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Advanced Fission Technologies and Systems
Published in William J. Nuttall, Nuclear Renaissance, 2022
The BREST fast reactor builds upon an earlier series of successful fast reactor projects in Russia. This experience culminated in 1980 with the completion of a third 600 MWe fast reactor unit at Beloyarsk. This BN-600 reactor represented a significant push forward in the engineering of liquid metal-cooled reactors [221]. Most fast reactor experience worldwide relates to the use of liquid sodium metal as a coolant, but this is problematic owing to the high chemical reactivity of the coolant which combusts spontaneously if it comes into contact with either air or water. The use of lead avoids these disadvantages, but it introduces some other concerns, such as a need to avoid corrosion. Russia has good experience in the use of SFR technology with its ‘BN’ series of reactors (BN-600, BN-800, and the proposed BN-1200). As noted above, the Russians have since adjusted their fast reactor plans with a view to solving the problem of unwanted plutonium. The proposed BREST reactor does this by opting for burning, rather than breeding mode, and by replacing the usual uranium dioxide fuel with mononitride (UN-PuN) fuel [222]. This increases the density of the fuel. One problem with the use of nitride fuels in fast reactors is the accumulation of biologically harmful carbon-14 in a nuclear reaction in which naturally abundant nitrogen-14 has a proton transformed into a neutron (with the emission of a fast positron) yielding carbon-14. This problem is avoided if the fast reactor mononitride fuels are manufactured with high fractions of the rarer nitrogen-15 isotope. Adamov et al. report that isotopic enrichment of nitrogen of up to 90%–99% and the later entrapment of 90%–99% of the carbon in the spent fuel during reprocessing would be sufficient to solve the carbon-14 radioactive waste problem [223].
Nuclear power and safety policy in Russia
Published in David Toke, Geoffrey Chun-Fung Chen, Antony Froggatt, Richard Connolly, Nuclear Power in Stagnation, 2021
David Toke, Geoffrey Chun-Fung Chen, Antony Froggatt, Richard Connolly
Between 1964 and 1985 a total of eight reactors were installed at NPPs within Russia. Further VVER reactors were commissioned after 1985 and they were also exported to socialist satellite states and Finland. In addition, two fast breeder reactors (FBR) were also installed, first in Kazakhstan in 1969 (the first-generation BN-350) and the second in Beloyarsk in Russia in 1980 (the second-generation BN-600).
From “Inherently Safe” to “Proliferation Resistant”: New Perspectives on Reactor Designs
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
Around the same time OSU granted NuScale Power exclusive rights in 2007, TerraPower chose a very different path. Funded by private capital, something unique to the United States, TerraPower clearly falls into the category of revolutionary designs, even though fast neutron reactors (variously referred to as breeders or burners) have been around for decades and were built and operated, albeit not always successfully, in several countries from the 1950s onward.85 Fast neutron reactors typically allow for flexible core arrangements that can be configured so as to “breed” more fuel or to “burn” long-lived actinides, depending on the initial fuel composition. Originally viewed as a solution to the scarcity of nuclear fuel, nowadays they promise a solution to the spent nuclear fuel (and more generally waste) problem that haunts the nuclear industry. Historically, fast neutron reactors have not had the best safety record. The combination of materials and complicated systems has repeatedly led to fires and other accidents in existing facilities. Both Japan and France shut down their respective facilities (Monju and Superphénix) after a series of accidents.wIndia and Japan have test facilities.86 The formerly Soviet reactor in Shevchenko, now Aktau, Kazakhstan, has also been permanently shut down and is undergoing decommissioning.87 Currently, only Russia operates commercial-scale fast neutron reactors at the Beloyarsk site in the Ural mountains (BN-600 and BN-800, referring to their megawatt-electric output).