Actinide consumption [electronic resource] : Nuclear resource conservation without breeding.
A new approach to the nuclear power issue based on a metallic fast reactor fuel and pyrometallurgical processing of spent fuel is showing great potential and is approaching a critical demonstration phase. If successful, this approach will complement and validate the LWR reactor systems and the atten...
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| Online Access: |
Online Access |
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| Corporate Author: | |
| Format: | Government Document Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Washington, D.C. : Oak Ridge, Tenn. :
United States. Dept. of Defense ; distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Dept. of Energy,
1991.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | A new approach to the nuclear power issue based on a metallic fast reactor fuel and pyrometallurgical processing of spent fuel is showing great potential and is approaching a critical demonstration phase. If successful, this approach will complement and validate the LWR reactor systems and the attendant infrastructure (including repository development) and will alleviate the dominant concerns over the acceptability of nuclear power. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) concept is a metal-fueled, sodium-cooled pool-type fast reactor supported by a pyrometallurgical reprocessing system. The concept of a sodium cooled fast reactor is broadly demonstrated by the EBR-II and FFTF in the US; DFR and PFR in the UK; Phenix and SuperPhenix in France; BOR-60, BN-350, BN-600 in the USSR; and JOYO in Japan. The metallic fuel is an evolution from early EBR-II fuels. This fuel, a ternary U-Pu-Zr alloy, has been demonstrated to be highly reliable and fault tolerant even at very high burnup (160-180,000 MWd/MT). The fuel, coupled with the pool type reactor configuration, has been shown to have outstanding safety characteristics: even with all active safety systems disabled, such a reactor can survive a loss of coolant flow, a loss of heat sink, or other major accidents. Design studies based on a small modular approach show not only its impressive safety characteristics, but are projected to be economically competitive. The program to explore the feasibility of actinide recovery from spent LWR fuel is in its initial phase, but it is expected that technical feasibility could be demonstrated by about 1995; DOE has not yet committed funds to achieve this objective. 27 refs. |
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| Item Description: | Published through the Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information. 01/01/1991. "anl/cp-71359" " conf-9104106--1" "DE91008815" 53. annual meeting and exhibit of the American Power Conference, Chicago, IL (USA), 20 Apr - 1 May 1991. Johnson, T.R.; McPheeters, C.C.; Battles, J.E.; Hannum, W.H. |
| Physical Description: | Pages: (6 p) : digital, PDF file. |