Fast-neutron reactor

Shevchenko BN350 nuclear fast reactor and desalination plant situated on the shore of the Caspian Sea. The plant generated 135 MWe and provided steam for an associated desalination plant. View of the interior of the reactor hall.

A fast neutron reactor or simply a fast reactor is a category of nuclear reactor in which the fission chain reaction is sustained by fast neutrons. Such a reactor needs no neutron moderator, but must use fuel that is relatively rich in fissile material when compared to that required for a thermal reactor.

Introduction

Basic fission concepts

In order to sustain a fission chain reaction, the neutrons released in fission events have to react with other atoms in the fuel. The chance of this occurring depends on the energy of the neutron; most atoms will only undergo induced fission with high energy neutrons, although a smaller number prefer much lower energies.

Natural uranium consists mostly of three isotopes, U-238, U-235, and trace quantities of U-234, a decay product of U-238. U-238 accounts for roughly 99.3% of natural uranium and undergoes fission only by neutrons with energies of 5 MeV or greater, the so-called fast neutrons. About 0.7% of natural uranium is U-235, which undergoes fission by neutrons of any energy, but particularly by lower energy neutrons. When either of these isotopes undergoes fission they release neutrons around 1 to 2 MeV, too low to cause fission in U-238, and too high to do so easily in U-235.

The common solution to this problem is to slow the neutron from these fast speeds using a neutron moderator, any substance which interacts with the neutrons and slows their speed. The most common moderator is normal water, which slows the neutrons through inelastic scattering until the neutrons reach thermal equilibrium with the water. The key to reactor design is to carefully lay out the fuel and water so the neutrons have time to slow enough to become highly reactive with the U-235, but not so far as to allow them easy pathways to escape the reactor core entirely.

Although U-238 will not undergo fission by the neutrons released in fission, thermal neutrons can be captured by the nucleus to transmute the atom into Pu-239. Pu-239 has a neutron cross section very similar to that of U-235, and most of the atoms created this way will undergo fission from the thermal neutrons. In most reactors this accounts for as much as ⅓ of the energy being generated. Not all of the Pu-239 is burned up during normal operation, and the leftover, along with leftover U-238, can be separated out to be used in new fuel during nuclear reprocessing.

Water is a common moderator for practical reasons, but has its disadvantages. From a nuclear standpoint, the primary problem is that water can absorb a neutron and remove it from the reaction. It does this just enough that the amount of U-235 in natural ore is too low to sustain the chain reaction; the neutrons lost through absorption in the water and U-238, along with those lost to the environment, results in too few left in the fuel. The most common solution to this problem is to slightly concentrate the amount of U-235 in the fuel to produce enriched uranium, with the leftover U-238 known as depleted uranium. Other designs use different moderators, like heavy water, that produce more neutrons than they absorb, allowing them to run on unenriched fuel. In either case, the reactor's neutron economy is based on thermal neutrons.

Fast fission, breeders

Although U-235 and Pu-239 are less sensitive to higher energy neutrons, they still remain somewhat reactive well into the MeV area. This means that if you enrich the fuel you will eventually reach a threshold where there are enough fissile atoms in the fuel that a chain reaction can be maintained even with fast neutrons.

The primary advantage is that by removing the moderator, the size of the reactor can be greatly reduced, and to some extent the complexity. This is commonly used for shipboard and submarine reactor systems, where size and weight are major concerns. The downside to the fast reaction is that fuel enrichment is an expensive process, so this is generally not suitable for electrical generation or other roles where cost is more important than size.

There is another advantage to the fast reaction that has led to considerable development for civilian use. Fast reactors lack a moderator, and thus lack one of the systems that remove neutrons from the system. Those running on Pu-239 further increase the number of neutrons, because its most common fission cycle gives off three neutrons rather than the mix of two and three neutrons released from U-235. By surrounding the reactor core with a moderator and then a blanket of U-238, those neutrons can be captured and used to breed more Pu-239. This is the same reaction that occurs internally in conventional designs, but in this case the blanket does not have to sustain a reaction and thus can be made of natural uranium or even depleted uranium.

Due to the surplus of neutrons from Pu-239 fission, the reactor will actually breed more Pu-239 than it consumes. The blanket material can then be processed to extract the Pu-239 to replace the losses in the reactor, and the surplus is then mixed with other fuel to produce MOX fuel that can be fed into conventional slow neutron reactors. A single fast reactor can thereby feed several slow ones, greatly increasing the amount of energy extracted from the natural uranium, from less than 1% in a normal once-through cycle, to as much as 60% in the best fast reactor cycles.

Given the limited stores of natural uranium ore, and the rate that nuclear power was expected to take over baseload generation, through the 1960s and 70s fast breeder reactors were seen as the solution to the world's energy needs. Using twice-through processing, a fast breeder economy increases the fuel capacity of known ore deposits by as much as 100 times, meaning that even existing ore sources would last hundreds of years. The disadvantage to this approach is that the breeder reactor has to be fed highly enriched fuel, which is very expensive to produce. Even though it breeds more fuel than it consumes, the resulting MOX is still expensive. It was widely expected that this would still be below the price of enriched uranium as demand increased and known resources dwindled.

Through the 1970s, breeder designs were being widely experimented on, especially in the USA, France and the USSR. However, this coincided with a crash in uranium prices. The expected increased demand led mining companies to build up new supply channels, which came online just as the rate of reactor construction stalled in the mid-1970s. The resulting oversupply caused fuel prices to decline from about US$40 per pound in 1980 to less than $20 by 1984. Breeders produced fuel that was much more expensive, on the order of $100 to $160, and the few units that had reached commercial operation proved to be economically disastrous. Interest in breeder reactors were further muted by Jimmy Carter's April 1977 decision to defer construction of breeders in the US due to proliferation concerns, and the terrible operating record of France's Superphénix reactor.

Advantages

Actinides and fission products by half-life
Actinides[1] by decay chain Half-life
range (y)
Fission products of 235U by yield[2]
4n 4n+1 4n+2 4n+3
4.5–7% 0.04–1.25% <0.001%
228Ra 4–6 155Euþ
244Cm 241Puƒ 250Cf 227Ac 10–29 90Sr 85Kr 113mCdþ
232Uƒ 238Pu 243Cmƒ 29–97 137Cs 151Smþ 121mSn
248Bk[3] 249Cfƒ 242mAmƒ 141–351

No fission products
have a half-life
in the range of
100–210 k years ...

241Amƒ 251Cfƒ[4] 430–900
226Ra 247Bk 1.3 k  1.6 k
240Pu 229Th 246Cm 243Amƒ 4.7 k  7.4 k
245Cmƒ 250Cm 8.3 k  8.5 k
239Puƒ№ 24.1 k
230Th 231Pa 32 k  76 k
236Npƒ 233Uƒ№ 234U 150 k  250 k 99Tc 126Sn
248Cm 242Pu 327 k  375 k 79Se
1.53 M 93Zr
237Np 2.1 M  6.5 M 135Cs 107Pd
236U 247Cmƒ 15 M  24 M 129I
244Pu 80 M

... nor beyond 15.7 M years[5]

232Th 238U 235Uƒ№ 0.7 G  14.1 G

Legend for superscript symbols
  has thermal neutron capture cross section in the range of 8–50 barns
ƒ  fissile
m  metastable isomer
  naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM)
þ  neutron poison (thermal neutron capture cross section greater than 3k barns)
  range 4–97 y: Medium-lived fission product
  over 200,000 y: Long-lived fission product

Fast neutron reactors can reduce the total radiotoxicity of nuclear waste, and dramatically reduce the waste's lifetime.[6] They can also use all or almost all of the fuel in the waste. Fast neutrons have an advantage in the transmutation of nuclear waste. With fast neutrons, the ratio between splitting and the capture of neutrons of plutonium or minor actinide is often larger than when the neutrons are slower, at thermal or near-thermal "epithermal" speeds. The transmuted odd-numbered actinides (e.g. from Pu-240 to Pu-241) split more easily. After they split, the actinides become a pair of "fission products." These elements have less total radiotoxicity. Since disposal of the fission products is dominated by the most radiotoxic fission product, cesium-137, which has a half life of 30.1 years,[6] the result is to reduce nuclear waste lifetimes from tens of millennia (from transuranic isotopes) to a few centuries. The processes are not perfect, but the remaining transuranics are reduced from a significant problem to a tiny percentage of the total waste, because most transuranics can be used as fuel.

Disadvantages

Nuclear reactor design

Coolant

Water, the most common coolant in thermal reactors, is generally not a feasible coolant for a fast reactor, because it acts as a neutron moderator. However the Generation IV reactor known as the supercritical water reactor with decreased coolant density may reach a hard enough neutron spectrum to be considered a fast reactor. Breeding, which is the primary advantage of fast over thermal reactors, may be accomplished with a thermal, light-water cooled & moderated system using very high enriched (~90%) uranium.

All current fast reactors are liquid metal cooled reactors. The early Clementine reactor used mercury coolant and plutonium metal fuel. Sodium-potassium alloy (NaK) coolant is popular in test reactors due to its low melting point. In addition to its toxicity to humans, mercury has a high cross section for the (n,gamma) reaction, causing activation in the coolant and losing neutrons that could otherwise be absorbed in the fuel, which is why it is no longer used or considered as a coolant in reactors. Molten lead cooling has been used in naval propulsion units as well as some other prototype reactors. All large-scale fast reactors have used molten sodium coolant.

Another proposed fast reactor is a Molten Salt Reactor, one in which the molten salt's moderating properties are insignificant. This is typically achieved by replacing the light metal fluorides (e.g. Lithium fluoride - LiF, Beryllium fluoride - BeF2) in the salt carrier with heavier metal chlorides (e.g., Potassium chloride - KCI, Rubidium chloride - RbCl, Zirconium chloride - ZrCl4).

Gas-cooled fast reactors have been the subject of research as well, as helium, the most commonly proposed coolant in such a reactor, has small absorption and scattering cross sections, thus preserving the fast neutron spectrum without significant neutron absorption in the coolant.

Nuclear fuel

In practice, sustaining a fission chain reaction with fast neutrons means using relatively highly enriched uranium or plutonium. The reason for this is that fissile reactions are favored at thermal energies, since the ratio between the Pu239 fission cross section and U238 absorption cross section is ~100 in a thermal spectrum and 8 in a fast spectrum. Fission and absorption cross sections are low for both Pu239 and U238 at high (fast) energies, which means that fast neutrons are likelier to pass through fuel without interacting than thermal neutrons; thus, more fissile material is needed. Therefore it is impossible to build a fast reactor using only natural uranium fuel. However, it is possible to build a fast reactor that will breed fuel (from fertile material) by producing more fissile material than it consumes. After the initial fuel charge such a reactor can be refueled by reprocessing. Fission products can be replaced by adding natural or even depleted uranium with no further enrichment required. This is the concept of the fast breeder reactor or FBR.

So far, most fast neutron reactors have used either MOX (mixed oxide) or metal alloy fuel. Soviet fast neutron reactors have been using (high U-235 enriched) uranium fuel. The Indian prototype reactor has been using uranium-carbide fuel.

While criticality at fast energies may be achieved with uranium enriched to 5.5 weight percent Uranium-235, fast reactor designs have often been proposed with enrichments in the range of 20 percent for a variety of reasons, including core lifetime: If a fast reactor were loaded with the minimal critical mass, then the reactor would become subcritical after the first fission had occurred. Rather, an excess of fuel is inserted with reactivity control mechanisms, such that the reactivity control is inserted fully at the beginning of life to bring the reactor from supercritical to critical; as the fuel is depleted, the reactivity control is withdrawn to mitigate the negative reactivity feedback from fuel depletion and fission product poisons. In a fast breeder reactor, the above applies, though the reactivity from fuel depletion is also compensated by the breeding of either Uranium-233 or Plutonium-239 and 241 from Thorium 232 or Uranium 238, respectively.

Control

Like thermal reactors, fast neutron reactors are controlled by keeping the criticality of the reactor reliant on delayed neutrons, with gross control from neutron-absorbing control rods or blades.

They cannot, however, rely on changes to their moderators because there is no moderator. So Doppler broadening in the moderator, which affects thermal neutrons, does not work, nor does a negative void coefficient of the moderator. Both techniques are very common in ordinary light water reactors.

Doppler broadening from the molecular motion of the fuel, from its heat, can provide rapid negative feedback. The molecular movement of the fissionables themselves can tune the fuel's relative speed away from the optimal neutron speed. Thermal expansion of the fuel itself can also provide quick negative feedback. Small reactors such as those used in submarines may use doppler broadening or thermal expansion of neutron reflectors.

Shevchenko BN350 desalination unit. View of the only nuclear-heated desalination unit in the world

History

A 2008 IAEA proposal for a Fast Reactor Knowledge Preservation System[8] notes that:

during the past 15 years there has been stagnation in the development of fast reactors in the industrialized countries that were involved, earlier, in intensive development of this area. All studies on fast reactors have been stopped in countries such as Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the only work being carried out is related to the decommissioning of fast reactors. Many specialists who were involved in the studies and development work in this area in these countries have already retired or are close to retirement. In countries such as France, Japan and the Russian Federation that are still actively pursuing the evolution of fast reactor technology, the situation is aggravated by the lack of young scientists and engineers moving into this branch of nuclear power.

List of fast reactors

USA

Europe

USSR/Russia

Never operated

Currently operating

Under repair

Under construction

In design phase

Chart

Fast reactors
U.S. Russia Europe Asia
Past Clementine, EBR-I/II, SEFOR, FFTF BN-350 Dounreay, Rhapsodie, Superphénix, Phénix (stopped in 2010)
CancelledClinch River, IFR SNR-300
Operating BOR-60, BN-600,
BN-800[11]
FBTR, CEFR
Under repairing Jōyō
Under construction Monju, PFBR,
Planned Gen IV (Gas·Sodium·Lead) BN-1200 ASTRID 4S, JSFR, KALIMER

See also

References

  1. Plus radium (element 88). While actually a sub-actinide, it immediately precedes actinium (89) and follows a three-element gap of instability after polonium (84) where no isotopes have half-lives of at least four years (the longest-lived isotope in the gap is radon-222 with a half life of less than four days). Radium's longest lived isotope, at 1,600 years, thus merits the element's inclusion here.
  2. Specifically from thermal neutron fission of U-235, e.g. in a typical nuclear reactor.
  3. Milsted, J.; Friedman, A. M.; Stevens, C. M. (1965). "The alpha half-life of berkelium-247; a new long-lived isomer of berkelium-248". Nuclear Physics 71 (2): 299. doi:10.1016/0029-5582(65)90719-4.
    "The isotopic analyses disclosed a species of mass 248 in constant abundance in three samples analysed over a period of about 10 months. This was ascribed to an isomer of Bk248 with a half-life greater than 9 y. No growth of Cf248 was detected, and a lower limit for the β half-life can be set at about 104 y. No alpha activity attributable to the new isomer has been detected; the alpha half-life is probably greater than 300 y."
  4. This is the heaviest isotope with a half-life of at least four years before the "Sea of Instability".
  5. Excluding those "classically stable" isotopes with half-lives significantly in excess of 232Th; e.g., while 113mCd has a half-life of only fourteen years, that of 113Cd is nearly eight quadrillion years.
  6. 1 2 Smarter use of Nuclear Waste, by William H. Hannum, Gerald E. Marsh and George S. Stanford, Copyright Scientific American, 2005. Retrieved 2010-9-2.
  7. "Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status" (PDF). International Panel on Fissile Materials. February 2010.
  8. "Fast Reactor Knowledge Preservation System: Taxonomy and Basic Requirements" (PDF).
  9. "Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant".
  10. Beloyarsk NPP website
  11. 1 2 Fast reactor starts clean nuclear energy era in Russia
  12. http://www.inspi.ufl.edu/icapp07/program/abstracts/7348.pdf
  13. China 's first Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) Put into Operation in 2009 – Zoom China Energy Intelligence-New site
  14. T. SOGA, W. ITAGAKI, Y. KIHARA, Y. MAEDA. Endeavor to improve in-pile testing techniques in the experimental fast reactor Joyo. 2013.
  15. http://urbc.ru/1068008920-reshenie-o-stroitelstve-bn-1200-budet-prinyato-v-2014-godu.html
  16. http://www.nr2.ru/economy/147920.html
  17. ***지속가능원자력시스템***
  18. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-French_government_puts_up_funds_for_Astrid-1609107.html

External links

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