Russia's Fast Breeder Reactor BN-800 at Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station Reaches Criticality, "Closed Nuclear Fuel Cycle"

If that's the case, Japan's Monju should be learning from Russians, not from French.

What reads like an official PR piece, from RT (6/27/2014):

Fast reactor starts clean nuclear energy era in Russia

Controlled nuclear fission has been started in Russia’s newest fast breeder reactor in the Urals, heralding a closed nuclear fuel cycle and a future without nuclear waste. Russia is the only country that operates fast neutron reactors industrially.

The next generation BN-800 breeder reactor (880 megawatts) assembled at Russia’s Beloyarskaya nuclear power plant has been put in the so-called critical state on Friday, a week after all necessary nuclear fuel was loaded into the active zone.

The press service of Rosenergoatom, the electric energy generation branch of Russia’s nuclear monopoly, Rosatom, has confirmed to the RIA news agency that nuclear reaction in the BN-800 reactor has been initiated.

“Starting from that moment the reactor started to ‘live’,” RIA said, quoting the source in Rosenergoatom.

This means that controlled nuclear fission in the reactor is self-sustaining and ongoing at a constant speed. Once this most important stage of the start-up work is done, the reactor will be gradually prepared to achieve the desired 880 megawatts output expected to be reached in October, when the reactor will be commissioned for industrial use.

The BN-800 uses liquid metal sodium (Na) as a coolant heat transfer agent. The start of commercial operation of the new reactor is planned for early 2015.

Service life of the BN-800 breeder reactor is expected to be 45 years. Every month it will produce 475 million kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to ensure constant supply to 3.15 million families (considering that the average monthly consumption of a family of three is 150 kilowatt hours).

Beloyarskaya nuclear power plant is situated in Zarechny, some 45 kilometers from the regional center of Yekaterinburg, in the Urals region.

The fast-neutron nuclear reactors use so-called breeder reactor technology that enables the use of a wider range of radioactive elements as fuel, thus considerably enlarging the potential stock of nuclear fuel for electricity generation.

Fast fission reactors close the question of potentially ending uranium nuclear fuel as they could ‘burn’ even nuclear waste.

Besides producing electric energy, it generates more fissile material that can be used as nuclear fuel. This brings us to the closed nuclear fuel cycle, a long-lasting dream of the nuclear energy industry that appears to have come true.

Unlike ‘traditional’ nuclear reactors that use assemblies of uranium-235 as the principal fuel, breeder reactors use specially designed MOX (Mixed Oxide) fuel based on plutonium-239.

Russia’s nuclear monopoly, Rosatom, is finishing a plant in Krasnoyarsk region that will produce MOX fuel for the BN-800 reactor. The production line is assembled in a mine 200 meters underground. This will be operable by the end of 2014, and, starting from 2016, it will be running at full capacity.

Russia has unique experience of operating fast reactors, although the first one, CLEMENTINE, was constructed in the US in 1946 at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Over the decades, the USSR, then Russia, introduced a number of industrial and research fast neutron reactors. One of them, the BN-600 (600 megawatt), since 1980 running at the same Beloyarskaya nuclear power plant, is the only fast neutron reactor in the world that generates electricity on industrial scales. The BN-600 is also the most powerful operable fast neutron reactor in the world.

After decades of research, practically all breeder reactor projects around the world, including in the US, France, Japan and several other countries possessing nuclear energy technologies are now closed down. The only country that currently possesses operating breeder reactor power generation is Russia.

Russian physicists have already elaborated the next step for the revolutionary technology: a BN-1200 breeder reactor that is set to be assembled at the same Beloyarskaya nuclear power plant by 2020.

Overall, eight BN-1200 breeder reactors are expected to be constructed by 2030, which means that Russia is the only nation that is entering a new era of nuclear energy power generation – a truly clean and ecologically secure closed nuclear fuel cycle.

BN-800 on wiki:

The BN-800 reactor will be a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor, under construction now at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station, in Zarechny, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. Designed to generate electrical power of 880 MW in total, the plant will be the final step to the commercial plutonium cycle breeder. It is assumed to start by the end of 2014. By now (2014 June) reactor start-up is in progress.

The plant will be a pool-type reactor, where the reactor, coolant pumps, intermediate heat exchangers and associated piping are all located in a common liquid sodium pool. The design of this plant was started in 1983 and was totally revised after the Chernobyl Disaster in 1987 and for somewhat lower degree in 1993 according to the new safety guidelines. After the second revision the electric output power was increased by 10% to 880 MW.

The reactor core is very much like in size and mechanical properties to the BN-600 reactor core, but differs very much in the fuel composition. While BN-600 uses medium-enriched uranium dioxide, the new plant will burn mixed uranium-plutonium fuel, helping to reduce the weapon-grade plutonium stockpile and provide information about the functioning of the closed uranium-plutonium fuel cycle. It was specially mentioned that the closed cycle will not require plutonium separation and other chemical processing.

The unit employs a three-circuit coolant arrangement; sodium coolant circulates in both the primary and secondary circuits. Water and steam flow in the third circuit. This heat is transferred from the reactor core via several independent circulation loops. Each comprises a primary sodium pump, two intermediate heat exchangers, a secondary sodium pump with an expansion tank located upstream, and an emergency pressure discharge tank. These feed a steam generator, which in turn supplies a condensing turbine that turns the generator.[1]

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International Nuclear Cooperation: Japan's Monju Reactor to Help France's Astrid, UK's Sellafield to Help Japan's TEPCO

As Japan's Prime Minister Abe tours Europe, he is securing the cooperation from Europe's largest nuclear nations that he hopes (I think) will enhance the status of Japan as a major nuclear nation and secure the nuclear future for Japan.

With France, Mr. Abe is offering Japan's Monju fast breeder reactor to conduct tests for the Astrid.

What's the Astrid? From the wiki entry for Generation IV reactors:

The European Sustainable Nuclear Industrial Initiative is funding three Generation IV reactor systems, one of which is a sodium-cooled fast reactor, called ASTRID, Advanced Sodium Technical Reactor for Industrial Demonstration, Areva, CEA and EDF are leading the design with British collaboration.[13][14] Astrid will be rated about 600 MWe and is expected to be built in France, with construction slated to begin in 2017 near to the Phénix reactor.[9]

Mr. Abe is eager to justify Japan's fuel cycle policy, and he wants to make nuclear technology and military weaponry as two of the major exports from Japan for which his government wants to become the top salesman.

From Nikkei Asia (4/30/2014; emphasis is mine):

Japan, France to work together on next-generation reactors

TOKYO -- The Japanese and French governments are working toward an agreement to cooperate in the development of fast reactors, a technology designed to reduce nuclear waste.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Francois Hollande will likely affirm the partnership in Paris on May 5. The agreement would build on an earlier comprehensive partnership formed last June in the field of nuclear energy.

Fast neutron reactors convert spent fuel, which remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years, into materials that emit radiation for just a few hundred years, thus helping to reduce overall nuclear waste.

When put into practical operation, such a reactor would generate electricity and cut down on nuclear waste at the same time.

France is developing the Astrid (Advanced Sodium Technological Reactor for Industrial Demonstration), which it plans to start operating around 2025, but it lacks sufficient reactors to conduct tests. Japan will offer up its Monju prototype fast breeder reactor, which has been idle due to safety concerns, for the tests.

 

Good luck France. Workers, engineers, and scientists at Monju say they are not comfortable working there, unsure about safety.

Then, TEPCO has announced that they will closely collaborate with the UK's Sellafield Ltd. whose expertise in decommissioning a troubled reactor could benefit TEPCO in decommissioning Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

The Windscale accident was an INES Level 5 accident.

From TEPCO's presentation in English (5/2/2014):

Overview

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) considers it would be beneficial to share expertise with overseas operators which have similar decommissioning experience, to decommission Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

TEPCO has agreed with Sellafield Ltd. on exchanging information relating to the management and technology of decommissioning, towards a safer and stable decontamination and decommissioning at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Sellafield Ltd. is a company in UK which has engaged in the decommissioning of a reactor and radioactive waste facilities. On ahead of the formal information exchanging agreement, the two companies signed a cooperation statement, which clarifies the objectives and significance of the agreement.

Content of the Statement (Objectives and significance of the information exchanging agreement)

Overview of the objectives

• Sharing expertise, experience and technology in radioactive waste management, clean up and decommissioning:

• Visits in both directions (Fukushima Daiichi NPS, Sellafield) by representatives from both organisations, sharing of information / reports and similar exercises

• Contributing to achieving the goals for both sites by learning from the similar challenges

• Continuously assessing the effectiveness of cooperation

Overview of the significance

• Proper visibility of the suppliers’ contribution

• Strengthening of the links between our businesses and wider, civil society

• Positive support of the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) etc.

About technologies/knowledge of Sellafield Ltd.

• Sellafield is working with the decommissioning of the Windscale nuclear reactor, which suffered radiation leak (INES-5).

• It deals with the decommissioning and risk-reducing measurements fo the other facilities with high risk of radiation leakage

• It has an experience of dealing contaminated water leak to the ground

It is clear from the comment by Mr. Naohiro Masuda, Chief Decommissioning Officer of a new TEPCO company called Fukushima Daiichi D&D Engineering Company, that this deal was brokered by the Japanese government and the UK government, regardless of whether TEPCO wanted it or not.

Mr. Masuda was the plant manager of Fukushima II (Daini) Nuclear Power Plant, which came very close to core melt after the loss of power after the earthquake on March 11, 2011. What the workers did under his leadership and why the core melt did not happen at Fukushima II would be worth recalling.

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Ideas to Save Bankrupt Detroit: Nuclear Power Plant Factory and Obamacare

Whatever works, some may say.

First, Nuke for Detroit scheme. A little-known company called American Atomics has made an offer to Detroit:

American Atomics would like to extend an offer to the City of Detroit, one that will not only “save Detroit," but that will result in Detroit becoming the fastest growing city on earth in five years.

We are going to build the world’s largest factory and begin mass producing our HOPE 40 power plant on August 1, 2018. This 8 million square foot, 720 million cubic foot highly integrated manufacturing facility will create between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs within 10 years, most of which will be accessible to semi-skilled workers based on company provided job training.

Our headquarters operations will require a separate 600,000 square foot office and laboratory campus where about 2,000 of the world’s most talented nuclear science and engineering, marketing and management, and administrative and finance individuals will work each day. The factory complex will be on a 2,000 to 2,400 acre site. Our HQ campus will be on a 60 to 90 acre site.

Our plan includes developing a companion industrial park complex where our key suppliers will build dedicated facilities for servicing our operations, with this site being another 1,200 to 1,600 acres and expected to generate another 100,000 to 200,000 manufacturing and industrial services jobs.

...We will, of course, implement HOPE 40 provided power generation for our own usage and the use of the community where we reside. This means that local businesses will enjoy 2¢ per kilowatt-hour flat rate electricity pricing, with no limitation on capacity — given that we will scale the local generating capacity with as many HOPE 40 power plants as needed to service the demand.

...We would like to choose Detroit, as we can think of no finer demonstration of the power of cheap, clean electricity to fuel economic growth than to show what happens in a location so desperately needing an economic boost. ...

What is "HOPE 40 power plant"? It sounds like a small-scale nuclear power generating unit using liquid metal as coolant, i.e. fast breeder.

From American Atomics' mission statement page:

On August 1st, 2018 the world will fundamentally, radically change for the better. That's when we'll begin shipping our first mass production run of 1,000 HOPE 40 power plants — a self-contained, truck-shippable power generator system that can be quickly set up anywhere on earth and allow its owner-operator to begin profitably selling electricity for three cents per kWH or less.

...We're rebooting the Atoms For Peace initiative by choosing the other reactor science — the fast spectrum reactor — and pouring the collective resources of the world's largest commercial venture into its completion.

The company looks like a venture-funded start-up, based in Tennessee. There is no information of officers of the company, except that "We are a group of the leading nuclear scientists, engineers, technologists, and manufacturing experts on earth, utterly dedicated to our mission of solving humanity's energy problems." (from the company's website)

I have no idea whether this is some kind of joke or hoax, or the real thing. The blog where I got the link to the company notes:

"...the technology that the company plans to develop into mass produced small nuclear power plants uses liquid metal cooling, something that has not been used in commercial nuclear plants in the United States since Fermi 1"

Fermi 1 was the 94 MWe prototype fast breeder reactor that had a partial core melt in 1966.

If this "truck-shippable" mass-produced nuclear power generating unit is real, then move over Russians (who are building nuclear power generating ships)...

And Obamacare...

From New York Times (7/28/2013):

Detroit Looks to Health Law to Ease Costs

As Detroit enters the federal bankruptcy process, the city is proposing a controversial plan for paring some of the $5.7 billion it owes in retiree health costs: pushing many of those too young to qualify for Medicare out of city-run coverage and into the new insurance markets that will soon be operating under the Obama health care law.

Officials say the plan would be part of a broader effort to save Detroit tens of millions of dollars in health costs each year, a major element in a restructuring package that must be approved by a bankruptcy judge. It is being watched closely by municipal leaders around the nation, many of whom complain of mounting, unsustainable prices for the health care promised to retired city workers.

Similar proposals that could shift public sector retirees into the new insurance markets, called exchanges, are already being planned or contemplated in places like Chicago; Sheboygan County, Wis.; and Stockton, Calif. While large employers that eliminate health benefits for full-time workers can be penalized under the health care law, retirees are a different matter.

“There’s fear and panic about what this means,” said Michael Underwood, 62, who retired from the Chicago Police Department after 30 years and has diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. ...

...retirees say they worry about what the costs would actually amount to and whether the coverage would be as generous as some have received through city plans.

A 60-year-old single man with an income of $45,000 might have to pay $4,275 a year, or about 52 percent of his total annual premium, for a midpriced plan bought through an exchange, with the balance covered by the federal subsidies, according to an estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. A couple who are both 55 with a combined income of $60,000 might have to pay $5,700 a year, or 42 percent of their total premium. In both examples, additional out-of-pocket costs of up to $6,350 per person could apply, depending on how much medical care they needed.

(Full article at the link)

So the city retirees would be forced to spend nearly 10% of the income on so-called Obamacare plans, just like non-city workers elsewhere.

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India's First Fast Breeder Reactor to Go Critical in Early 2013, Near Chennai

Some poetic justice, I can't help thinking. But this may be exactly what the Japanese government and the corporate elites (particularly in the nuclear industry) want anyway, to be near a successful (if) fast breeder reactor for a change.

India's first prototype fast breeder reactor will go critical in early 2013, with commercial power generation to commence in March 2015 in the township of Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu, about 70 kilometers south of Chennai where the Japanese government-industry joint venture is to set up a "Japan town" where expat Japanese can live in luxury with own hospitals and shopping centers, golf course in a resort setting.

The fast breeder uses liquid sodium as coolant, just like "Monju" in Japan. I am pretty sure that Indians, just like the Japanese before them, think they are different, and won't make stupid mistakes like Americans (TMI), Russians (Chernobyl), and Japanese (Fukushima). Not to mention the costly "Monju" fast breeder project that has had nothing but failures.

Just watch out for those cyclones and tsunamis from future mega earthquakes from Indonesia...

From Zeenews.com (1/21/2012):

Chennai: India's first 500-MW prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR), being set up at Kalpakkam near here, is likely to go critical early next year and commercial generation of electricity is expected in March 2015.

India`s first PFBR to go critical early 2013
"Construction activities will come to close this year-end. Loading of the part fuel is expected to happen during the first quarter of next year and the reactor would go critical," said S.C. Chetal, director at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) that designed the PFBR.

Chetal is also a director at Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd (BHAVINI), a public sector company under the Directorate of Atomic Energy (DAE), that has been given the responsibility to build fast reactor power plants in the country.

When the PFBR is commissioned, power can be produced at a lesser cost than electricity generated from conventional sources.

A breeder reactor is one that breeds more material for a nuclear fission reaction than it consumes. The reaction produces energy that is used in the form of electricity. The Indian fast reactors will be fuelled by a blend of plutonium and uranium oxide.

India`s first PFBR to go critical early 2013
While the reactor will break up (fission) plutonium for power production, it will also breed more plutonium than it consumes. The original plutonium comes from natural uranium.

The surplus plutonium from each fast reactor can be used to set up more such reactors and grow the nuclear capacity in tune with India's energy needs.

Fast reactors form a key in the India's three-stage nuclear power programme, which comprises pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) at the first stage, fast breeder reactors (FBRs) at second and thorium-based systems at the third stage. In 1985, India became the sixth country in the world to have such a technology.

The government has said in parliament that the PFBR is expected to begin commercial production in March 2015. Nuclear scientists though are of the view that commercial generation can happen even before that date.

According to Prabhat Kumar, project director, BHAVINI, the PFBR construction work will be over by September this year and testing of various systems would end by December 2012 or January 2013.

"There is no inordinate time lag between PFBR attaining criticality and it starting commercial production given the fact that it is a newly-designed reactor. With small core/fuel lot of tests on reactor physics would be done. Then by gradually increasing the generation engineering tests would be carried out," a nuclear scientist told IANS, preferring anonymity.

"A year of testing will be sufficient after reactor attained criticality," he remarked.

Asked about the delay in commercial production, Chetal said: "The PFBR is first of its kind in the country and we want to be sure about the functioning of each and every system."

According to him, with the loading of part fuel, the reactor systems will be checked by increasing the power generation in a gradual manner.

He does not agree that the delay in commercial production of PFBR would have an impact on the next two fast reactors that is planned at Kalpakkam.

"The design modifications made in the proposed two reactors will not make them as first of its kind. They will be commercial reactors. Since PFBR is new we want to be sure with its systems," Chetal added.

The government has allotted Rs.250 crore for pre-project activities for two more 500 MW units.

It has sanctioned construction of two more 500 MW fast reactors whose location is yet to be finalised.

IANS

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Mainichi English: "Agency gears up to retrieve device fallen inside Monju reactor"

Ah, the horror, the horror....

Monju is a fast breeder reactor that uses sodium as coolant, which catches on fire on contact with air. It uses MOX-fuel.

3.3-tonne, 12-meter "In‐Vessel Transfer Machine" fell into the reactor vessel on August 26, 2010. The manager at the plant in charge of fuel exchange committed suicide in February this year.

From Mainichi Shinbun English (5/24/2011):

TSURUGA (Kyodo) -- The Japan Atomic Energy Agency began preparatory engineering work Tuesday to set up equipment it will use to retrieve a device that fell inside the vessel of its prototype fast-breeder reactor Monju in Fukui Prefecture last August, agency officials said.

The agency aims to collect the cylindrical 3.3-ton device together with part of the vessel's upper lid by mid-June to get the reactor back to normal by autumn, allowing the resumption of a test run of the 280,000-kilowatt prototype, the officials said.

But it is unknown when the test run will begin at the unit on the Sea of Japan coast as Prime Minister Naoto Kan has declared a review of Japan's basic energy plan following the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

After the Aug. 26 accident, the agency tried in October to recover the device used in fuel exchange but failed as it had become misshapen, preventing its retrieval through the upper lid.

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