BraveNewClimate

Guest Post by Tom Blees. Tom Blees is the author of Prescription for the Planet – The Painless Remedy for Our Energy & Environmental Crises. Tom is also the president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives and a board member of the UN-affiliated World Energy Forum [wef21.org]. Many of the goals of SCGI, and the methods to achieve them, are elucidated in the pages of Blees’s book. He is a member of the selection committee for the Global Energy Prize, considered Russia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize for energy research. His work has generated considerable interest among scientists and political figures around the world. Tom has been a consultant and advisor on energy technologies on the local, state, national, and international levels.

Roads Not Taken

Those who grew up during the years of the Cold War will probably never forget the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, a time when two superpowers came perilously close to unleashing all-out nuclear war. Several of John Kennedy’s generals were purportedly advising an attack at least on Cuba, if not on Russia itself. Kruschev was likely receiving similarly bellicose advice from some of his advisors. The fact that these two men took the decision to stand down brought the world back from the precipice.

But this harrowing incident was certainly not the only time that those two nations came close to initiating nuclear Armageddon. Yuri Andropov was also reportedly urged at one point by his military advisors to attack the United States, but refused to listen to them. And then there have been close calls caused by malfunctioning early warning systems, sometimes in the USA, sometimes on the other side. The average citizen was blissfully unaware of these near misses, and will likely never know about them except from hearsay or historical reporting many years after the fact.

But there is another nuclear road that was not taken. Ironically, the failure to take that road can lead to global catastrophe for both humankind and many of the species with whom we share this planet. This time the problem is not nuclear war but the threat of climate change, and nuclear power can be the solution.

This article is being written on the one-year anniversary of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated communities in northeast Japan in March of 2011. Though nearly 16,000 people were killed in the tsunami and over a million buildings were destroyed or damaged, if one were to ask nearly anyone outside Japan about the Tōhoku earthquake it would likely elicit no recognition. But mention Fukushima and immediately people know which earthquake you’re talking about. For the press coverage of the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant dwarfed the attention paid to the devastation wrought elsewhere by the tsunami.

As a result of this phenomenon, Japan has taken nearly every one of its 54 nuclear power plants offline amid pressure to abandon nuclear power entirely. Since those power plants were supplying about 30% of Japan’s electricity, this has dramatically increased the country’s carbon emissions as it turned to fossil fuel imports to keep the lights on and the factories running. It has also created Japan’s first trade deficit in over thirty years, with an estimated cost of about $100 million per day for additional energy imports.

But the impact of the Fukushima accident reached far beyond Japan (Aside: can it truly be termed a “disaster” or “catastrophe” when there was not a single instance of radiation-induced injury to the public? Even among emergency workers at the plant there were only a few who are expected to have any radiation-induced health risks. One worker died, but it was from a heart attack and had nothing to do with radiation exposure.) Shortly before the accident, Germany had been arguing over whether to decommission their perfectly serviceable nuclear power plants in deference to political pressures from the Greens. Fukushima tipped the scales, consigning Germany to a future of more coal and gas burning and almost certainly more (ironically, often nuclear-generated) electricity from its neighbors. Some other European nations have likewise reacted to Fukushima by foreclosing the option of building any new nuclear power plants.

But the nuclear road not taken that was alluded to above was a far more consequential decision, and one that might without exaggeration be termed a disaster. Like many choices of great import, the decision to abandon a new type of nuclear power system was taken by a few people in key positions. History will not likely judge them kindly, though as in so many cases those who exercised the most influence remain for the most part nameless, unknown to those who were outside the process.

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This is the fourth and final part of the series of extracts from the book Plentiful Energy — The story of the Integral Fast Reactor by Chuck Till and Yoon Chang.

Reproduced with permission of the authors, these sections describe and justify some of the key design choices that went into the making the IFR a different — and highly successful — approach to fast neutron reactor technology and its associated fuel recycling.

These excerpts not only provide a fascinating insight into a truly sustainable form nuclear power; they also provide excellent reference material for refuting many of the spurious claims on the internet about IFR by people who don’t understand (or choose to wilfully misrepresent) this critically important technology.

For reference, here are the previous entries:

Part 1 (metal fuels and plutonium).

Part 2 (coolant choice and reactor configuration).

Part 3 (lessons learned from fast reactor capital costs).

This last extract considers the cost differences and similarities between the next-generation IFR and the current generation of thermal reactors (using a comparison with a generic LWR). Note that this section does not include the costs of fuel (mining, enrichment, fabrication, recycling, and so on). That is, however covered later in the book:, with full fuel-cycle cost estimate being: LWR = 0.55 c/kWh at current uranium cost (Table 13-4) and IFR 0.44 c/kWh — or $35 million/GWyr (Table 13-9).

This section is drawn from pages 277-280 of Plentiful Energy. To buy the book ($18 US) and get the full story, go to Amazon or CreateSpace. (Note that the images below do not come from the book).

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Generic cost comparison between the IFR and LWR (light water reactor) 

Comparison of fast reactor capital cost with the capital cost of commercial LWRs is not straightforward either. First, the part that should be straightforward, that of identifying the capital cost of commercial reactors, isn’t straightforward at all. U.S. LWRs were built twenty or more years ago, under wildly varying construction environments, some prior to the anti-nuclear campaigns of cost increases, some during the height of them, and a few after. Comparisons between PWR, BWR, heavy water reactors, and gas-cooled reactors are not straightforward either, even though, with the water reactor types, we are dealing with actual experience. Comparison with yet-to-be-designed fast reactors involves more uncertainty. However, the details of the makeup of capital costs do provide useful insight.

The Department of Energy’s Energy Economics Data Base (EEDB) defines a code of accounts for estimating and categorizing such cost components. [6] For illustrative purposes, a reference PWR capital cost breakdown developed for the EEDB is presented in Table 13-2. [7] Since the database was generated in the 1980s, the absolute dollar amounts have little relevance to today, so the cost breakdown is expressed in terms of percentage of the total direct costs.

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This is the third of a four-part series of extracts from the book Plentiful Energy — The story of the Integral Fast Reactor by Chuck Till and Yoon Chang.

Reproduced with permission of the authors, these sections describe and justify some of the key design choices that went into the making the IFR a different — and highly successful — approach to fast neutron reactor technology and its associated fuel recycling.

These excerpts not only provide a fascinating insight into a truly sustainable form nuclear power; they also provide excellent reference material for refuting many of the spurious claims on the internet about IFR by people who don’t understand (or choose to wilfully misrepresent) this critically important technology.

Click here for part 1 (metal fuels and plutonium).

Click here for part 2 (coolant choice and reactor configuration).

The third extract looks at the history of costs for commercial fast reactors to date (e.g., Superphenix in France). What can this tell us about the possible future costs of the IFR? (the final part will do a comparison with light water reactors). This section is drawn from pages 274-277 of Plentiful Energy. To buy the book ($18 US) and get the full story, go to Amazon or CreateSpace. (Note that the images below do not come from the book).

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Fast Reactor Capital Cost: What can be learned from fast reactor construction experience to date?

A model of the Superphenix nuclear power station, a now closed fast breeder reactor. While it was open, it was highly controversial and once on the receiving end of a eco-terrorist rocket attack.

Some notion of likely cost competitiveness can be gained from past fast reactor construction experience, but the information available is limited. It can be said that the capital costs per MWe of the early fast reactors built around the world were much higher than those of LWRs. But the comparisons are not by any means direct and unambiguous. In comparison to the LWR, every difference between the two adds a cost increment to the fast reactor. With one significant exception, they were much smaller in size and electrical capacity than the LWRs built for commercial electricity generation. There were only a few of them. They were built as demonstration plants, by governments underwriting fast reactor development. There was basically one demonstration per country, with no follow-on to take advantage of the experience and lessons learned. Nor were they scaled up and replicated. The LWR had long since passed the stage where first-of-a-kind costs were involved, and had the advantage of economies of scale as well. Further, their purpose was commercial, with the attendant incentive to keep costs down. None of this has applied to fast reactors built to the present time.

Experience with thermal reactor types, as well as other large-scale construction, has shown that capital cost reduction follows naturally through a series of demonstration plants of increasing size once feasibility is proven. This has been true in every country, with exceptions only in the periods when construction undergoes lengthy delays due to organized anti-nuclear legal challenges. But this phased approach of multiple demonstration plants is no longer likely to be affordable, and in any case, with the experience worldwide now, it is probably unnecessary for a fast reactor plant today. Estimating the “settled down” capital cost potential is not an easy task without such experience. Nevertheless, as the economic competitiveness of the fast reactor is taken to be a prerequisite to commercial deployment, we do need to understand the capital cost potential of the fast reactor and what factors influence it.
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This is the second of a four-part series of extracts from the book Plentiful Energy — The story of the Integral Fast Reactor by Chuck Till and Yoon Chang.

Reproduced with permission of the authors, these sections describe and justify some of the key design choices that went into the making the IFR a different — and highly successful — approach to fast neutron reactor technology and its associated fuel recycling.

These excerpts not only provide a fascinating insight into a truly sustainable form nuclear power; they also provide excellent reference material for refuting many of the spurious claims on the internet about IFR by people who don’t understand (or choose to wilfully misrepresent) this critically important technology. Click here for part 1 (metal fuels and plutonium).

The second extract, on coolant choice and reactor configuration, comes from pages 108-111 of Plentiful Energy. To buy the book ($18 US) and get the full story, go to Amazon or CreateSpace. (Note that the images below do not come from the book).

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The Coolant Choice

Liquid sodium was the choice of coolant from the beginnings of fast reactor development, because the neutron energies must remain high for good breeding and sodium doesn’t slow the neutrons significantly. (Water does, and so nullifies breeding.) But sodium has other highly desirable properties too—it transfers heat easily and removes heat from the fuel quickly; it has a high heat capacity which allows it to absorb significant heat without excessive temperature rise; its boiling point is far too high for it to boil at operating temperatures, and importantly, even to boil at temperatures well above operating; and finally, although a solid at room temperature, it has a low enough melting point to stay liquid at temperatures not too far above that. In addition, there is no chemical reaction at all between the sodium and the structural materials making up the core (such as steel and zirconium). It is chemically stable, stable at high temperatures, stable under irradiation, cheap, and commonly available.

Further, as a metal, sodium does not react at all with metal fuel either, so there is no fuel/coolant interaction as there is for oxide fuel exposed to sodium. In oxide fuel, if the cladding develops a breach such reactions can form reaction products which are larger in volume than the original oxide. They can continue to open the breach, expel reacted product, and could possibly block the coolant channel and lead to further problems. Metal fuel eliminates this concern.

For ease of reactor operation, sodium coolant has one supreme advantage. Liquid at room pressures, it allows the reactor to operate at atmospheric pressure. This has many advantages. Water as a coolant needs very high pressures to keep it liquid at operating temperatures. A thousand- to two-thousand-psi pressure must be maintained, depending on the reactor design. Thick-walled reactor vessels are needed to contain the reactor core with coolant at these pressures.

The diameter of the vessel must be kept as small as possible, as the wall thickness necessary increases directly with diameter. With the room-pressure operation of sodium coolant, the reactor vessel, or reactor tank as it is called, can be any diameter at all; there is no pressure to contain. And leaks of sodium, if they happen, have no pressure behind them, they drip out into the atmosphere, where generally they are noticed as a wisp of smoke. The important thing is that there is no explosive flashing to steam as there is when water at high pressure and temperature finds a leakage path.

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Over the next month or two, I will publish four extracts from the book Plentiful Energy — The story of the Integral Fast Reactor by Chuck Till and Yoon Chang.

Reproduced with permission of the authors, these sections describe and justify some of the key design choices that went into the making the IFR a different — and highly successful — approach to fast neutron reactor technology and its associated fuel recycling.

These excerpts not only provide a fascinating insight into a truly sustainable form nuclear power; they also provide excellent reference material for refuting many of the spurious claims on the internet about IFR by people who don’t understand (or choose to wilfully misrepresent) this critically important technology.

The first extract, on Fuel Choice, comes from pages 104-108 of Plentiful Energy. To buy the book ($18 US) and get the full story, go to Amazon or CreateSpace.

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Metal Fuel

The IFR metal alloy fuel was the single most important development decision. More flows from this than from any other of the choices. It was a controversial choice, as metal fuel had been discarded worldwide in the early sixties and forgotten. Long irradiation times in the reactor are essential, particularly if reprocessing of the fuel is expensive, yet the metal fuel of the 1960s would not withstand any more than moderate irradiation. Ceramic fuel, on the other hand, would. Oxide, a ceramic fuel developed for commercial water-cooled reactors, had been adopted for breeder reactors in every breeder program in the world. It is fully developed and it remains today the de facto reference fuel type for fast reactors elsewhere in the world. It is known. Its advantages and disadvantages in a sodium-cooled fast reactor are well established. Why then was metallic fuel the choice for the IFR?

The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) system

In reactor operation, reactor safety, fuel recycling, and waste product—indeed, in every important element of a complete fast reactor system—it seemed to us that metallic fuel allowed tangible improvement. Such improvements would lead to cost reduction and to improved economics. Apprehension that the fast reactor and its associated fuel cycle would not be economic had always clouded fast reactor development. Sharp improvements in the economics might be possible if a metal fuel could be made to behave under the temperature and radiation conditions in a fast reactor. Not just any metal fuel, but one that contained the amounts of plutonium needed for reactor operation on recycled fuel. Discoveries at Argonne suggested it might be possible.

Metal fuel allows the highest breeding of any possible fuel. High breeding means fuel supplies can be expanded easily, maintained at a constant level, or decreased at will. Metal fuel and liquid sodium, the coolant, also a metal, do not react at all. Breaches or holes in the fuel cladding, important in oxide, don’t matter greatly with metal fuel; operation can in fact continue with impunity. The mechanisms for fuel cladding failure were now understood too, and very long irradiations had become possible. Heat transfers easily too. Very little heat is stored in the fuel. (Stored heat exacerbates accidents.) Metal couldn’t be easier to fabricate: it’s simple to cast and it’s cheap. The care that must be taken and the many steps needed in oxide fuel fabrication are replaced by a very few simple steps, all amenable to robotic equipment. And spent metal fuel can be processed with much cheaper techniques. Finally, the product fuel remains highly radioactive, a poor choice for weapons in any case, and dangerous to handle except remotely.

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Below is the foreword I wrote, on invitation of Chuck Till and Yoon Chang, for the book “Plentiful Energy” (I included a shorter version in my review of the book on Amazon).

In this short essay, I draw an analogy between the IFR and the Wright brothers’ 1903 ‘ ‘Flyer’. The idea is that successful technology — especially a revolutionary design — is built on the back of many learning-by-doing failures. Yet, once the initial problems have been solved, the remaining pathway for the technology’s development is one of incremental (but often rapid) evolutionary improvements.

I suspect that with just a few more years of serious investment in RD&D, the LFTR ‘Flyer’ could also launch. The molten-salt thorium reactor concept is extremely appealing, and the ORNL prototype, which ran in the mid- to late-1960s, showed real promise. In my view the Th232-U233 fuel cycle would make an excellent complement to the U238-Pu239 fuel cycle offered by the IFR, and both reactor types hold the promise of safe and inexhaustible energy.

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Foreword to: Plentiful Energy – The book that tells the story of the Integral Fast Reactor

On a breezy December day in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, N.C., a great leap forward in the history of technology was achieved. The Wright brothers had at last overcome the troubling problems of ‘inherent instability’ and ‘wing warping’ to achieve the first powered and controlled heavier-than-air flight in human history. The Flyer was not complicated by today’s standards – little more than a flimsy glider – yet its success proved to be a landmark achievement that led to the exponential surge of innovation, development and deployment in military and commercial aviation over the 20^th century and beyond.

Nonetheless, the Flyer did not suddenly and miraculously assemble from the theoretical or speculative genius of Orville and Wilbur Wright. Quite the contrary – it was built on the back of many decades of physical, engineering and even biological science, hard-won experience with balloons, gliders and models, plenty of real-world trial-and-error, and a lot of blind alleys. Bear in mind that every single serious attempt at powered flight prior to 1903 had failed. Getting it right was tough!

Yet just over a decade after the triumphant 1903 demonstration, fighter aces were circling high above the battlefields of Europe in superbly maneuverable aerial machines, and in another decade, passengers from many nations were making long-haul international journeys in days, rather than months.

What has this got to do with the topic of advanced nuclear power systems, I hear you say? Plenty. The subtitle of Till and Chang’s book “Plentiful Energy” is “The complex history of a simple reactor technology, with emphasis on its scientific bases for non-specialists”. The key here is that, akin to powered flight, the technology for fully and safely recycling nuclear fuel turns out to be rather simple and elegant, in hindsight, but it was hard to establish this fact – hence the complex history. Like with aviation, there have been many prototype ‘fast reactors’ of various flavors, and all have had problems.

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With regards to Generation IV nuclear fission technology, most of the attention on BNC has been on the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), for reasons explained in this post, which I quote:

The focus of this series (IFR FaD) is aimed squarely at the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) rather than other Gen IV designs, such as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) or Advanced High Temperature Reactor (AHTR). The reason for this is two fold: (i) I’m more familiar with the IFR technology (and I am in regular email exchange with the world experts on this technology, via SCGI and other links), and (ii) LFTR has a strong and welcoming advocacy group elsewhere, and I’d encourage people to go there to ask more questions about that technology … However, I should make it quite clear that I’m not “for IFR and against LFTR” — both 4th generation nuclear designs hold great appeal to me, and I will sometimes consider IFR vs LFTR comparisons in the IFR FaD series, as a point of comparison or contrast.

I think we need to be pursuing the final stages of research, development and commercial-scale deployment of all of these next-generation fission technologies, since it would require such a trivial input compared to the huge investment that will be required anyway in energy infrastructure over the next few decades (>$26 trillion globally by 2030). However, it is nevertheless useful to consider the relative merits of the individual technologies, and I hope to look at this from a number of angles in blog posts during 2012.

For some initial ideas and to initiate discussion, below I reproduce an email exchange on this matter, including aspects of commercial readiness,  that was recently posted on the Science Council for Global Initiatives website. The conversation is from three highly experienced nuclear physicists/engineers, Dr George Stanford, Dr Dan Meneley, and Prof. Per Peterson. I’m sure this will stir some debate! (And, as I said, I will have more to post on this in the new year).

I have also added a few hyperlinks to clarify terms that may be unfamiliar to the general reader; please note that the links and pictures were added by me (Barry Brook), not the original correspondents.

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G. Stanford wrote (11-29-10):

We’ll see what others on this list have to say, but in my opinion, Carlsen’s enthusiasm for thorium is premature, to say the least.  The ONLY significant advantage a thorium cycle would have over fast reactors with metallic fuel (IFR/PRISM) is its lower requirement for start up fissile.  That advantage is offset by the fact that the thorium reactor is at a stage of development roughly equivalent to where the IFR was in 1975 — a promising idea with a lot of R&D needed to before it’s ready for a commercial demonstration — which puts its deployment about 20 years behind what could be the IFR’s schedule.  The thorium community has not yet even agreed on what will be the optimum thorium technology to pursue.

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Back in 2001, Dr George Stanford conducted an interview with the National Policy Analysis Center on the IFR. Nearly ten years later, in September 2010, George has updated this material, which is pitched squarely a layman audience. I post the updated version below (7-page printable PDF version here), since it fits like a glove with the IFR Facts & Discussion series that I am gradually developing. It’s probably the single best introduction to the IFR for the totally uninitiated — but there’s also real value here for the nuclear veteran, so everyone, read on!

Q&A on Integral Fast Reactors – safe, abundant, non-polluting power

By Dr George S. Stanford. George is is a nuclear reactor physicist, part of the team that developed the Integral Fast Reactor. He is now retired from Argonne National

Laboratory after a career of experimental work pertaining to power-reactor safety. He is the co-author of Nuclear Shadowboxing: Contemporary Threats from Cold War Weaponry.

What is the IFR?

IFR stands for Integral Fast Reactor. It was a power-reactor development program, built around a revolutionary concept for generating nuclear power—not only a new type of reactor, but an entire new nuclear fuel cycle. The reactor part of that fuel cycle was called the ALMR—Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor. In what many see as an ill-conceived move, proof-of-concept research on the IFR/ALMR was discontinued by the U.S. government in 1994, only three years before completion.

You might also see references to the AFR, which stands for “Advanced Fast Reactor.” It’s a concept very similar to the IFR, with some improvements thrown in. GE-Hitachi has the plans for a commercial version they call PRISM.

How was the IFR idea different from the concepts underlying traditional nuclear-power fuel cycles?

All of those fuel cycles were derived from technologies developed to meet special military needs: naval propulsion, uranium enrichment, weapons-plutonium production, and plutonium separation. Waste disposal has been approached as “someone else’s problem.” The IFR concept is directed strictly to meeting the needs of civilian power generation. It is an integrated, weapons-incompatible, proliferation-resistant cycle that is “closed”—it encompasses the entire fuel cycle, including fuel production and fabrication, power generation, reprocessing and waste management.

Do we need a new kind of reactor? What’s wrong with what we have now?

IFRs could reduce or eliminate significant difficulties that beset thermal-reactor fuel cycles—problems or concerns with:

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There are many topics in the IFR FaD series that I want to develop in sequence — and in some detail. But for the moment, here’s a little diversion. People often complain that sodium-cooled fast reactors are about as easy to control as wild stallions — at least compared to the docile mares that are water-moderated thermal reactors. The experience on the EBR-II (which I’ll describe further in future posts) certainly belies this assertion, but for now, I want to go to another source.

Here are comments from Joël Sarge Guidez, written in 2002, who Chairman of International Group Of Research Reactors (IGORR), Director of Phénix fast breeder reactor (a 233 MWe power plant which operated in France for more than 30 years, with an availability factor of 78 % in 2004, 85% in 2005 and 78% in 2006), and President of the club of French Research Reactors:

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A reactor that’s easy to live with

Pressurised water reactor specialists are always surprised how easy it is to run a fast reactor: no pressure, no neutron poisons like boron, no xenon effect, no compensatory movements of the rods, etc. Simply, when one raises the rods, there is divergence and the power increases. Regulating the level of the rods stabilises the reactor at the desired power. The very strong thermal inertia of the whole unit allows plenty of time for the corresponding temperature changes. If one does nothing, the power will gradually decrease as the fuel ages, and from time to time one will have to raise the rods again to maintain constant power. It all reminds one of a good honest cart-horse rather than a highly-strung race horse.

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So far in the IFR Facts and Discussion series, I’ve discussed Gen III and Gen IV fuel cycles and energy densities. In later IFR FaD posts, I aim to explore some possible scenarios for future deployment of the IFR and related technologies. But before I can do this, I need to explain (and justify!), some key underlying concepts — fissile inventory (what Alex Goodwin cleverly called the nuclear ‘spark plug’  in this post on the LFTR), breeding rates, and available fissile and fertile stockpiles. But before I even do that, I should give you the ‘vision thing’.

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After allowing for the benefits from improved energy efficiency, I estimate the world needs to generate roughly 10 terawatts (10,000 gigawatts) of electricity as “clean energy” worldwide by 2050 – a five-fold increase on the energy used today. The world’s current nuclear power capacity, amounting to 380 gigawatts of electricity, has been built up over 50 years. The goal of 10 TWe by 2050 would require a rate of building some 30 times faster. Is that even remotely possible?

To have any realistic chance of achieving this goal — which we must, for the sake of climate change mitigation and peak oil-related energy security — we will need to expand global nuclear power capacity as rapidly as possible over the next 20 years. The most feasible way to do this is by constructing a fleet of generation III+ reactors, such as the AP-1000.

Integral fast reactors and liquid fluoride thorium reactors have so far operated successfully only as demonstration plants and experimental reactors. Nevertheless, a 500-megawatt (0.5 gigawatt) fast reactor is to become operational in India during 2010. Some commercial “generation IV” units have been operated (such as the Phenix fast reactor in France and the BN-350 and BN-600 in Russia) but only a few are currently being built. This is largely because uranium is still plentiful and cheap. That means there is insufficient incentive to invest in this “leap” technology, despite its advantages. Even so, construction is about to start in Russia and China on three BN-800s, scheduled for completion within five years.

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In a newspaper Op Ed last year, I wrote the following:

Imagine someone handed you a lump of silvery metal the size of a golf ball. They said you might wish to put on some plastic gloves to hold it, although that would not be necessary if you washed your hands afterwards. You look down at the metal resting on your palm. It feels heavy, because it’s very dense. You are then told that this metal golf ball can provide all the energy you will ever use in your life. That includes running your lights, computer, air conditioner, TV, electric car, synthetic jet fuel. Everything. Using 1 kilogram of uranium (or thorium, take your pick). That is what modern nuclear power offers. An incredibly concentrated source of energy, producing a tiny amount of waste.

I’d like to explain this statement here in a little more detail.

In earlier IFR Fad posts, I’ve explained that 1 tonne of depleted uranium (or you can also use mined uranium or used nuclear fuel) has sufficient energy to run a 1,000 megawatt electrical power station for 1 year — if run through a fast spectrum reactor. (I’ve also explained, in more detail, some key differences between the fast reactor and light water reactor fuel cycles). What does this mean in personal terms? Time to crunch some numbers…

The Australian population of 21 million currently consumes about 250,000 GWh of electricity per year. That works out to be 12 MWh per person, or 33 kWh per day. (This is similar to the figure David Mackay worked out for the British). A 1 GWe IFR (integral fast reactor nuclear power plant), running at 90% capacity factor, would produce 7,884 GWh of electricity per year. This would, therefore, be enough to satisfy the current electricity needs of 657,000 Australians. Or, to put it another way, one Aussie would require 1.5 grams of uranium per year. If they lived to be 85 years old and consumed electricity at that rate throughout their life, they’d require 130 g of uranium.

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