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The Dual Fluid Reactor The 19th Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference (PBNC 2014) Hyatt Regency Hotel, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, August 24-28, 2014 PBNC2014-292 THE DUAL FLUID REACTOR - A NEW CONCEPT FOR A HIGHLY EFFECTIVE FAST REACTOR Armin Huke1,Gotz¨ Ruprecht1, Daniel Weißbach1;2, Stephan Gottlieb1, Ahmed Hussein1;3, Konrad Czerski1;2 1Institut fur¨ Festkorper-Kernphysik¨ gGmbH, Leistikowstr. 2, 14050 Berlin, Germany 2Instytut Fizyki, Wydział Matematyczno-Fizyczny, Uniwersytet Szczecinski,´ ul. Wielkopolska 15, 70-451, Szczecin, Poland 3Department of Physics, University of Northern British Columbia, 3333 University Way, Prince George, BC, Canada. V6P 3S6 Abstract The Dual Fluid Reactor, DFR, is a novel concept of a fast heterogeneous nuclear reactor. Its key feature is the employment of two separate liquid cycles, one for fuel and one for the coolant. As op- posed to other liquid-fuel concepts like the molten-salt fast reactor (MSFR), in the DFR both cycles can be separately optimized for their respective purpose, leading to advantageous consequences: A very high power density resulting in enormous cost savings, and a highly negative temperature feedback coefficient, enabling a self-regulation without any control rods or mechanical parts in the core. The fuel liquid, an undiluted actinide trichloride (consisting of isotope-purified 37Cl) in the ref- erence design, circulates at an operating temperature of 1300 K and can be processed on-line in a small internal processing unit utilizing fractionated distillation or electro refining. Medical radioisotopes like Mo-99/Tc-99m are by-products and can be provided right away. In a more ad- vanced design, an actinide metal alloy melt with an appropriately low solidus temperature is well possible which further compactifies the core and allows to further increase the operating tempera- ture due to its high heat conductivity. The best choice for the coolant is pure lead which yields a very hard neutron spectrum. Introduction In the early decades of nuclear fission power technology development most of the possible imple- mentations were at least considered in studies and many were tested in experimental facilities as most of the types of the Generation IV canon. The power plant and nuclear infrastructure technolo- gies which came into widespread deployment were determined by the requirements of the military. Uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing with the wet chemical PUREX process originated from the Manhattan project in order to gain weapons-grade fissile material. The usage of fuel elements with light water reactors originated from the propulsion systems of naval vessels like submarines and carriers. The aforementioned technologies tailored for the military came into civil deployment with minimal modifications and are at most suboptimal for civil power plants with respect to economic criteria. The employment of fuel elements where fission products accumulate during operation requires heavy measures to avoid a core meltdown, as happened in Three Miles Island 2 and Fukushima I 1,2,3. All those measures reduce the EROI (Energy Return on Invested, see [1] and Sec.6), the most sound measure for the economy of power plants, for today’s pressurized water reactors (PWRs) drastically to values only a factor of 2 higher than the EROIs for fossil fuel power plants. 1 The 19th Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference (PBNC 2014) Hyatt Regency Hotel, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, August 24-28, 2014 Unfortunately, most Generation IV reactor concepts except the Molten Salt Fast Reactor (MSFR, see below) are again based on solid fuel technology. Even worse, for the most intensively devel- oped breeder technology worldwide, the Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor SFR or the Traveling-wave variant, Terrapower’s TP-1 [2]), the most unfavourable cooling metal has been chosen. Sodium has aggressive chemical reactivity with air, water and structural materials as well as a high neutron reaction cross section with the possibility of a temporary positive void coefficient. These prop- erties require a reactor pressure vessel, double-walled piping, and an intermediary cooling cycle. In effect all this sums up to expenses which double the electricity production costs of the SFR relative to a PWR as calculated for the Superphenix´ class [3] (p.24). Here again the reason for the pre-selection of sodium originated from the military – the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program of the US Air Force. A highly powered reactor core for the propulsion of strategic bombers required a liquid metal coolant with low total weight or rather low density: sodium. However, there is no reason to continue this reactor line for civil applications even though it is the most advanced concept. Hence Generation III and most of Generation IV nuclear power plants are loosing competition in comparison to fossil fired power plants especially in the advent of the shale gas exploitation. On the other hand, there is a factor of 108 between the energy release in the fission of a heavy nucleus and the energy from the chemical combustion of e.g. carbon and hydrogen atoms. Even if the ratio of the EROI of current PWRs to fossil power plants could be increased to 4, this is certainly too low and upgradable. The Dual Fluid Reactor (DFR) concept presented here is designed with respect to the EROI mea- sure and passive safety standards according to the KISS principle and with attention to the the state of technology in mechanical, plant and chemical engineering for a speedy implementation. It was a gap in the reactor concepts of the past with a high development potential. A DFR power plant could exploit the potential of nuclear fission power with an EROI two orders of magnitude higher than fossil fired power plants. 1 Basic Principle The Dual Fluid Reactor (DFR) is essentially a heterogeneous reactor with a liquid coolant and a liquid fuel whereby both revolve through the reactor core. The disentangling of the cooling and fuel supply function has many advantageous properties in comparison to the MSFR, where both functions must be satisfied by one material in a compromise. In the MSFR, the material is essentially restricted to molten salt which is a trade-off between high-temperature fuel, low- temperature cooling, and an acceptable heat capacity. In the DFR concept the fuel is pumped through an interconnected array of conduits immersed in the coolant liquid which constitute the reactor core in its vessel. Both cycles can now be optimized for the respective purpose. The coolant liquid is required to have the highest possible heat transportation capability and best neutronic properties. With pure liquid lead as the best choice it is possible to employ undiluted fissionable fuel material as opposed to the MSFR with less than 20% actinide fluoride. This results in a very hard neutron spectrum improving the neutron economy. Further benefits of liquid metal coolant comprise the application of effective magneto hydrodynamic techniques both for pumping and, possibly in the future, electricity generation because of the high concentration of charge car- riers. Furthermore, the reactor core and primary coolant loop can be operated at normal pressure which allows for simple and cost regressive size scaling. The DFR resembles to the LFR with the fuel rods filled with a liquid fuel. In the LFR the wall material of the exchangeable fuel rods is limited to steel alloys with a higher lead corrosion sus- 2 The 19th Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference (PBNC 2014) Hyatt Regency Hotel, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, August 24-28, 2014 ceptibility due to economic reasons. Since the fuel conduit array of the DFR does not need to be replaced regularly it now becomes economically feasible to employ expensive materials. Further- more, in comparison to the conditions in thermal neutron reactors, the choice of isotopes for the structural materials opens widely because of the low neutron capture cross sections for fast neu- trons. Appropriate materials have been developed decades ago, though they have been difficult to machine, see also Sec. 4. These days, their fabrication is industrial routine. Refractory materials are the most favourable candidates withstanding molten fuel salts as well as liquid lead at very high temperatures, well above 1000 ◦C (e.g. refractory metals [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]). The perma- nent deployment in the reactor core even allows for ceramics known for their low tensility. Silicon carbide, for instance, can be sintered in large blocks, and does not affect the neutron economy in the fast neutron bath, unlike the refractory metals. Similar to the MSFR, the fuel can be reprocessed on-line in a connected facility inside the plant’s containment. The core fuel conduit array is designed in a manner that the fuel can be drained gravitationally into subcritical storage tanks through a melting fuse plug just below the core. As mentioned before, the liquid fuel may be but is not limited to actinide salts. An alternative could be a solder-like melt of a metal alloy made up of actinides and, if necessary, metals with low melt- ing points in order to reduce the solidus temperature of the alloy and gain a pumpable fluid. The advantage would be an even higher power density of the reactor core due to the better heat trans- portation capability and a possible higher operating temperature because of the lower corrosive potential of the structural material. In such a manner the basic design allows for a high bandwidth of variations which can be trimmed to the specific purpose. In the result, a compact reactor core Figure 1: DFR fuel and cooling loop. The fuel circulates between the PPU (which is also connected to the fission product storage) and the core whereas the coolant loop connects the fissile zone to the conventional part, also cooling the fission product storage. PPU, core and fission product storage are equipped with a fuse plug.
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