Energy Independence,

the fast breeder reactor solution

A breeder reactor creates fissile isotopes from non-fissile ones. A project funded by the US Government, the Integral Fast Reactor, demonstrated in 1986 that it could be done with greater safety than any existing commercial reactor.
In an act of unconscionable ignorance, the project was closed down in 1994.

Facts:

1. Nuclear power produced just under 20% of the electricity consumed in the USA in the years 2004..2007.

   For each of those years, uranium oxide needed for US nuclear reactors is reported at close to 50 million pounds a year.

   That's 25 thousand tons a year. Trifling compared with the thousands of millions of tons of coal burned, and the even larger quantity of carbon dioxide (more than three times as much as the carbon) produced by it. In fact, every million tons of coal burned produced several tons of uranium and thorium oxide, both slightly radioactive, in the ash.

2. Most of the uranium loaded into nuclear reactors presently running is thrown away in the "nuclear waste." Perhaps 4% of the uranium is actually consumed.
3. The USA has a ban on reprocessing. The ban is a mistake, it makes disposal of plutonium impossible.
4. The price charged to utilities for reactor grade enriched uranium does not include the costs of the miserably inefficient disposal methods decreed by various government restrictions. This accounts for the idea that uranium and plutonium recovered by reprocessing isn't economic.

5. Uranium is more abundant than gold, silver or mercury, about the same as tin and slightly less abundant than cobalt, lead or molybdenum.

6. The proportion of ²³⁵U in natural uranium is very close to 0.7%. So 140 tons of refined uranium contain one ton of ²³⁵U
7. ²³⁵U, ²³³U, and ²³⁹Pu are fissile isotopes. We can regard these as a fairly scarce resource.
   The first is difficult to isolate. The other two are almost non-existent on the present Earth, but they can easily be synthesized in a reactor from the more common ²³²Th and ²³⁸U.
   Fissile isotopes are therefore a renewable energy resource, and more sustainable than forests in the face of profligate human energy demands.
8. The USA had 280 thousand tons of stocks of depleted uranium in 1999.
   In 2007, it was 492 million kilograms, which is a bit more than 500 thousand US tons. Obviously, if we could burn all of that up to make energy, and not throw away so much uranium as "nuclear waste", the energy problem is solved.
9. The USA funded the development, at Argonne National Labs, of the most advanced breeder reactor in the world, but cancelled it in 1994. The IFR was probably superior to anything any other country has produced yet.
10. There was, a few years ago, an account of the IFR project at the Argonne lab's website. I cannot find it any more. There was one at Berkeley U. also, and you have to dig into their archives now to find it. I am suspicious enough to wonder why.
11. The funding for bin Laden, and probably most Islamic terrorist groups, comes from petroleum revenues. Well, perhaps it's not a fact, but it seems very probable.

Assumptions:

1. The 50 million pounds was natural uranium oxide, unenriched. That's 25,000 tons.

2. Let Q be the average mass of enriched uranium consumed annually for electricity production, including what accumulates as "waste".

3. Let e be the proportion of ²³⁵U in the total uranium of the fuel rods. I think it's about 5%, so the enrichment factor e for fuel grade uranium is e/0.7, which is near enough 7.

4. It follows that for every ton of reactor uranium, there are at least six tons of depleted uranium, I.e. seven tons were mined and refined to metal. That's if you extracted all of the fissile isotope from the depleted portion. But in fact, if depleted uranium is 0.2% ²³⁵U, it takes ten tons of uranium to make one of fuel grade, because only 0.5% of the 0.7% is transferred. According to the French site
   http://www.francenuc.org/en_sources/sources_unat_e.htm
   depleted uranium was 0.25% ²³⁵U for at least one instance.
   So Q is probably about 5 million pounds (or less), i.e. about 2,500 tons.

5. Let f be the proportion of fissile isotope ²³⁵U turned into fission products, actually producing energy. The uranium actually consumed is therefore Q.e.f
   (The quantity consumed in the reactors) times
   (the enrichment figure) times
   (the proportion of ²³⁵ U consumed)

6. Suppose f is as high as 4/5. Then 20% of the USA's annual electricity consumption required about 4/5 times 1/20 of Q. That's one twenty-fifth, 4%, of Q. So the actual amount of uranium consumed, and the mass of the fission products, amounts to only one hundred tons a year.

7. This process throws away 96% of the fuel rods, and the other 9/10 of the uranium mined.

Now consider a Fast Breeder Reactor, totally self contained except for importing its first fuel load, and perhaps a supplement of natural or depleted uranium. Once every 50 years it would export its tired old fission products for disposal.

Calculation Based on these Assumptions

1. Suppose we used the IFR to convert progressively all of the ²³⁸ U to fissile fuel, recycle and fission it.

2. Annually, depleted uranium = 9/10 of 25,000 tons = 22,500 tons

   • Spent reactor uranium = 96% of 2,500 tons = 2,400 tons

   • Total uranium actually consumed for 20% of our annual electrical demand = 100 tons.

   • total uranium annually mined but not used = 24,900 tons. That's enough to supply ALL of our electrical demand for nearly 50 years.

3. Suppose we had a number of reactors that converted just enough of the non-fissile uranium into fissile plutonium, and didn't make it available outside of the reactor.

4. Such a reactor would produce just enough plutonium in one fuel cycle (perhaps a couple of years) to let each fuel rod be reprocessed and replenished with a supplementary charge of depleted or recycled reactor uranium, and continue for another cycle.

5. In March 1995, approximately 200 Metric Tonnes of U.S.-origin weapons-usable fissile materials were declared surplus to U.S. defense needs.

6. With the backlog of "waste" from 10 years, and the stocks of depleted uranium from reactor fuel and nuclear weapons manufacture, and of bomb grade enriched uranium and plutonium already declared surplus to our "defense needs", we could supply enough reactors to power the entire USA, hydrogen economy included, for at least a century, without either mining or enriching any uranium. At the same time, we'd reduce the waste storage problem per gigawatt-year by a factor of 20 in volume, and about a thousand in duration.

The assumptions above as to quantities are probably pessimistic. The amount of depleted uranium available is probably twice what I assume. The amount of plutonium that is unnecessarily still devoted to our monstrous commitment to 'defend' ourselves with nuclear weapons is presumably a military secret.

Finally, if Q= 5 million pounds per year, that's 2.5 thousand tons a year. With the approximate assumptions above, the current annual production of actual fission product waste is one hundred tons a year, and would be five hundred if all of our electricity supply were fast nuclear. Various estimates of our total energy consumption are about six times our electrical energy consumption, which would require sequestering 3,000 tons of fission product waste annually, a decidedly easier job than sequestering thousands of millions of tons of carbon dioxide gas.

Caveats

1. You can expect fierce opposition to a serious attempt at putting coal and petroleum out of business. There hasn't been much opposition to solar, wind, and biofuels from them, other than scoffing, because they know that such technologies are no threat!
2. There's no incentive here for "private" enterprise. The US government has already taken on the liability for disposing of the "waste", including the real waste, so the whole program should be nationalized.
   It is, after all, the Moral Equivalent of War.
3. To meet the actual peak demand, we'd need enough reactors that some would contribute only part of their capacity to the grid.
4. Nukes are happiest at full load, so the obvious solution is to make hydrogen electrolytically with the capacity not being employed for the actual electric demand.
5. Another option is to build hydroelectric pumped storage projects to meet peak demand with pumped water.
   Pumping water uphill is incidentally the only way to make use of energy from wind turbines, but you still have the visual pollution, and the dead bat and bird bodies. 600-foot high wind turbines and their bird slaughter will be less noticeable offshore, until you find that the bald eagle, pelican, osprey, and albatross populations are depleted.