It’s Time to Give Up on Breeder Reactors

Abstract

reactor that could produce more plutonium than it consumed (dubbed a "breeder reactor") was first raised during World War II by scientists in the U.S. atomic bomb program. They were concerned that uranium 235, the rare chainreacting isotope that fuels today's nuclear reactors, was insufficiently abundant on Earth to support a large-scale deployment of nuclear power. Over the next 20 years, Britain, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the Soviet Union followed the United States in establishing national plutonium breeder reactor programs. (Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands joined the French and German programs as partners.) In all of these programs, the main driver was the hope of solving the long-term energy-supply problem by deploying large numbers of nuclear power reactors. In "Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status," a new report by the International Panel on Fissile Materials, experiences with fast breeder reactors in six countries are examined. 1 These studies make clear that the assumptions driving the pursuit of breeder reactors for the past six decades have proven to be wrong. False assumptions. The rationale for pursuing breeder reactors was based on the following key assumptions (sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit): (1) Uranium is scarce, and high-grade deposits would quickly become depleted if light water nuclear reactors, which do not breed more fuel than they consume, were deployed on a large scale; (2) breeder reactors would quickly become economically competitive with light water reactors (the dominant reactor

Can North America’s advanced nuclear reactor companies help save the planet?

“…The neutrons propagating the chain reaction remain energetic, or fast. Fast reactors are more flexible in the type of fuel they can consume and can, for example, use uranium-238 as fuel, which is 140 times more abundant than uranium-235 (Cochran et al 2010). 4.…”

“…5 Expert reviews, though, have also found technical problems with fast reactors, in particular sodium leaks, which, while not deadly, have made past reactors prone to shutdowns, which increases the cost of electricity produced (Pillai and Ramana 2014). And though liquid sodium has some safety advantages as a coolant, it also reacts violently with water and burns if exposed to air; liquid-sodium-cooled fast reactors have been shut down for long periods by sodium fires (Cochran et al 2010). The problems could get even more serious.…”

“…Whether such an explosive core disassembly could release enough energy to rupture a reactor containment and cause a Chernobyl-scale release of radioactivity into the environment is a major concern and subject of debate. (Cochran et al 2010) In their paper, they noted that though about $100 billion had been spent globally on breeder reactor research and development and demonstration projects, no one had yet produced a reactor that was economically competitive with a conventional light-water reactor. Japan is the most recent country to show signs of throwing in the towel: In October 2016, it announced that in 2020, it would start decommissioning its Monju fast reactor, which had a troubled history of accidents and cover-ups.…”

Nuclear power as a climate mitigation strategy – technology and proliferation risk

“…The FBR, however, needs fuel with a much higher concentration of fissile material; 14% is assumed in the MIT study (2011). As an alternative to plutonium, we assume that uranium enriched to 20% (highly enriched uranium [HEU]) could be used to operate these reactors based on Cochran et al (2010). This, however, has been tested on a very limited scale.…”

“…The breeder reactor concept has generally only been tested on a limited scale, but breeding ratios above unity, the production of a greater amount of fissile material than consumed, have been achieved in many countries and reactor types (Cochran, et al 2010). In our model, due to the lack of extensive data related to FBR fuel economy, we assume a breeding ratio of 1 and base our costs on sodium cooled reactors.…”