapons production, it could be used in weapons at varying degrees of sophistication/with fusion boosting.

The U.S. government detonated a nuclear device in 1962 using then defined "reactor-grade plutonium", although in more recent categorizations it would instead be considered as fuel-grade plutonium, typical of that produced by low burn up magnox reactors.[38][39]

Plutonium produced in the fuel of a breeder reactor generally has a higher fraction of the isotope plutonium-240, than that produced in other reactors, making it less attractive for weapons use, particularly in first generation nuclear weapon designs similar to Fat Man. This offers an intrinsic degree of proliferation resistance, but the plutonium made in the blanket of uranium surrounding the core, if such a blanket is used, is usually of a high 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]

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]

Unlike reactors that use relatively slow low energy (thermal) neutrons, fast-neutron reactors need nuclear reactor coolant that does not moderate or block neutrons (like water does in an LWR) so that they have sufficient energy to fission actinide isotopes that are fissionable but not 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 light weight 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. Light weight (low density) improves resistance to seismic inertia events (earthquakes.)

Drawbacks:

Extreme fire hazard 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]