The New Economics of Nuclear Power

iprimap · Veteran Member

The New Economics of Nuclear Power

10kBq Jaro · Senior Member

This new WNA report is quite timely -- I downloaded the pdf file and printed copies to bring with me today to the UN Climate Change Conference here in Montreal (COP-11), where we are manning a kiosk on nuclear energy -- a combined effort with the Canadian Nuclear Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Canadian Nuclear Society, and North American Young Generation in Nuclear.

One of the side events at the conference today was a presentation on nuclear energy by the IAEA and representatives of the Canadian gov't. They did a pretty good job of answering a few antinuke jabs during the question periods.

On the negative side, we discovered that some antinuke types were systematically removing our posters announcing monday's presentation by Patrick Moore (formerly of Greenpeace). Of course we put up more posters, as well as complaining to the conference security personnell regarding these incidents.

stungun · Veteran Member

Wind power is not mentioned in your comparison. This website claims it comes at 3 cents per kwatt, but I would gladly pay more for the safety factor. Wind power tops the input/output production consumption chart too, with an 80 to 1 ratio...

http://www.earthsci.org/teacher/basicgeol/alt_energy/alt_energy.html

Wind Energy

Can potentially provide 25 to 50% of the energy needs of the U.S.
However, it may effect birds, degrade scenery and can be fairly noisy.

In 1980 it cost approximately 38 cents/kwatt for wind power; now that price is down to roughly 3 cents/kwatt (making it comparable to coal).
India as well as other developing nations are increasing use of this energy source.

iprimap · Veteran Member

Windpower as well as nuclear power should be embraced as replacements for fossil fuel generation. Relying on just one source of energy supply is insufficient and fool-hardy. However, the economics of wind generation are not nearly as profitable as Stungun implies.

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=989

The False Promises of Wind Energy

5.10.05

Michael Fox, Ph.D.

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That windmills retain a mystical popularity among its Northwest supporters, is truly a triumph of hope over substance, not to mention unawareness of hidden costs and poor performance data. There is a huge amount of information now available regarding wind energy from around the United States and Europe. It’s not good news. It is past time that Northwest energy agencies, utilities, and elected officials use the data before building anymore of them and ripping off the rate payers. Reasonable people of the Northwest expect energy agencies to learn these lessons from around the world, just as they expect them to provide low cost reliable electrical energy.

Hundreds of windmills now stand over the formerly beautiful Palouse landscape of Southeastern Washington. Further, a company named Zilkha Renewable Energy is proposing a new wind farm in the Ellensburg area. In this case the proposed wind farm will have an installed capacity of 180 MW.

Hidden Costs
Part of the energy debate must include the large and hidden costs of such windmills, not mentioned on the Zilkha website. A major reason why windmills are being built around the US is because of the huge tax breaks, subsidies, and tax credits now available to the owners. For example, let’s assume the construction costs of the Zilkha 180 MW wind farm will be $180 million. The first two years of depreciation will be about $108,000,000, or about 60% of the total value! At an assumed taxation rate of 35% they will avoid the payment of $37.8 million during this time!! We taxpayers are stuck with this bill! The entire $180 million project can be depreciated in about 6 years!!

Furthermore, Zilkha will get a federal tax credit of $ 0.018 for each kw-hr produced! This tax credit will allow Zilkha to deduct another estimated $9 million ($.018/kwh x 473,040,000 kwh/yr) from it annual tax liability for the next 10 years.

Furthermore, in Washington State, according to the report on Zilkha by expert Glenn Schleede, wind farm owners are exempt from paying any sales or use tax on equipment used to generate electricity from the wind. This also includes charges for labor and services used during construction. The value of this exemption could be as much as $10,000,000 during construction.

All of these exemptions are in addition to the revenues from sales of such electricity. Even if sold at $ 0.03 per kilowatt hour, the revenues would be about $15,000,000 per year. These certainly fatten the wind farm owners’ coffers, but are done at the expense of the taxpayers who pay the bulk of the costs. This is a classic scheme of state sponsored redistribution of wealth from people at the bottom of the economic ladder to those on top, more associated with 20th century dictators.

As Schleede points out, the big losers in this scheme are the rate payers and the taxpayers who pay the taxes avoided by the wind farm owners. The neighbors and citizens also bear the costs of adverse environmental, ecological, scenic, and property value impacts.

Poor Performance
The Zilkha website also states that this capacity is enough to serve 45,000 homes. This is untrue. The actual amount of such intermittent energy received would be about 30% of this energy produced at unscheduled times. Much of that energy would be produced when it was not needed.

The 180 MW capacity of the Zilkha farm operating only at an estimated 30% of the time would produce (unpredictably) a total 473,040,000 kw-hr per year. This seemingly big number is less than ½ of 1% of the total electrical energy consumed in the State of Washington in 2002. According to Schleede, this would be about 16% of the energy produced in 2002 by the single natural gas combined cycle plant in Hermiston OR (474 MW), which stands on only a few acres. We need a serious realistic debate on these energy issues, without the exaggerations.

Wind energy is unreliable for the simple reason that wind is unreliable, unpredictable, and intermittent. That is, more than 70% of the time more reliable sources are needed in its place.

The Need for a Backup Energy System
Because of the unpredictability of the wind, a dedicated equally-sized backup system must be kept in reserve, not producing energy of its own. This backup energy capacity (called spinning reserve) is a hidden cost, requiring its own fuel consumption, emissions, and costs in reserve, which usually are not considered in the overall cost analyses for wind energy.

System Unreliability
As is being learned in England, Denmark, Germany, US, and elsewhere, wind farms also add to transmission system instabilities. The windmills can actually reduce the reliability of the transmission system, because of the need not only to match loads with variable energy generation, but the additional needs to control for both system voltage and frequency stabilities. These costs are typically not included either in such analyses.

Windmills have been described as deduction generators more so than energy generators, and it is the deductions which are of interest to the big owners, not the energy per se. It’s time to put the interests of the ratepayers and taxpayers first, by ending the huge subsidies in costly and unreliable energy sources. If wind energy can’t compete without grotesquely large subsidies, it must be abandoned.

iprimap · Veteran Member

In all fairness to Stungun, I am posting the following article about a market based incentive for renewables. While I don't have the figures readily available to back this up, I would imagine that if coal fired and natural gas electrical generation plants had to internalize the costs of their waste disposal (COx, NOx, SOx, mercury, etc.) as nuclear power plants have to internalize the costs of their waste disposal (24 billion dollars to date to the US Congress for a DOE-built national geological respository), then nuclear energy and wind energy would likely be the most economical.

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1151

Preferred Renewable Return - A New Market Based Incentive for Renewables

12.1.05

Bill Roush, President, Heartland Solar Energy Ind. Assoc.

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Renewable energy has been plagued by the fact that its' greatest benefits are not a part of the economic equation that is usually used when making decisions for more power plants. Things like clean air and water result in improved health, but those health benefits don't make renewable energy look cheaper or dirty fuels look more expensive in a straight cost of service calculation. Some would add the unknown costs to insurers, agriculture and others, of climate change to fossil fuel costs. We devote billions of taxpayer dollars defending our current and planned fossil fuel infrastructure, both here and abroad, and yet this too does not make fossil fuels look more expensive.

Secure, job creating homegrown energy that we don't have to spend these taxpayer dollars on don't look cheaper in most 'what does it cost me?' economic calculations. These have come to be known as external costs of fossil fuels that just don't become part of the 'bottom line' cost analysis that we usually make energy decisions on.

There is, I believe, a way to factor in the benefits of renewable energy that fits well with our economic system and current regulatory structure. In short, it would be to allow regulated, investor owned utilities (IOU's) to make a higher rate of return on investments producing renewable energy than from investments in 'dirty' fuels with external cost to society.

Certainly we know by now that electric utilities are very good at providing affordable power and good jobs. Some of them have even become good at using renewable energy, but usually only when mandated to do so by a renewable portfolio standard. While these standards have been tremendously successful in producing large quantities of renewable energy, utilities have usually fought their initiation and sometimes their implementation. Many of us resist being told what to do, even if it is the 'right thing'.

Another thing our investor owned utilities are very good at is delivering a regular financial rate of return. They dependably meet the returns allowed by state regulators year after year with few exceptions. This is an important point. State regulators though a Public Utility Commission allows IOU's to make a set rate of return such as 12% on their investments. This percentage is determined by the PUC to be fair in balancing the need for the IOU to make a profit, provide jobs and affordable power in their local area.

It is time to allow IOU's a greater rate of return on clean, safe, renewable energy investments than they are allowed on fuels with huge external costs to society.

This 'preferred renewable return' incentive fits perfectly with both our market based, profit making economy and our current regulatory structure. IOU's can propose and PUC's can determine what is the appropriate incentive (14% instead of 12% as an example) for their local area. The incentives can be based on the benefits of eliminating external costs to citizens, the state and others and what is needed to spur investment. Ideally, there would be a different 'preferred renewable return' for different renewable technologies based on what is needed to bring the technologies to the market. For instance, photovoltaics may deserve a higher return based on their current higher costs. Each PUC would be able to set such incentives as they see fit, based on their local market and resources. Technologies could include the full range of renewables available in the region, such as geothermal, liquid fuels, landfill methane, solar hot water, solar electric and wind. Financing of and grid management for distributed generation, energy efficiency and even off grid applications could be included in this incentive package.

Such an incentive would also be justified based on the huge, roller coaster price swings of fossil fuels lately. The small 'preferred renewable return' would help us move from the wild and unpredictable price swings of fossil fuel costs to the more predictable and downward trending costs of renewable energy.

A 'preferred renewable return' could be initiated by the utility, the PUC, the Governor or state legislature. Given the success of recent public votes on renewable energy (Colorado, San Francisco, Columbia, MO), it could also come from an initiative or ballot issue.

This is a way to 'mainstream' renewable energy. Our local utilities would then have every incentive to seek out investments in the growing renewable energy marketplace. This would be an ongoing, permanent incentive that would add the power of market forces to getting us off the fossil fuel treadmill.

iprimap · Veteran Member

Stungun made one statement on wind power which should be expounded upon: "I would gladly pay more for the safety factor."

Stungun's commitment to put his money where his stated principles lie is to be commended. Nevertheless, the Free Market should decide what succeeds and what does not, not a set of arbitrary principles based on faulty statistics and forced on the rest of the rate-paying public. For example, the following chart I found at the http://www.world-nuclear.org web site. While it does not include numbers for immediate fatalities and normalized deaths from wind power generation, the table is very clear that nuclear energy is far safer than coal, natural gas and hydro (which by itself accounts for the majority of renewable electrical generation in North America).

Comparison of accident statistics in primary energy production.
(Electricity generation accounts for about 40% of total primary energy).

Fuel Immediate fatalities 1970-92 Who? Normalised to deaths per TWy* electricity

Coal 6400 workers 342

Natural gas 1200 workers & public 85

Hydro 4000 public 883

Nuclear 31 workers 8

In other words, one may well argue with validity that nuclear electrical generation is perhaps one of the safest means of providing large scale baseload electrical supply. Thus, Stungun's concerns are completely misplaced. The interested reader may review the entire article on the Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors at the following web page:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.htm

Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors

October 2005

-- Edited by iprimap at 21:04, 2005-12-03

stungun · Veteran Member

Yikes, the death factor figures again! All this statistic twisting is not healthy. I realize you are just quoting sources, but, come on, the bottom line is easy. A terrorist strike at a nuclear power plant vs a windmill. It's a no brainer... I thought!

And the dreaded subsidies and lack of sales tax on windmills. Sort of laughable, yet I suppose that is your best arguement against wind power! Nuclear power drips in subsidies, but that is not why I oppose it.

GoogleNaut · Guru

Well, just a funny comment as far as wind generators go:

My grandfather used to have a 10KW Jacobs Wind generator on his farm in the San Joaquin Valley--his was a grid interttie unit--one of the very first in California. Well, when the wind began to blow as they sometimes do in Central California, he used to hobble out with his cane (arthritus or not!) to the back of his barn where his electric meter was--and he used to just start laughing whenever he saw that meter spinning backwards. I swear--it was better for him than watching TV! I think once or twice he even got a check from PG&E because he managed to supply surplus power with his unit over a month. I don't think he ever made enough from surplus power sales to pay for the kit, but he ALWAYS bragged about how much he saved with it!

Anyways, I've always been a big fan of mini wind generators. I think they are ideal on a personal home basis--but I'm not entirely sure about the economics of full scale units. It depends upon entirely how much the wind blows, and some areas get a lot more wind than others...

10kBq Jaro · Senior Member

Californians are also realizing the environmental impact of windmills.
The large windmill farm in the Altamont pass area for example, is now being forced by concerned environmentalists to shut down many of their windmills for about two months of the year, during bird migration episodes.

Unfortunately, the raptor bird kills happen year-round.
The California Energy Commission reported that the windmills in the Altamont Pass killed more than 30 golden eagles per year (an endangered species).

The National Audubon Society launched a successful nationwide campaign to stop the installation of a huge field of massive windmills in "Condor Pass" in southern California - windmills that surely would have threatened this endangered species. And in Wyoming, windmill installers are already having trouble finding suitable sites that will not threaten raptors like bald eagles, hawks, and falcons.

The Tehachapi Mountains in California once offered a scenic view but are now littered with thousands of windmills, power lines, and windmill maintenance access roads.

stungun · Veteran Member

Oh cry me a river, jaro, a bird died! I have birds regularily fly into my house. Millions die each year by flying into houses, so are you suggesting we ban houses and nasty windmills that "litter" our earth, as you ironicly claim?

Sure, some places are too pretty or bird essential for windmills, but the effect on pregnant women is close to zero. It's called "priority"...

I bet our engineers could deter most birds and bats, with sound warnings, etc, but they are busy building new bombs and nuclear spacecraft...

10kBq Jaro · Senior Member

....beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I see endless industrial parks replacing habitable landscapes, farmland, forests, etc.
And these produce absolutely nothing when the wind doesn't blow, or when it blows too much.
Unless you have backup power, your unaffected pregnant women all freeze to death in winter, or die of heat stroke in summer.
Love your "priority" Stun !

PS. how many golden eagles or California condors or other endangered species have been killed by crashing into your house ?
Sure, moonscapes have zero effect on pregnant women -- because there aren't any living there.

stungun · Veteran Member

Well, I have had one tasty pheasant crash into my house Jaro, but not too many bald eagles here...

Wall Street marketing and your waxing and whining poetically about landscapes is all ya got? As I said before, we can make H fuel cells on excess windy days, but myopic repeats of your pooh-pooh logic tell the bottom line...

10kBq Jaro · Senior Member

stungun wrote:

we can make H fuel cells on excess windy days

Wind power is already about the most expensive power there is - with the exception of solar PV.

You add on "H fuel cells" -- at what cost ?????

Right now, and for the foreseeable future, fuel cells are far too expensive for replacing internal combustion engines in cars & trucks. What on earth makes you think that somehow fuel cells for windmills will be any less expensive ?

How do you store the hydrogen ? ....cryo-liquefaction perhaps ? ....any idea how much energy that uses, and the cost of that technology - on top of your windmills ?

Talk about dreaming in Technicolor !

Philipum · Veteran Member

Aren't you drifting away from the point? The point is to decide how safe nuclear power is. I have worried a lot myself about this question, and after a great deal of investigations, I came to the conclusion that nuclear power is not especially unsafe, and that it would be a mistake not to favour nuclear power versus fossile fuels.

The energy pay-back time is an important factor for large-scale energy productiion plants. For nuclear power, it is about 5 months, and for wind power, it varies but is in average about 10 months. Wind power can be competitive where the geography allows it. The intermittency of wind power makes it unreliable as a major energy source: it can therefore only constitute a fraction (typically 20%) of the total power produced. Of course I think wind power must play its role as a clean energy source to replace fossile fuels, but it cannot do it on its own.

-- Edited by Philipum at 12:32, 2005-12-05

iprimap · Veteran Member

Stungun had indicated that nuclear power plants are vulnerable terrorist targets whereas wind mill generators are not. In actuality, wind mill generators due to their location and lack of security infrastructure are probably more vulnerable to a determined terrorist attack that a nuclear power plant with a 24 hour per day security guard force and on-site national guardsmen. Nevertheless, terrorists normally seek soft targets filled with innocent people (schools, shopping malls, office buildings, heavily trafficked bridges, etc.), not hardened structures such as nuclear power plants or out-of-the-way structures such as wind mill generators. Information on the safety and security provided at US commercial nuclear power plants may be reviewed at the following web pages:

http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=1&catid=13

http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/safeguards.html

Of all traditional forms of electrical generation, nuclear energy causes far fewer deaths and results in far less adverse environmental and public impact than any other form of generation. In fact, one may well argue that by obviating the need for replacement coal-fire power plants, nuclear energy actually saves lives by reducing particulate emissions that cause respiratory disease. Lastly, while it is wise to make the maximum use of renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and tidal as feasible, these alone cannot supply 100% (or even 50%) of the baseload electrical supply needed in North America. The choice is clear: with the high cost of natural gas electricity will have to be generated by nuclear or coal and of the two nuclear is by far the most environmentally friendly and people-safe form of electrical production.

Regardless of Stungun's juvenile sarcasm, the measure of safety provided by a technology can indeed measured by the fatalities that result from the use of such technology. Automobiles would fail if to them was applied the criteria used by the anti-nuclear fringe element of society. Nuclear energy passes with flying colors: not a single member of the public has been injured or killed in the last 50 years commercial nuclear power in North America. NOT ONE! Coal burning kills up to 30000 per year and it accounts for 52% of US electrical generation.

iprimap · Veteran Member

From web page http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=106Environmental Protection

Environmental Protection

Of all energy sources, nuclear energy has perhaps the lowest impact on the environment, including water, land, habitat, species and air resources. Nuclear energy is the most eco-efficient of all energy sources because it produces the most electricity in relation to its minimal environmental impact.

Nuclear energy is the world's largest source of emission-free energy. Nuclear power plants produce no controlled air pollutants, such as sulfur and particulates, or greenhouse gases. The use of nuclear energy in place of other energy sources helps to keep the air clean, preserve the Earth's climate, avoid ground-level ozone formation and prevent acid rain.

In 2004, U.S. nuclear power plants prevented 3.43 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 1.11 million tons of nitrogen oxide, and 696.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the earth’s atmosphere.

The NOx emissions avoided by U.S. nuclear power plants are equivalent to the NOx emissions from approximately 58 million passenger cars (43 percent of the U.S. total). The carbon dioxide emissions avoided by U.S. nuclear power plants are equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions from approximately 134 million passenger cars (99 percent of the U.S. total).

Nuclear power plants were responsible for more than a third of the total voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions reported by U.S. companies in 2003 (the last year available), according to the Energy Information Administration. Emissions reductions from nuclear energy usage amounted to 122 million metric tons of CO2, 37 percent of the 332 million metric tons of total CO2 reductions reported.

Throughout the nuclear fuel cycle, the small volume of waste by-products actually created is carefully contained, packaged and safely stored. As a result, the nuclear energy industry is the only industry established since the industrial revolution that has managed and accounted for all of its waste, preventing adverse impacts to the environment.

Water discharged from a nuclear power plant contains no harmful pollutants and meets regulatory standards for temperature designed to protect aquatic life.

Industrial Safety

For years, America's commercial nuclear energy industry has ranked among the safest places to work in the United States. In 2004, nuclear's industrial safety accident rate--which tracks the number of accidents that result in lost work time, restricted work or fatalities--was 0.25 per 200,000 worker-hours. U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics show that it is safer to work at a nuclear power plant than in the manufacturing sector and even in the real estate and finance industries.

Even if you lived right next door to a nuclear power plant, you would still receive less radiation each year than you would receive in just one round-trip flight from New York to Los Angeles.

You would have to live near a nuclear power plant for over 2,000 years to get the same amount of radiation exposure that you get from a single diagnostic medical x-ray.

Philipum · Veteran Member

Yes, there are many advantages with nuclear power. But there are problems as well, the two major ones being: long-lived nulcear waste production and nuclear bomb material proliferation. If we want to have a complete analysis, we have to investigate how bad these two problems are, and see if the advantages overshoot these draw-backs.

From my investigations, I found that the nuclear waste problem is serious and non-trivial, but it can be solved practically. The most cost-effective way to dispose of the high-level waste is to burry it deep underground in a stable geological structure, isolating it for at least one million years. As a simple, pioneering example, the KBS-3 system adopted in Sweden and Finland proved to be a safe alternative (even in the worst possible case where all canisters would fail, the expected extra radiation at the surface would never be more than 10% of the natural radiation background ).

As for nuclear proliferation, actually it does not really concern industrial nuclear power. In normal drift, the nuclear fuel is used for about four years in the reactor, and during this time, the plutonium is being contaminated with Pu240 which makes it a very unreliable bomb material. It would be much more efficient for a contry desiring nuclear weapons to build a small, dedicated plutonium-production reactor which runs on natural uranium. To prevent proliferation related to industrial nuclear power, it is therefore sufficient, as it is being done today, to have an organization, i.e., IAEA, which controls that the nuclear reactors and the uranium enrichment plants are used as they are supposed to.

iprimap · Veteran Member

Philipum,

The December issue of Scientific American provides an article on smarter use of nuclear waste. This article gives a good summary of advanced used fuel treatment technologies. With fuel treatment technologies, the need for 10,000 year storage of spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain (or any other repository) becomes a moot point. Please go to the following web page to order the Sciam.com the article:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=000D5560-D9B2-137C-99B283414B7F0000

I have a PDF copy that I can-mail on request (for personal – not public – use).

There are indeed a variety of ways to utilize spent nuclear fuel. These include the Molten Salt Reactor, the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder, the Very High Temperature Gas Cooled Fast Breeder, and the Carlo Rubbia Energy Amplifier. Any one of these ways obviates the need for long term repository and removes the major impetus from the obstructionism that Senator Harry Reid has put in the way of nuclear power advancement.

For more information on spent fuel reprocessing, please see:

INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR:

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy99/phy99xx7.htm

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html

CARLO RUBBIA ENERGY AMPLIFIER

http://doc.cern.ch//archive/electronic/other/generic/public/cer-0210391.pdf

NUCLEAR WASTE LINKS AT ENERGY PULSE

Nuclear Waste Perspectives Part 1

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=589

Nuclear Waste Perspectives Part 2

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=724

Nuclear Power Comparisons and Perspectives

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=498

Nuclear Cycles and Nuclear Resources

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=374

And my favorite:

Nuclear Power and Politics

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=360

The following article discusses how Washington policy makers stand in the way of sensible energy policies. See web page:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110007605

While it applauds President Bush’s pending announcement of government take-over of spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing, I can’t help but be disturbed by such a prospect. The 24 billion dollars that the nuclear utility industry has paid to the US Congress for a national geological repository that Senator Harry Reid is obstructing tooth-and-nail should actually be returned to the industry with a mandate that the utilities figure out a way to deal with their own waste. I cannot believe the government can do cheaper what Free Enterprise can do on its own. And furthermore, another downside to government-provided fuel reprocessing is making the utility industry always beholden to omnipotent government. That is simply wrong and is but yet another harbinger of the fascist state to which Roderick T. Long describes in his essay:

Liberalism vs Fascism

http://www.mises.org/story/1957

Regards,

Paul

Philipum · Veteran Member

Thank you iprimap for your material: I will take time to go through it. I have already some preliminary comments on the advanced fuel cycle designs. These are technologies that we know would work in principle, but it will take some time before they are demonstrated feasible and economical on an industrial scale. The way the nuclear spent fuel is treated today in e.g. the USA, Sweden and Finland is archaic, but it has the merit to demonstrate that practical solutions really exist, even with today's technologies.

Philipum · Veteran Member

There's something I don't understand (in INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR National Policy Analysis) under "Safety":

Metal is a good heat conductor, while oxide is a poor one. That means the interiors of the metal rods stay much cooler, which means that there is far less heat stored in an operating ALMR, which means that if there were a loss of coolant flow there would be much less heat present to raise the temperature of the fuel, which means that the consequences of a hypothetical accident would be much less severe. Briefly, there,s a phenomenon called the "resonance Doppler effect," which causes the reactivity to change somewhat with temperature. Because in an ALMR the temperature does not change much in a hypothetical accident, the reactor is much more stable.

I would believe the opposite. As I understand it, the resonance Doppler effect is very desirable for safety in water-moderated reactors: when the temperature increases, the probability for neutron capture through the resonances in U-238 increases, and thus the number of neutrons decreases, and the power decreases. In that way the reactor auto-regulates. I expect it to be a problem if this effect is suppressed in fast reactors with metallic fuels.

Another safety concern which is not mentioned at all is the effective fraction of delayed neutrons. After the nuclear fuel is used and reused by recycling, it will eventually reach an equilibrium, with necessarily a relatively large fraction of plutonium, neptunium, americium, and curium inside the fuel. However, the transuranics have usually a smaller effective fraction of delayed neutrons than uranium: it would make the reactor more difficult to control than current reactors.

Or are these problems irrelevant or solved somehow (besides the possibility of sub-critical reactors)?