Spent Nuclear Rods for Power Production

I don't specifically remember the use of spent nuclear rods (at least, not without some reprocessing) being used in foreign reactors. But there are several alternative technologies out there (pebble reactors, breeder reactors, etc.) that seem to not even be discussed in the USA.

Cynic that I am, is that because the big companies trying to sell nuclear power in this country see more profit in the traditional pressurized water designs?

Breeder reactors may not be discussed in the US, that does not mean that they are not used. Are far is I know the only way to make plutonium (good for bombs, but too concentrated for reactors so there is no practical way to extract the heat) is in a breeder reactor. The US has lots of warheads, therefore the US must have a breeder reactor, and strategically for security of military supply, must have at least two.

All other reactor designs use isotopes of uranium U235 and to a lesser extent U233, which make up about 0.7% of mined uranium. The rest is mostly U238 but there are actually 6 isotopes in all.

Power reactors operate at concentrations of between 3 and 5% so the uranium has to be enriched by converting it into uranium hexaflouride UF₆ and subjecting it to either a gaseous diffusion or centrifuge process to increase the concentration. In Europe used fuel rods are recycled because it is easier and cheaper to start at 3% and enrich to 5% than starting at 0.7% and enriching to 5%. It also avoids having to arrange long term storage for used fuel rods. There is an argument that transporting used fuel back to the reprocessing centre is dangerous and open to terrorist attack, but considering that bomb grade material is typically 90% U235, I do not consider this argument valid. Why the US does not reprocess is a complete mystery.

Finally the military use of depleted uranium for ordinance. Depleted uranium is what is left after you have separated out the quite radioactive U235 and is composed of the only very slightly radioactive U238. If you dug up rocks from somewhere that has high background radiation, like Aberdeen, Scotland and threw them at the enemy, you would be scattering more radioactivity around the environment than chucking U238. It is used because it is 1.7 times heavier than lead, so for the same weight and speed of shell it has 1.7 times the penetrating power and this is needed to penetrate composite armouring like Cobham armour. In both Kosovo and Iraq where it has mostly been used, the enemy did not have sophisticated armour, so it was not required. Its use just created another thing for a misinformed environmental lobby to bleat about.

jhhassaciates presumption "therefore the US must have a breeder reactor" is an assumption based on ignorance. Evidence of this is that the Manhatten project produced tons of Pu without a breeder.

There are other factual errors in this post.

The use of DU ordinance is a topic unrelated to nuclear fuel reprocessing.

Actually, the Manhattan project used mostly reactor bred plutonium. They did begin research using plutonium made in a synchrotron, but the process is far too slow for production purposes.

The manhattan project produced far less than a ton of plutonium by non-breeder-reactor means. I would wager that the total of all plutonium ever produced by any synchrotron is still less than ton.

The comment concerning the US using a breeder is based on sound logic and is true. The Hanover sight in Oak Ridge is one such breeder reactor. I believe Los Alamos probably has one as well.

If you are going to slam people claiming inaccuracies, it would be wise to fact check your own assertions before flaming away... :-)

eLF,

The Manhattan project produced plutonium in graphite moderated nuclear reactors. The reaction converted some of the uranium to plutonium. These reactors consumed more fissile material than new fissile material was generated, therefore they were NOT breeder reactors, you can fact check this yourself.

I can assure you that the Manhattan project produced greater than a ton of plutonium by non-breeder reactor means.

Please note that I have not stated that the US has never had a breeder reactor. And I disagree that it would be sound logic to make such a statement based on the fact that I am somewhat ignorant regarding US breeder reactors.

I do like your final sentence and I am in complete agreement with at least that much of your post... ;)

Ace, Your been the closest to correct throughout this discussion, and suitably cautious when uncertain. Everyone would potentially benefit from reading Wikipedia's articles on "Breeder Reactors" and "Fast Breeder Reactors".

I was in error. I failed to make the distinction between Pu bred in a reactor (as opposed to a Cyclotron....no limit do my misstatements it seems) and the use of a breeder reactor to create the Pu.

I appreciate the correction and opportunity to upgrade my understanding.

A Cyclotron .....and it was a many year multi location project

I'll bet that it was - just look up the "history" of the Manhatten project as extended by Ace. - Loupy.

You are perfectly right of course. How remiss of me to not think that setting off a bomb in the Arizona desert and then scraping up the result with a spatula is not a perfectly reasonable and economic method for the commercial production of plutonium.

Hanford Washington.

I think we are actually discussing "enriched uranium" in the fuel rod context. I was advised by Canada Nuclear that the most recent design of CANDU reactor has been run on "spent" fuel from a US - PWR.

I did not think to ask about either Plutonium or DU - but then that wasn't the question here, was it?

They did however confirm that the new design also burns Thorium, in case anyone ever gets interested in a 'lower half-life' nuclear fuel.

Good information. Since using new rods is cheaper than using spent rods, maybe, we (US) are just selling our spent rods to other countries to get rid of them. I think we're getting closer to figuring out why the US doesn't have spent rods power plants.

Now, if someone knowledgeable about the French spent rods power plants would explain the economics of their system, it would be very helpful.

Papadoc, The primary reason that it makes sense for the French to reprocess nuclear fuel is that it greatly reduces the volume of waste that they must deal with. The reason that commercial reactors in the US don't reprocess is political (see post #3).

How much coffinite (or uraninite) do they actually have in reserves to mine in France? It might just be cheaper than paying foreign nations to supply the raw ore or processed material. On the other hand in nations with large natural deposits of readily accessible ore and processing facilities, it could be cheaper to process the new rods, and sell the old ones at a huge discount to France (even at a huge discount it would be cheaper than disposal). Though I am sure there are political interests on both sides that lobby for one or the other technologies. In the US we have substantial mining and resource processing interests, so they favor the side that directs more money to such activities. Within France, I suspect there is not a lot of active mining occurring (in relative terms), so the strength of those interests as a lobby may not be as formidable. Then there is also public opinion, no community in the US is going to let you dump even very low level nuclear waste in their area, if they can oppose it, and NIMBY is king in the US. In France the national politics are less concerned with the interests of local people, as long as it serves an interest of the majority (or at least doesn't get them rioting in Paris). It just makes more sense to make a new product for our use and sell our waste rather than have to dispose of it, then to clean and reprocess the waste into a smaller volume of useable material.

Oh yeah, I knew France derives a huge majority of their electricity from Nuclear power. I didn't know they exported the electricity. Though I guess that makes sense, if they generate excesses in a smaller localized economy (France being slightly smaller than Texas, slightly larger than Sao Paulo) with major infrastructure interconnections, it makes sense to export it. This is very similar to the way some larger countries in the Americas export electricity from one State where excesses are generated to other States where industry or large numbers of people can use the excess. Nuclear power is a stable source of energy less influenced by short-term market price fluctuations, but not sure what you mean by vulnerability, as that depends on the attack on the system you are considering. Obviously, a war or terrorism would present a different set of circumstance in which nuclear facilities would be prime targets if you wished to decimate a population, than say economic conflicts and market price fluctuations. Though there is long-term vulnerability (that may not be considered) since much of the uranium is mined in places like the Congo or Former Soviet Union (though I understand with the fall of the Soviet Union the market was flooded with a lot of processed uranium and essential no mining and refining of ore occurs currently). They still have to purchase much of the raw resources (fuel) in some form from someone else outside of France.

I used the term sell in the sense that if you transfer a product at less cost than it would cost to dispose of that product, you "sell" it in that you make a profit in terms of less loss over standard. so the question becomes, if reprocessing the spent fuel is expensive, how much does it cost the French to get new fuel and how do they compare? How would this compare in the US, where the resources are directly available from with in the country or adjacent Canada? The cost point comparison might be less competitive in the US than in western Europe, or it may not? It would be nice to see some actual costs for these.

By building relatively small power stations, they have 58, the loss of a few would not disrupt their supply. They generate about 25% over their national consumption and this is the excess that goes for export. The stations themselves are bomb hardened both to contain an internal blast and defend from an external one, and are defended by paramilitary force that would make the green berets look like a Sunday school class.

Naturally the French government is cagey about its strategic uranium stockpile, but estimates range from 80 to 120 years worth based on current usage (excluding their weapons grade material which could be diluted for use in power generation).

My only direct involvement in the industry dates back to the DFR and PFR programs based at Dounreay back in the late 1960s / early 1970s, so my knowledge of costings is woefully out of date.

hmm, that kind of makes me wonder what the US and Russia have in reserves, considering the huge amounts of nuclear weapons being decommissioned.

I thought all nuclear facilities had highly trained guards (I know the ones at Diablo Canyon practice shooting at nothing a lot, well targets I should say). Though I think the comparison to the Green Berets is probably a bit of an exageration, maybe the Rangers or Pararescue.

Bomb hardened is a nice sounding word. I can remember watching those new reels of US bombs penetrating bomb hardened underground bunkers in Iraq. I wonder how many of those would a country capable of launching and invasion and major offensive on french soil may have (let alone the ones that could just bomb France from a distance and never have to send troops)? This knid of makes me think it really means hardened agaisnt poorly planned terrorists and spec ops.

I'm of the understanding of the military's use of depleted uranium (DU) in armour piercing shells they were (are) using in Iraq.

Apparently it does the job, but does leave behind quite a hazardous radioactive mess, that eventually seeps it's way into the groundwater, as well as causing long term respiratory, tissue and nervous system damage, and adds carcinogenic active contributing factors to the troops who are unfortunate enough to come into contact (or inhalation) with the stuff.

And YES, I wish that it vould be reprocessed into usable fuel to generate power, as you have suggested. - Loupy.

Links seldom warrant a GA, but that one does.

Carter. What a thing, his pro tobacco policies, UGH.

Truman saved millions of lives by ending WW2, painful but true.

Carter with his endorsement of Big Tobacco killed an order of magnitude more than Truman could save, he is the gift that keeps on giving (to big tobacco), then he appeased the Soviets, then this.

George Dubbya Bush is a modern day pariah in many eyes, but in reality he is almost a nobel laureate compared with Peanut Carter.

Quite a few years back, I remember reading about power bring generated using waste fuel.It basically consisted of a coil around the rods,and an oscillator circuit to convert the voltage into AC.The theory was the neutron emission would produce voltage when passing thru the copper coils,and the circuitry would modify it to a usable level.

Anyone else hear of this?

There are a lot of factors that govern the reprocessing of fuel rods. Fuel rods used by the military are of a much different quality then say for the power plant down the street. Though most of the information of military fuel rods is fairly classified information, you can assume that they are reusing them to the best of their abilities for the use intended. As far as the rods used in domestic power production, I believe these are in fact reprocessed as much as possible. The type and quality of materials dictates what can be done to reconstitute the enrichment, along with the amount of decay.

Lets not get to gun-hoe on the Nuclear stuff just yet. There is still a lot of bad things that can happen to us from these materials.

You can NOT assume that spent US fuel rods are being reused to the best of their abilities!

In fact I have seen many naval sub reactor cores being transported for disposal to a burial area.

There have been operating facilities in the US for over ten years that produce reprocessed fuel assemblies from and for foreign countries. But it would be a federal violation to use fuel from or in any US reactor. I worked at one.

fixitorelse, your belief based on assumption is factually incorrect. Don't take my word for it, do some research, and only believe what you can verify. There is a lot of BS on the internet presented as fact that is simply not accurate.

I wrote a research piece on this some years ago, that was published. Do not assume that we all are not aware of what is going on with the materials coming from the nuclear industry. I chose not to be totally negative on the subject, but cautionary.

Re: "Do not assume that we all are not aware of what is going on with the materials coming from the nuclear industry."

Fixit, You seem to be saying that - We should assume that we all are aware of what is going on with the materials coming from the nuclear industry.

That statement seems ridiculous and poorly communicated coming from a published technical writer. Were you an advocate for making verifiably inaccurate assumptions in your research piece as well? Or have I completely misinterpreted your intended meaning?

I recommend that in the future you should be less concerned about negativity and instead choose to be accurate on the subject.

Actually, if you took the negative of his statement it would not imply all are aware but rather that some are aware, as it states we all are not aware. Which I think indicates some persons on the forum are aware.

Technology for reprocessing and using spent fuel rods has only become available recently (month ago). Have a look at this link.

http://www.industryweek.com/articles/china_discovers_nuclear_fuel_breakthrough_23561.aspx

Re: Technology for reprocessing and using spent fuel rods has only become available recently (month ago). Have a look at this link.

If you've seen my comments in some other thread requesting more rating possibilities for posts, I guess I'd like to add to the list and include: "humorous" (or "sarcasm" or something). I'm sure for a lot of our guests, it is sometimes hard to catch the sarcasm that an American might use in a post.

I guess I don't know for sure if this is intended to be sarcasm or is just a case of a misplaced "only". Such technology existed before now, this might be a new approach to such reuse. Rewriting the statement to read as follows might be more accurate. (Boy, I had a headache yesterday, somehow I must be bouncing back from it today, and showing that by overreacting. I'll go take a Valium or something.)

"A new technology for reprocessing and using spent fuel rods has become available recently (month ago)."

I think this is wrong. When I was working at Argonne National Lab in the 1970s, they were developing a remote control facility for reprocessing of used nuclear reactor fuel rods. The actual facility was at the Idaho test area. I think they were successful, but it was turned off for political reasons.

If this is new, what technology is France and some other countries using to make power from spent fuel rods?

The recycling of used nuclear fuel rods is possible, but for political reasons it has only low acceptance.

- Some intententions go to eliminate any risk that materials (used fuel as well te recycled) could be missused.

- Finaly, the recycling chimistry makes radio-active waste what is not accepted by

many ecologist groups.

For the ecology, the advantage would be that smaller quantities of uranium could be

extracted of the earth, a process which brings low radio-active materials in the environnment, too.

I was wondering if you could answer this one for me. In the process of enriching from 0.71% to 4%, where does the extra U235 come from?

Basically, what you end up with is a bunch of depleted uranium (DU) with a U-235 fraction of only 0.2% to 0.3% that you've taken the U-235 from to make the 4% enriched source. So you can imagine how much DU you get when enriching to over 90% for nuclear weapons and other military uses.

Thanks.

Sounds expensive.

What is the cost per kw for current nuclear power plants?

What would be the cost per kw for nuclear power plants using spent rods?

In the countries that are using spent rods, how much more does the power from the spent rods power plants cost than the existing nuclear power plants?

Where I live, we get power from nuclear, natural gas, and coal power plants. My power is about $0.10 per kwh.

I calculated this once for a nuclear plant built by my local utility. That was probably 20 years ago, so I hesitate to quote any figures (my memory isn't that good).

What was most interesting, though (to me) was the difference between fuel cost and total cost--the fuel cost was tiny--some fraction of a penny--a very small fraction of a penny, iirc.

Not to say that I have anything against safety, but the carrying cost and such on the $4 B investment was the big cost.

I thought they were trying to get away from using the old rods and are now going to floating iron particle style rods now