RE: So what now do we do?

Thanks to Al Koop for the additional info on breeders. Let me follow with another question. There was a time when smaller reactors were considered feasible options. Perhaps they offered better cooling designs and simply less materials to worry about. Has designs for smaller fission reactors been killed by economies of scale ?

Al McCarrick

-----Original Message-----
From: Al Koop [mailto:koopa@gvsu.edu]
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 9:56 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: So what now do we do?

From Alan Mccarrick

1. What is France's current stand regarding re-processing fuel and
using breeder reactors? I thought the old Phoenix reactor was quite
successful, but don't know what became of Super-Phoenix. It seems that
one direction toward addressing the amount of highly radioactive wastes
is to create more fuel rather than bury the whole mass.

In The Party's Over, Richard Heinberg write the following:

The fuel supply for nuclear power is virtually limitless if we use fast
breeder reactors to produce plutonium--which is one of the most
poisonous materials known and is used to make nuclear weapons. But only
a few fast-breeder reactors have been constructed, and they have proved
to be prohibitively expensive, largely as a result of the need for
special safety systems. These reactors generate an extraordinary
amount of heat in a very small space and use molten metals or liquid
sodium to remove the heat. Designing reactors to take these properties
into account has made them costly to build and maintain. It also makes
them susceptible to serious fires and long shutdowns: the French
Superphoenix reactor operated for less than a year during the first 10
years after it had been commissioned.

France and the UK, despite have pursued breeder programs for several
decades, have no plans for constructing more such plants. Japan has not
restarted its Monju reactor, which was shut down after a sodium fire in
December 1995. Among countries that have constructed breeder reactors,
Russia alone supports further development.

It is also possible to reprocess spent fuel into a form known as MOX
(mixed oxide) which consists of a mixture of plutonium and uranium
oxides. Reprocessed MOX fuel can then be used to replace conventional
uranium fuel in power plants. However, only two MOX plants have been
built (one in the UK; the other in France), and both have turned out to
be environmental and financial nightmares. End of quote.

Does anyone know if there are any clear misprepresentations here?
Heinberg is a strong proponent of the energy depletion scenario but I
have not yet found a case where he has made bad misrepresentation of the
situation.

Al Koop
Received on Thu, 4 Dec 2003 10:10:21 -0500