“We must move toward reliance on clean, safe, renewable forms of energy production that do not provide the materials for weapons of mass destruction and do not poison the environment for thousands of centuries.”
The Integral Fast Reactor meets those criteria. It produces no more radiation than a standard nuclear reactor–3%-8% of background–which is completely harmless, plus inert hot water, and no chemical pollution. It is safe, designed and tested to be meltdown-proof using the same test that resulted in the Chernobyl accident, except that the IFR shut off automatically. It is renewable in that it is a breeder reactor. However, unlike most breeders, it does not require offsite reprocessing and doesn’t produce fissile material usable or potentially usable in nuclear weapons. At the end of the fuel cycle, it produces only short-life fission products useful in batteries. An efficient fuel cycle using IFRs, the Canadian CANDU slow-breeder, and today’s light-water reactors could look something like this:
-Light-water nuclear waste into IFR
-IFR uses remaining uranium, plutonium, and transuranics from light-water reactor waste, producing 5-8 millirem and hot water
-Onsite dry reprocessing removes short-life fission products (15%-20% of total mass), leaving low-enriched, slightly-enriched, or natural-ratio MOX, and producing no chemical pollution. Radiation levels are insignificant, especially compared to the consequences of not using such a system.
-Short-life fission products processed into batteries
-Reprocessed fuel recast into fresh fuel and reused. The IFR does not require precise geometry.
-Thorium fuel into CANDUs or other slow breeders, producing uranium-233
-CANDU fuel recast into IFR fuel
-Go back to the beginning
Already nonexistent transportation problems could be made completely irrelevant by siting a CANDU, light-water reactor, and one or two IFRs on one site. Slightly radioactive fresh nuclear fuel would be transported in, along with battery cases, and hot water, electricity, and batteries would come out.
Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Environment, Fuel Cycle, Proliferation, Radiation, Safety, Transportation, Waste
Posted on November 30, 2005 by Stewart Peterson |
