This is JAPAN we're talking about!

Japanese nuclear fuel cycle under review

18 April 2012
Japan is evaluating a wide range of nuclear fuel cycle options as part of the larger reviewof the future role of nuclear power within energy policy, a government minister told the annual meeting of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum.

".....Five options are being considered, one scenario involving direct disposal of light-water reactor fuel after use, two scenarios where this is reprocessed and with fuel materials recycled as mixed-oxide fuel. Two more scenarios look at the use of fast reactors and fast breeder reactors....."

".....This review will quantify the amount of plutonium and used fuel generated by each option as well as looking at broader impacts such as energy security, the international perspective, and the impacts of the changes resulting from each of the potential policies.


Separately Japan is reviewing its Basic Energy Policy, which may recommend nuclear's contribution to electricity be targeted at either 0%, 20%, 26% or 36% for the medium term....."


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Now I'm a betting man and:   Japan - the need for energy security - breeder reactors - 36% nuclear contribution - all go hand-in-hand.

I can forsee where the politics is going:  persuing energy security; the imperitive of keeping the lights on for the Japanese 'way of life'; the clamour for an emission-free electricity supply; the demonstration of dumping PWR and BWR technologies because of their safety frailties - all nicely leading into a programme of deployment of inherently safe, fast breeder reactors, with enough 'home-made' fuel to power Japan for a century or two!

Any one prepared to give me any decent odds on this 'outsider'?

THE ENERGY REVOLUTION - LA GUILLOTINE FOR HYDROCARBON ENERGY

The Tumbrel takes Energy from Coal, Gas, Oil 
and PWR Reactor to their Deaths.
Public Funds for  Wind, Solar PV and 
Other Renewables are aboard.

The wheels of the Tumbrel grind into motion, with its payload of doomed energy technologies. Along the way, investors will be clawing at their former milch cows to get their money out; politicians will be telling how 'it's time to move on'; most of the crowd will be listening to the scores, texting or talking on smartphones; a few will be thanking a variety of deities or other things, that the day has come at long last!  

It's only a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), but may this move be the defibrillator applied to the heart  of UK manufacturing. We have the expertise and capacity to manufacture plant and equipment for Breeder Reactors which operate at atmospheric pressure.

Who cares at this stage that they use solid fuel and that they're unnecessarily huge. We're on our way to renewable energy at affordable prices and free of greenhouse gas emissions.

We're on our way to using plutonium stockpiles and stores of long-lived nuclear waste, which at the moment do nothing but soak up immense expenditure; while we're doing that, we're able to provide valuable electricity for a few centuries, without digging anything else out of the ground.

We're on our way to burning up masses of existing 'nuclear waste' (in fact it's valuable fuel), leaving only minuscule amounts of left-over waste, which decays to background radiation levels in 300 years and this can be safely and cheaply stored.

We're on our way to a Reactor Technology to displace Pressurised Water Reactors (PWRs), which is currently the foremost nuclear technology to generate electricity. This rids us of the burden of high pressure operation, with its 'driver' potential to eject radiotoxic substances upwards and outwards into the environment.

We're on our way to rapid deployment, by virtue of modular construction and factory-made units capable of transportation on flat-bed trucks. We eliminate the constraint of single-sourcing of PWR pressure vessels - only Japan Steel Works have the capacity. Breeder operation is at atmospheric pressure and any plant and equipment required can be multi-sourced.


But best of all - we're on our way to a foothold for LFTR technology. The advantages over fast breeders are irresistible:  Elimination of solid fuel - the bane of accidental high temperature excursions - with meltdown potential ever-present. The greatly reduced fuel payload, with all that means in terms of muting one of the most potent anti-nuclear arguments and reinforcing the safety message to the public at large. The greatly reduced reactivity of coolant salts over liquid metals - a very saleable safety bonus.

 

Breeder Reactors will become embedded as the only renewable, clean, emission-free way to equitably meet the future energy needs of everyone on the planet. 


This will include the birth of a global Hydrogen Economy, for the manufacture carbon-neutral liquid fuels, from atmospheric CO2 for all of our transport needs, and the manufacture of ammonia, as feed-stock for nitrate fertilisers, from atmospheric nitrogen, to feed a burgeoning population. 


During this period, which can be reasonably envisaged as into the 2020s and 2030s, LFTRs will start to dominate demand as public perception of their inherent, passive safety gains more and more  credence. There's every chance that LFTRs will send other breeder designs the way of video tapes. 


If only the UK could get into the manufacturing race as a front-runner, we would see scientific activity, manufacturing employment, growth and prosperity last witnessed 3 generations ago.

1986 - US MEDIA'S COVERAGE OF CHERNOBYL SHUTS OUT FUKUSHIMA-TYPE ACCIDENT AT AMERICAN NUCLEAR POWER PLANT!

26 years ago and only 3 weeks before Chernobyl, a US reactor underwent a Common Mode Failure of the type which devastated the Fukushima-Diiachi reactors. 70 scientists and technologists were jammed into the reactor control room in, what ordinary folks would have considered, a suicide pact. At that point, the Common Mode Failure occured and nature took its course.

 In Dr John Sackett's word:  ".....the worst accident that could befall a nuclear power system, that worst accident is a complete loss of electric power to everything, back-up as well, and failure of all the safety systems that shut the reactor down...."

  

Left - Darrell Pfannensteil, Shift Supervisor
Centre - Dr John Sackett, Director
Right - Dick Lindsey, Director of Communications

This is exactly what happened at Fukushima-Diiachi -  after all of the electricity from the reactors themselves was turned off, along came the sunami and knocked out all of the back-up systems. The result was a catastrophe.

Darrell Pfannensteil was issuing instructions to his plant operators as the event occured. He had told colleagues beforehand that he was not scared of this type of accident occuring, so what was his response? In his own words:  ".....we got to watch the forces of nature shut the reactor down.....we'd found a reactor that could protect itself....."

 Later, Darrel's experience of working on EBR-II, lead him to draw a comparison with the predominant nuclear reactor used for power generation, the Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR). ".....I did have experience - about 6 years - on pressurised water reactors.....if I [n]ever see another pressurised water reactor, it would not bother me. This is the technology to go with....."

After 33 years of dedicated, productive work, the political decision to shut down EBR-II was made and in September 1994, Dr Sackett recollects that:  "....when I had to go to the operating crews and tell them we'd got the order to shut EBR-II down.....the reaction amongst all the crews was - doesn't the country realise what they're losing here?....". Near to tears, he goes on to say:  ".....I remember directing the shut-down---and the scram---and just silence...."


You witness men saddened by their knowledge of what the world has turned away from and bemused by the decades lost before we all have to accept the deployment of breeder reactor technology. And what of the planetary desecration that has been allowed to happen in those decades? When these vociferous anti-nuclear activists are finall silenced, will they still puff out their chests as they plug in their electric cars, but then will they also switch on the light in their air conditioned living room, turn on the TV and wrap-around sound system, sit back and think about those wasted decades? Probably not.

All of this can be seen on :  http://vimeo.com/35261457

NUCLEAR POWER IS RENEWABLE - MATHEMATICS AND LOGIC PROVE IT!

Breeder reactors: A renewable energy source  (Am. J. Phys. 51(1), Jan. 1983)

Bernard L. Cohen

Department of Physics. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260

     Since energy sources derived from the sun are called “renewable,” that adjective apparently means that they will be available in undiminished quantity at present costs for as long as the current relationship between the sun and Earth persists, about 5 billion years. It is the purpose of this note to show that breeder reactors using nuclear fission fulfil this definition of a renewable energy source, and in fact can supply all the world’s energy needs at present costs for that time period......

.....We thus conclude that all the world’s energy requirements for the remaining 5 [billion] yr of existence of life on Earth could be provided by breeder reactors without the cost of electricity rising by as much as 1% due to fuel costs. This is consistent with the definition of a “renewable” energy source in the sense in which that  term is generally used.

     Nuclear fusion has been advertised as a method for “burning the seas.” We see that nuclear fission with breeder reactors is an alternative method for “burning the seas,” and it has the considerable advantage that the technology for doing it is in hand.

So, 29 years ago the calculations were done, to prove we had enough fertile isotopes of thorium and uranium to last 'forever'. All we need is a breeder reactor to deliver it safely and cheaply and everyone on Earth can have a decent standard of living, from a source which does not pollute the environment and degrade the chemistry of the atmosphere any further. 

  Foot-soldier-members of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth:For goodness sake,use your common sense! You must stop listening to the deluded siren calls of your 'experts' and their  Energy [R]evolution wish-list.

If you get behind LFTRs you have the experience and wherewithall to make it happen, and make it happen quickly! 

 

Breeder Reactors it is - But will it be 'Fast (Metal Cooled - Uranium) Breeders' OR 'Thermal (Molten Salt - Thorium) Breeders' ?

Dr James Mahaffey

'Atomic Awakenings' http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6600498-atomic-awakening  outlines nuclear energy's discovery and applications throughout history. Mahaffey's brilliant and accessible book is essential to understanding the astounding phenomenon of nuclear power in an age where renewable energy and climate change have become the defining concerns of the twenty-first century.

This is the way it will be:  My purpose is not to sell nuclear power, because there is no longer a reason to sell it. Nuclear power, waiting quietly in its coma, has now become inevitable. That is, the ultimate need for nuclear power has finally caught up with its mad dash to develop. Whether you like it or not, the industrial world no longer has a choice. The age of burning coal and gasoline is over as atmospheric chemistry and general environmental pollution have approached states of crisis and hydrocarbons are becoming too expensive to burn. We need wind power, solar power, geothermal and hydro and anything else we can think of, but the base power must be constant running, high output nuclear stations. The real expansion of nuclear power is just awakening.....                              

 

   
Tom Blees is the author of Prescription for the Planet - The Painless Remedy for Our Energy & Environmental Crises. Tom is also the president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives  http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/

The Science Council for Global Initiatives is a growing international group of scientists, politicians, activists and other concerned men and women working together to articulate cohesive, efficient policies for solving the most serious problems ever faced by mankind. Resource wars, globe-girdling pollution, the threat of serious climate disruption; these challenges demand immediate international cooperation and inspiration on an unprecedented level. The world-class members of SCGI are creating the foundations for political and social structures that will enable us to meet the formidable challenges of the 21st century.

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Two super-cool, undemonstrative, tell-it-as-it-is, professional communicators who know that energy from breeder reactors is sustainable - from the inexhaustible fuel sources of uranium and thorium, until the end of (Homo.s) time. And, within 2 or 3 decades, Breeder Reactors will be the main source of base-load energy for all of humankind.

But why do they only mention Fast Breeders, without even a nod or a wink towards Thermal Breeders which are so much more efficient and require only a fraction of the amount of fuel and therefore size of vessels, pumps, valves, etc..

But that's just a minor benefit of Thermal Breeders over Fast Breeders. There's a catalogue of other reasons why Fast Breeders should be second in the queue:

Safety

Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactors (LMFBRs), or any other acronym that fits, use highly reactive sodium as a coolant, exchanging heat with pressurised water. Sodium explodes on contact with water (and burns on contact with air) - so the system has a potent 'driver' to expel radiotoxic substances upwards and out into the environment.

Molten Salt Breeder Reactors (MSBRs) are thermal breeders, operating at atmospheric pressure, with both reactor and coolant salts of low chemical reactivity; there is no high pressure or chemically reactive ‘driver’ to expel radiotoxic substances into the environment. A reactor vessel leak or breach would result in the molten salt glug-glug-glugging down the side of the vessel into non-critically configured drain tanks, designed to remove decay heat.

Affordability

LMFBRs operate at atmospheric pressure on the primary circuit side, but they do need large pressure vessels on the secondary side for steam generation - although nothing like the gigantic proportions of Light Water Reactor  (LWR) steam generators. Materials are competitively priced stainless steel, but plant and equipment is larger than equivalent MSBRs. Also, a separate and expensive, on-site fuel reprocessing plant is preferable to importing already processed fuel.

MSBRs also operate at atmospheric pressure, but the heat exchanger with the gas turbine fluid and coolant salt circuit (within the heat exchanger only) has to withstand high pressure. Also, the material to handle the molten fluoride salts is sophisticated Hastelloy N  which is expensive. However, because the plant is smaller and the fuel reprocessing 'built-in', it is likely that MSBRs come under the price of equivalent LMFBRs.

Efficiency

LMFBRs, at relatively low temperature, use steam turbine power, which might reach 38% efficiency of conversion of heat to electricity.

MSBRs use gas turbines at 48% efficiency - this means you get 25% more electricity for your (fuel cost) money.

Although both forms of breeders are roughly equivalent in respect of most other attributes, MSBRs have a substantial efficiency advantage over LMFBRs, when it comes to the development of a 'Hydrogen Economy'.

Hydrogen Economy

LMFBRs, because of their low-temperature operation, would have to produce electricity first, before that could be used to get to the temperatures required to produce hydrogen. A guesstimate might be 50% efficiency. 

MSBRs can output 750 °C process heat, which is capable of producing hydrogen directly and the efficiency is maximised.

The importance of a Hydrogen Economy cannot be overemphasised. See: 'Benefits of LFTRs.

Note:  LFTRs are the configuration of MSBR most suited to electricity generation. Other configurations of MSBRs may be better suited to 'burning' nuclear 'waste' and the plutonium stockpiles.