Posted on 08/16/2015 8:30:52 PM PDT by ckilmer
Construction of the Xipu fast neutron reactor nuclear power demonstrative project in east China's Fujian province is designed to start at the end of 2017, China Business News quoted Xu Mi, an academician with Chinese Academy of Engineering, as saying.
The demonstrative nuclear power project, designed with 600,000kw (600 MWe) installed capacity, will be a fourth generation reactor designs.
The Shanghai newspaper speculated that this newest facility, because of its planned full scale size, will be the long anticipated joint commercial venture between China National Nuclear Corp. and TerraPower, a firm based on Bellevue, WA. Gates has been instrumental in funding the development of a type of fast reactor called a “traveling wave reactor” through TerraPower, a company he founded in 2008 and chairs. Gates has visited China at least three times in recent years for possible cooperation on nuclear power.
On his last trip to Beijing, which took place last February of this year, Gates met with Nur Bekri, a vice chair of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, and with China National Nuclear Corp chairman Sun Qin. China National Nuclear Corp is one of the country’s largest nuclear power company and a major Chinese partner of TerraPower. The two firms first announced an intent to cooperate on fast reactor designs in 2012.
The Chinese newspaper did not cite a confirmation statement from Terrapower about the Fujian pilot project.
Fast neutron reactors
China's research and development on fast neutron reactors started in 1964.
A 65 MWt sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor – the Chinese Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) – at the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE) near Beijing, started up in July 2010.1 It was built by Russia's OKBM Afrikantov in collaboration with OKB Gidropress, NIKIET and Kurchatov Institute. It was grid connected at 40% power (8 MWe net) in July 2011, and ramped up to full 20 MWe power in December, then passed 'official' checks in October 2012. It has negative temperature, power reactivity and sodium void coefficients. Its fuel cycle is designed to use electrometallurgical reprocessing. It is reported to have high-enriched (65%) UO2 fuel.
The CDFR-1000, a 1000 MWe Chinese prototype fast reactor based on the CEFR, was envisaged with construction start in 2017 and commissioning 2023 as the next step in CIAE's program. This would be a three-loop 2500 MWt pool-type, use MOX fuel with average 66 GWd/t burn-up, run at 544°C, have breeding ratio 1.2, with 316 core fuel assemblies and 255 blanket ones, and a 40-year life. This is CIAE's 'project one' Chinese Demonstration Fast Reactor (CDFR). It is to have active and passive shutdown systems and passive decay heat removal. The reactor would use MOX fuel with average 66 GWd/t burn-up, run at 544°C, have breeding ratio 1.2, with 316 core fuel assemblies and 255 blanket ones. This could form the basis of the Chinese Commercial Fast Reactor (CCFR) by 2030, using MOX + actinide or metal + actinide fuel. MOX is seen only as an interim fuel, the target arrangement is metal fuel in closed cycle.
However, in October 2009, an agreement was signed by CIAE and China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation (CNEIC) with Russia's Atomstroyexport to start pre-project and design works for a commercial nuclear power plant with two BN-800 reactorsc (see section on Sanming in the information page on Nuclear Power in China). These reactors are referred to by CIAE as 'project 2' Chinese Demonstration Fast Reactors (CDFRs), with construction originally to start in 2013 and commissioning 2018-19. In contrast to the intention in Russia, these would use ceramic MOX fuel pellets. The project was expected to lead to bilateral cooperation of fuel cycles for fast reactors. However, according to the Beloyarsk plant Director late in 2014, “The main objective of the BN-800 is [to provide] operating experience and technological solutions that will be applied to the BN-1200," and no further Russian BN-800 units are planned. The project is reported to have been suspended indefinitely, though this is unconfirmed.
The CIAE's CDFR-1000 is expected to be followed by a 1200 MWe China Demonstration Fast Breeder Reactor (CDFBR) by about 2028, conforming to Generation IV criteria. This will have U-Pu-Zr fuel with 120 GWd/t burn-up and breeding ratio of 1.5 or more, with minor actinide and long-lived fission product recycle.
PWR capacity in China is expected to level off at 200 GWe about 2040, and fast reactors progressively increase from 2020 to at least 200 GWe by 2050 and 1400 GWe by 2100.
CGN and Xiamen University are reported to be cooperating on R and D for the travelling-wave reactor (TWR). The Ministry of Science and Technology, with CNNC and SNPTC, are skeptical of it. (This is a fast reactor design using natural or depleted uranium packed inside hundreds of hexagonal pillars. In a 'wave' that moves through the core at only one centimetre per year, the U-238 is bred progressively into Pu-239, which is the actual fuel. However, this design has now radically changed to become a standing wave reactor with the fuel shuffled in the core.) In January 2013 a prototype TWR-P was being discussed as a TerraPower-SNERDI joint project, and in December 2013 a US Federal Register notice said that the USA had negotiated an agreement with China “that would facilitate the joint development of TWR technology”, including standing wave versions of it.
Background
IAEA review of fast reactors in 2015
In Russia, the BN-600 sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) has shown an impressive operational performance by reaching an 86% load factor last year, while the Russian light water reactor (LWR) fleet reaches 82% on average. The multipurpose sodium-cooled fast neutron research reactor (MBIR), to be built in Dimitrovgrad, obtained the construction license from the Russian government. The BN-800 SFR will be commissioned at the beginning of 2016.
In India, commissioning of the prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam is expected to start by the end of September 2015. The China experimental fast reactor (CEFR), which was connected to the grid in 2011, reached 100% power in December 2014. In France, the conceptual design phase for the advanced sodium technological reactor for industrial demonstration (ASTRID) is planned to be completed by the end of 2015. In addition, other participating countries reported promising and progressing activities in FR development.
IAEA 2013 update of innovative nuclear reactors
Fermi breeder reactor nearly nuked Detroit. And that was back when anybody cared.
They need something to power all the Electric Vehicles they’re planning on having on the road. Goal of 5,000,000 by 2020. 30% of all Govt cars will be EVs starting in 2016.
Jimmah doesn’t like breeding reactors. Oops.. Jimmah is about gone.
It’ll cost at least twice as many Yawns as it would have a month ago.
ping
“Fermi breeder reactor nearly nuked Detroit. And that was back when anybody cared.”
Radiation alarms sounded, it was shutdown. NO releases to public.
Repaired, refueled and restarted.
And that was back when NRC hardly cared.
“It suffered partial core meltdown.”
Two of the 105 assemblies ... And was safely shutdown when radiation alarms were activated with no threat to the public.
“BTW, NO commercial reactors would be economically viable if they didn’t have liability insurance against catastrophe provided by the US taxpayer. NO utility could afford it.”
Reactor sites pay almost $400 million a year in off-site liability insurance. If an accident happens other sites are required to contribute to the ‘fund’. Presently, that would be almost $12,000,000,000 available before federal dollars would be involved.
“Who calculate the odds of another Chernobyl or Fukushima. Figure it out.”
Chernobyl consists of several government owned and managed (USSR) reactors based loosely on the original Fermi pile. Those reactors were used because they produce lots of weapons grade plutonium. They had/have no shielding whatsoever beyond the graphite bricks to shield workers in the building, which is much more like an office building than Western commercial reactors with five foot thick reinforced concrete, sometimes two concrete shells and a steel pressure vessel which the U.S. is no longer capable of manufacturing itself.
Fukushima killed no one, nor has any commercial nuclear reactor, from the radioactive components of the reactor. Our commercial reactors, even with the burden of supporting the antinuclear legal bar and carrying the debt burden as construction is delayed by law suit after law suit, sometimes pitting a husband being paid by the profit making branch of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which receives government grants, and a wife working for the EPA, also paid by our taxes. Commercial nuclear plants produce no greenhouse gases and pay for themselves in a few years, though the debt service on one of the last plants, part of the TVA, which might be granted an operating license, has been carried for the three decades during which law suits have delayed generation of commercial power. It has nothing to do with liability insurance, a very old shibboleth. If not you couldn’t have coal power, which Obama’s cabal wants to shut down, because a 1000 MW coal plant, with scrubbers, causes about 200 additional deaths/year from cardio pulmonary illnesses, from EPA data.
Using your logic we should really kill the airline industry because there have been hundreds of tragic losses from airline crashes and the airplane industry doesn’t begin to generate revenues comparable to base-load electric power generators, which last upwards of 40 years and have never hurt anyone. Non-commercial Chernobyl hurt many more people by being shut down, with three immediate radiation deaths and an estimated 50 total deaths from leukemia over the ten years following its meltdown. Every year since its shutdown, over 200 Ukrainians died early from pulmonary disease that has long been attributed to normal operational atmospheric exhaust products from coal, which exhausts include measurably more radioactive isotopes than the steam from nuclear plants; coal comes from the ground where neutron activation from radium is normal. But the NRC has not, since I last followed it, the charter to monitor radiation from coal or natural gas generators.
I’ve also read reports of a large increase in deaths from alcoholism stimulated by the loss of jobs and subsequent stress on families because industry in the city of Chernobyl suffered greatly.
China has serious air pollution problems It knows that nuclear power is the cleanest and least expensive source of clean energy for a country which is now the world’s largest manufacturer. I noted a twenty year plan announced by China to add 135 commercial nuclear plants by 2015. Good for China. We have a class of Mandarins ourselves who have discovered how to profit by obstructing production of efficient electricity generators. The Marxists like political activist, Presidential Science advisor John Holdren were very effective at shutting down a brand new nuclear electric plant near Sacramento California, already at low power, thus permitting California to buy some hydro, but mostly coal generated electricity from New Mexico to make up for the base load power Rancho Seco would have provided. Their goal, much like Obama’s, was a Marxist Utopia - small is beautiful - but became a war against capitalism, like the one Obama is successfully executing now.
The general tactic is to providing justifications that satisfy the ignorant while directing profits generated by taxpayers to hundreds of obvious boondoggles like Solyndra, which anyone familiar with semiconductor manufacturing costs knew made no sense being built in Fremont California, and anyone familiar with solar electric conversion efficiencies knows is intentional misdirection. Only enormous and wasteful subsidies can provide the misleading impression to some that they have saved money on their electric bills. Then the “green” companies kick back profits enabled by political cronies, crooks, to campaign funds.
“$12,000,000,000? Nice try, looks like a lot of money. It’s only 12 billion. “
LOL
“If that insurance is such a good deal, why won’t private insurers touch it?”
It is PRIVATE!
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