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over 1 this would likely result in an unacceptable power derating and high costs in a liquid water cooled reactor but the supercritical water coolant of the supercritical water reactor scwr has sufficient heat capacity to allow adequate cooling with less water making a fast spectrum water cooled reactor a practical possibility 12 the type of coolants temperatures and fast neutron spectrum puts the fuel cladding material normally austenitic stainless or ferritic martensitic steels under extreme conditions the understanding of the radiation damage coolant interactions stresses and temperatures are necessary for the safe operation of any reactor core all materials used to date in sodium cooled fast reactors have known limits 13 oxide dispersion strengthened alloy steel is viewed as the long term radiation resistant fuel cladding material that can overcome the shortcomings of today s material choices integral fast reactor edit one design of fast neutron reactor specifically conceived to address the waste disposal and plutonium issues was the integral fast reactor ifr also known as an integral fast breeder reactor although the original reactor was designed to not breed a net surplus of fissile material 14 15 the ifr concept included on site pyroprocessing to recycle used fuel 14 the remaining waste would not consist solely of short lived fission products long lived fission products such as technetium 99 and iodine 129 remain important for disposal and pyroprocessing also generates waste streams containing salts and fuel cladding 16 some fission products could later be separated for industrial or medical uses and the rest sent to a waste repository the ifr pyroprocessing system uses molten cadmium cathodes and electrorefiners to reprocess metallic fuel directly on site at the reactor 17 such systems co mingle all the minor actinides with both uranium and plutonium the systems are compact and self contained so that no plutonium containing material needs to be transported away from the site of the breeder reactor breeder reactors incorporating such technology would most likely be designed with breeding ratios very close to 1 00 so that after an initial loading of enriched uranium and or plutonium fuel the reactor would then be refueled only with small deliveries of natural uranium a quantity of natural uranium equivalent to a block about the size of a milk crate delivered once per month would be all the fuel such a 1 gigawatt reactor would need 18 the integral fast reactor concept combines a fast reactor with fuel recycling 14 the project was canceled in 1994 by united states secretary of energy hazel o leary 19 20 other fast reactors edit the graphite core of the molten salt reactor experiment the first fast reactor built and operated was the los alamos plutonium fast reactor clementine in los alamos nm 21 clementine was fueled by ga stabilized delta phase pu and cooled with mercury it contained a window of th 232 in anticipation of breeding experiments but no reports were made available regarding this feature another proposed fast reactor is a fast molten salt reactor in which the molten salt s moderating properties are insignificant this is typically achieved by replacing the light metal fluorides e g lif bef 2 in the salt carrier with heavier metal chlorides e g kcl rbcl zrcl 4 several prototype fbrs have been built ranging in electrical output from a few light bulbs equivalent ebr i 1951 to over 1 000 mwe as of 2006 the technology is not economically competitive to thermal reactor technology but india japan china south korea and russia are all committing substantial research funds to further development of fast breeder reactors anticipating that rising uranium prices will change this in the long term germany in contrast abandoned the technology due to safety concerns the snr 300 fast breeder reactor was completed in 1985 but did not obtain authorization to start up the project was cancelled in march 1991 22 thermal breeder reactor edit the shippingport reactor used as a prototype light water breeder for five years beginning in august 1977 the advanced heavy water reactor is one of the few proposed large scale uses of thorium 23 the iaea s 2019 report lists about 846 500 tonnes of thorium in india s monazite deposits based on 2010 2011 estimates this total includes identified and undiscovered resources 24 the third and final core of the shippingport atomic power station 60 mwe reactor was a light water thorium breeder which began operating in 1977 25 it used pellets made of thorium dioxide and uranium 233 oxide initially the u 233 content of the pellets was 5 6 in the seed region 1 5 3 in the blanket region and none in the reflector region it operated at 236 mwt generating 60 mwe and ultimately produced over 2 1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity after five years the core was removed and found to contain nearly 1 4 more fissile material than when it was installed demonstrating that breeding from thorium had occurred 26 27 a liquid fluoride thorium reactor is also planned as a thorium thermal breeder liquid fluoride reactors may have attractive features such as inherent safety no need to manufacture fuel rods and possibly simpler reprocessing of the liquid fuel this concept was first investigated at the oak ridge national laboratory molten salt reactor experiment in the 1960s from 2012 it became the subject of renewed interest worldwide 28 fuel resources edit breeder reactors could in principle extract almost all of the energy contained in uranium or thorium decreasing fuel requirements by a factor of 100 compared to widely used once through light water reactors which extract less than 1 of the energy in the actinide metal uranium or thorium mined from the earth 29 the high fuel efficiency of breeder reactors could greatly reduce concerns about fuel supply energy used in mining and storage of radioactive waste with seawater uranium extraction currently too expensive to be economical there is enough fuel for breeder reactors to satisfy the world s energy needs for 5 billion years at 1983 s total energy consumption rate thus making nuclear energy effectively a renewable energy 30 31 in addition to seawater the average crustal granite rocks contain significant quantities of uranium and thorium that with breeder reactors can supply abundant energy for the remaining lifespan of the sun on the main sequence of stellar evolution 32 nuclear waste edit actinides and fission products by half life v t e actinides 33 by decay chain half life range a fission products of 235 u by yield 34 4 n thorium 4 n 1 neptunium 4 n 2 radium 4 n 3 actinium 4 5 7 0 04 1 25 0 001 228 ra 4 6 a 155 eu þ 248 bk 35 9 a 244 cm ƒ 241 pu ƒ 250 cf 227 ac 10 29 a 90 sr 85 kr 113m cd þ 232 u ƒ 238 pu ƒ 243 cm ƒ 29 97 a 137 cs 151 sm þ 121m sn 249 cf ƒ 242m am ƒ 141 351 a no fission products have a half life in the range of 100 a 210 ka 241 am ƒ 251 cf ƒ 36 430 900 a 226 ra 247 bk 1 3 1 6 ka 240 pu 229 th 246 cm ƒ 243 am ƒ 4 7 7 4 ka 245 cm ƒ 250 cm 8 3 8 5 ka 239 pu ƒ 24 1 ka 230 th 231 pa 32 76 ka 236 np ƒ 233 u ƒ 234 u 150 250 ka 99 tc 126 sn 248 cm 242 pu 327 375 ka 79 se 1 33 ma 135 cs 237 np ƒ 1 61 6 5 ma 93 zr 107 pd 236 u 247 cm ƒ 15 24 ma 129 i 244 pu 80 ma nor beyond 15 7 ma 37 232 th 238 u 235 u ƒ 0 7 14 1 ga has thermal neutron capture cross section in the range of 8 50 barns ƒ fissile primarily a naturally occurring radioactive material norm þ neutron poison thermal neutron capture cross section greater than 3k barns in broad terms spent nuclear fuel has three main components the first consists of fission products the leftover fragments of fuel atoms after they have been split to release energy fission products come in dozens of elements and hundreds of isotopes all of them lighter than uranium the second main component of spent fuel is transuranics atoms heavier than uranium which are generated from uranium or heavier atoms in the fuel when they absorb neutrons but do not undergo fission the actinide series on the periodic table runs from actinium to lawrencium and includes uranium as well as transuranic elements 38 the largest component is the remaining uranium which is around 98 25 uranium 238 1 1 uranium 235 and 0 65 uranium 236 the u 236 comes from the non fission capture reaction where u 235 absorbs a neutron but releases only a high energy gamma ray instead of undergoing fission the physical behavior of the fission products is markedly different from that of the actinides in particular fission products do not undergo fission and therefore cannot be used as nuclear fuel indeed because fission products are often neutron poisons absorbing neutrons that could be used to sustain a chain reaction fission products are viewed as nuclear ashes left over from consuming fissile materials furthermore only seven long lived fission product isotopes have half lives longer than a hundred years which makes their geological storage or disposal less problematic than for transuranic materials 39 with increased concerns about nuclear waste breeding fuel cycles came under renewed interest as they can reduce actinide wastes particularly plutonium and minor actinides such as neptunium americium and curium 40 breeder reactors are designed to fission the actinide wastes as fuel and thus convert them to more fission products for unreprocessed uranium oxide spent nuclear fuel bodansky s 2006 review described a rapid initial decrease in radioactivity as short lived fission products decay followed by a more gradual decrease as actinides decay 41 today s commercial light water reactors do breed some new fissile material mostly in the form of plutonium because commercial reactors were never designed as breeders they do not convert enough uranium 238 into plutonium to replace the uranium 235 consumed nonetheless at least one third of the power produced by commercial nuclear reactors comes from fission of plutonium generated within the fuel 42 even with this level of plutonium consumption light water reactors consume only part of the plutonium and minor actinides they produce and nonfissile isotopes of plutonium build up along with significant quantities of other minor actinides 43 since breeder reactors on a closed fuel cycle would use nearly all of the isotopes of these actinides fed into them as fuel their fuel requirements would be reduced by a factor of about 100 44 waste volume alone does not determine disposal requirements a 2023 doe assessment identified radionuclide inventory heat output chemical and physical properties and packaging as relevant factors for a given total heat output reducing waste volume increases heat density the space required in a repository also depends on the host rock and its temperature limits 45 radioactivity is not the same as the dose potentially received from a waste repository a 2023 doe assessment noted that waste radiotoxicity is strongly linked to actinide content while mobile long lived fission and activation products can be important contributors to repository dose under typical repository conditions actinides move more slowly than these products 16 in principle breeder fuel cycles can recycle and consume all actinides 30 leaving only fission products the table illustrates the gap between medium lived and long lived fission products a 2015 measurement put the half life of samarium 151 one of the medium lived fission products at 94 6 0 6 years 46 as a result of this physical oddity after several hundred years in storage the activity of the radioactive waste from an fbr would quickly drop to the low level of the long lived fission products however to obtain this benefit requires the highly efficient separation of transuranics from spent fuel if the fuel reprocessing methods used leave a large fraction of the transuranics in the final waste stream this advantage would be greatly reduced 29 the fbr s fast neutrons can fission actinide nuclei with even numbers of both protons and neutrons such nuclei usually lack the low speed thermal neutron resonances of fissile fuels used in lwrs 47 the thorium fuel cycle inherently produces lower levels of heavy actinides the fertile material in the thorium fuel cycle has an atomic weight of 232 while the fertile material in the uranium fuel cycle has an atomic weight of 238 that mass difference means that thorium 232 requires six more neutron capture events per nucleus before the transuranic elements can be produced in addition to this simple mass difference the reactor gets two chances to fission the nuclei as the mass increases first as the effective fuel nuclei u233 and as it absorbs two more neutrons again as the fuel nuclei u235 48 49 breeders aim to produce more fissile material than they consume burners aim to consume actinides by incorporating them into the core fuel and not adding a breeding blanket 50 design edit fission probabilities of selected actinides thermal vs fast neutrons 51 52 the percentages of thermal and fast fission indicate the fraction of nuclei fissioned when hit by a respective neutron the remainder undergoes neutron capture isotope thermal fission cross section thermal fission fast fission cross section fast fission th 232 53 71 microbarn 1 n 79 94 millibarn 3 n u 232 76 52 barn 59 2 063 barn 95 u 233 531 3 barn 89 1 908 barn 93 u 235 585 1 barn 81 1 218 barn 80 u 238 16 8 microbarn 1 n 306 4 millibarn 11 np 237 20 19 millibarn 3 n 1 336 barn 27 pu 238 17 77 barn 7 1 968 barn 70 pu 239 747 4 barn 63 1 802 barn 85 pu 240 36 21 millibarn 1 n 1 328 barn 55 pu 241 1012 barn 75 1 626 barn 87 pu 242 2 436 millibarn 1 n 1 151 barn 53 am 241 3 122 barn 1 n 1 395 barn 21 am 242m 6401 barn 75 1 834 barn 94 am 243 81 58 millibarn 1 n 1 081 barn 23 cm 242 4 665 barn 1 n 1 775 barn 10 cm 243 587 4 barn 78 2 432 barn 94 cm 244 1 022 barn 4 n 1 733 barn 33 n non fissile conversion ratio edit one measure of a reactor s performance is the conversion ratio defined as the ratio of new fissile atoms produced to fissile atoms consumed all proposed nuclear reactors except specially designed and operated actinide burners 11 experience some degree of conversion as long as there is any amount of a fertile material within the neutron flux of the reactor some new fissile material is always created when the conversion ratio is greater than 1 it is often called the breeding ratio for example commonly used light water reactors have a conversion ratio of approximately 0 6 pressurized heavy water reactors running on natural uranium have a conversion ratio of 0 8 53 in a breeder reactor the conversion ratio is higher than 1 break even is achieved when the conversion ratio reaches 1 0 and the reactor produces as much fissile material as it uses doubling time edit the doubling time is the amount of time it would take for a breeder reactor to produce enough new fissile material to replace the original fuel and additionally produce an equivalent amount of fuel for another nuclear reactor this was ...
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