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A D N A
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1GEM STA R
Green Energy-MultiplierSub-critical, Thermal-spectrum,Accelerator-driven, Recycling Reactor
GEM STA R
R. Bruce Vogelaar
Virginia TechOctober 28, 2011APS - DNP
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2GEM STA R
The Inconvenient TruthAl Gore
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3GEM STA R
Global Warming is happening now
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4GEM STA R
nuclear energy will probably beconfirmed in most of today's nuclearcountries as a low carbon energy source
needed to limit imports of oil and gas andto meet fast growing energy needs
Carre previous talk
and everyone puts a brave face on it;sans any other alternative for the past 40years
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but there are otherinconvenient truthsWaste
long-lived fission products andactinides
bury in Yucca Mountain? (now cancelled!)
burn with accelerators?burn in next generation reactors?
store on sitecurrent practice
Weapons Proliferationenrichmentreprocessing
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Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA)of Core Damage Frequency (CDF)
E v e n
t s / R e a c
t o r - Y e a r
Safety
SMR claim 10 -8 events per reactor-year
thats 1 event in 1,000,000 reactors over 100 years
is there a credibility issue?
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8GEM STA R
current prices for electricity(estimated by Black and Veatch, Overland Park, Kansas)
cents/kwhCoal without CO 2 capture 7.8Natural gas at high efficiency 10.6Old nuclear 3.5New nuclear 10.8Wind in stand alone 9.9Wind with the necessary base line back-up 12.1Solar source for steam-driven electricity 21.0Solar voltaic cells; higher than solar steam electricity
*NYT, Sunday (3/29/09) by Matthew Wald
GEM*STAR: 4.5 per kWh with natural uranium fuel
Cost
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Paradigm Shift
ReprocessingThermalReactorsEnrichment
NaturalUranium
FastReactors
GeologicStorage
Liquid FuelRecycling Reactor
Withsupplemental neutrons
Natural uranium orLWR spent fuel
GeologicStorageEnd-of-life waste remnant reduced
by x10 and delayed by centuriesNo enrichment, no reprocessing
GEM STA R
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10GEM STA R
what would an accelerator based nuclear energy deployment look like
UraniumOre
Enrichment
FuelFabrication
AdvancedBurner
Reactor
FuelSeparation
TransmutationFuel
Fabrication
Fission Products and Process Losses
LightWater
Reactor
High-LevelWasteRepository
Low-LevelWaste
DisposalStorage
Strontium, Cesium and Uranium
TransmutationReprocessing
RecyclingLiquid-fuelSubcritical
Reactor
reduce and defer waste
Fluorination
Accelerator or fusion neutrons
GNEP
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The cost of neutrons has dropped dramatically
1.00E+05
1.00E+06
1.00E+07
1.00E+08
1.00E+09
1.00E+10
1.00E+11
1.00E+12
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Year
N e u t r o n c o s t
( $ p e r g r a m
)
Electrosta tic tandemwith stopping lengthdeuterium target
LAMPF withW target
SNS withHg target
GEM*STARwith U target
Electron linac w ithW target
~40 grams of neutrons will produce 1GWe for one year
($432M @ 5 /kWh)
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Proton Driven Sub-Critical System
electric thermaltbeam fissiont
beam beamn f tbeam1 f n t
walla 1 f n tnet electric power out
power on targetelectric wall
walla 1 f n t
1a
t m
Ewall Ebeama Eelectric
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a
Design criteria: large m (fissions per neutron),limiting the need to maximize a (accelerator efficiency)
uranium fuel (un-reprocessed LWR spent fuel is actually better) molten salt eutectic improved neutron utilization & target design
This is what the GEM*STAR project achieves.Results in multiple advantages over existing (orplanned) nuclear energy systems.
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Solid Fuel Issues
volatile fission-product build-upwithin cladding
much more centrallypeaked for driven
systems
non-uniform fuelconsumption
thermal shock due to beam trips (~800 320)
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Molten Salt Eutectic Fuel
ThF 4
UF 4
LiF : UF 4LiF
850
950
1050
750 650
1111 o
1035 o845o
568 o
565 o
500 o
490o
550
Uranium or Thoriumfluorides form eutecticmixture with 7LiF salt.
High boiling point lowvapor pressure
Proven in ORNLMSRE reactorusing ModifiedHastelloy-N(235 U, 239 Pu, 233 U)
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consider a clear liquid which releases heat when
exposed to light, eventually turning a dark purpleInitial fill
with continuous feed-and-bleed beginning here
color and heat output remainsconstant indefinitely
equilibrated isotope fractionsthroughout core and throughout time
increasing light exposure
feed
bleedfast internal mixing
10 -6 less volatile fission-productbuild-up in core
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For 50 years, and even today, people argue for fast-spectrum systems.
Why?
Faster burn-up of heavy actinides.
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But Using Thermal Spectrum0.01 0.2 eV
highest tolerance for fission products: spin structure and resonance spacing reducescapture cross-section at thermal energies:
-fission (239 Pu)-capture (f.p.)
151 Sm (transmuted rapidly to low c nuclei) 135 Xe (continuously removed as a gas)
more than compensates for slower fission ofheavy actinides (which are burned anyway)
~ 100 (vs ~ 10 @ 50 keV)
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extracts many times more fission energy,
without additional long-lived actinides
Feed material:
LWR spent fuel 20 GWy
Acc 1 40 GWy
Acc 2 60 GWy
etc
major reduction and deferral of waste
Relative Wasteafter 2 passes
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Recycling
first pass(40+ years)
second pass(40+ years)
each can be usedto start anotherpre-equililbrated
core every 5 years
subsequent passes (fusion n source?)
40 years worth of LWR spent fuel
under-coreinterim storage
under-coreinterim storage
under-coreinterim storage
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Existing Proton Beam Power
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Target Considerations
GEM*STAR Internal Target
diffuse (or multiple) beam spots molten salt used for heat removal high neutron yield from uranium
(but minimize target fission) spent target fluorinated and used as fuel
minimize impact on local reactivity
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-0.005
0.000
0.005
0.010
0.015
0.020
0.025
0.030
0
30
60
90
120
150
180
210
240
270
300
330
360
0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00
F l u e n c e
( n / b )
N
e t E l e c
t r i c P o w e r O
u t / P o w e r o n
T a r g e
t
Fissioned Fraction (%)
Fuel: Natural Uranium (MCNPX)
GEM*STAR Split Design
Traditional Graphite (0.6 ppm B)
Fluence
equiv. to a LWRburning 0.5% ofnatural uranium
running at peak gives 91%Pu-239 plutonium
running at x60 gives 70%Pu-239 plutonium
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0.000
0.005
0.010
0.015
0.020
0.025
0.030
0.035
0.040
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50
F l u e n c e
( n / b )
N e
t E l e c
t r i c P o w e r
/ P o w e r o n
T a r g e
t
Additional Fission Fraction (%)
GEM*STAR split designTraditional Graphite100 * keff + 50Fluence
feed LWRspent fuel
fissionproductfraction
SuperCritical
Fuel: un-reprocessed Light-Water-Reactor spent fuel
running at x140 gives45% Pu-239 plutonium
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High Temperature MSAdvantages over LWRs
no high-pressure containment vessel 34% 44% efficiency for thermal to electric
conversion (low-pressure operation)
match to existing coal-fired turbines, enablesstaged transition for coal plants, addressingpotential cap-and-trade issues
synthetic fuels via modified Fischer-Tropschmethods very attractive (much morerealistic than hydrogen economy)
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What are the obstacles?GEM*STAR uses liquid fuel but NRC is onlycomfortable with solid fuel, despite MSRE successExisting commercial deployed fleet of LWRsEngineers in nuclear industry have little experience withaccelerators; physicists using accelerators have little
experience with nuclear power plants littlecooperation in base programs (vague talk about adistant ATW application)current focus (in US) only on existing and newmodular reactors (scaled down versions of existingdeployed technology)
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advantages seem clearhowever:
DOE NE Report to Congress, April 2010, Nuclear EnergyResearch and Development Roadmap does not include the wordaccelerator even once .
DOE Science (HEP & NP) ADS Report (September 17, 2010) Finding #2: Accelerator-driven sub-critical systems offer the potential for safely
burning fuels which are difficult to incorporate in critical systems, for examplefuel without uranium or thorium . [ WHY not U ??? ]
Finding #3: Accelerator driven subcritical systems can be utilized to efficientlyburn minor actinide waste .
Finding #4: Accelerator driven subcritical systems can be utilized to generatepower from thorium-based fuels
MIT Energy Initiative;OBamas Blue Ribbon Panel 100 year horizon, no new direction, yet continue DOE-NE funding at current level
DOE NE thinking about an ADS demonstration in 2050 (ie, when Im 90 )
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ADS Technology Readiness AssessmentTransmutation
Demonstration
Industrial Scale
Transmutation
Power
GenerationFront End System PerformanceReliability
AcceleratingSystem
RF Structure Development and PerformanceLinac Cost Optimization
ReliabilityRF Plant Performance
Cost Optimization Reliability
Beam Delivery PerformanceTarget Systems Performance
ReliabilityInstrumentationand Control
Performance
Beam Dynamics Emittance/halo growth/beamlossLattice design
Reliability Rapid SCL Fault RecoverySystem Reliability Engineering Analysis
34
Green: ready, Yellow: may be ready, but demonstrationor further analysis is required, Red: more development isrequired.
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Table was based on outdated criteria, permitting modest R&D butdeferring ADS for power to distant future.
helps motivate Intensity Frontier (ie: Project X at Fermilab) ;but higher efficiency via higher-power beams is not a requirement;$100s of millions are going into solar and wind which have far greater outages.
DOE-NE: It takes about 20 years to validate any new fuel system, so 2050
is the earliest one might imagine for ADS.based on input from solid-fuel manufacturers;but consider how this might change if a new system actually addressed waste,proliferation, LWR spent fuel usage, and safety (thus becoming politically,publicly, and financially desirable).
Table 1: Range of Parameters for Accelerator Driven Systems for four missions
described in this whitepaper
Transmutation Demonstration
Industrial Scale
Transmutation
Industrial Scale Power Generation
with Energy Storage
Industrial Scale Power Generation without
Energy Storage Beam Power 12 MW 10 75 MW 10 75 MW 10 75 MW Beam Energy 0.5 3 GeV 12 GeV 12 GeV 12 GeV Beam trips (t > 5 min) < 50/year < 50/year < 50/year < 3/year Availability > 50% > 70% > 80% > 85%
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People (and agencies) are legitimatelyafraid that if they blink theyll lose what
they already have.
How to proceed in this environment?
ARPA-E: nothing nuclear at allNEUP: low relevance
start with liquid transport fuel demonstrationusing other green energy (~$7M);transition it to nuclear (GEM*STAR)
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ADNA (Accelerator Driven Neutron Applications, Inc)
commercial project for liquid transportation fuel generate funds for demonstration facility
GEM*STAR Consortium continue to engage funding agencies and raise
awareness (DOE, ARPA-E, DTRA, NSF, NNSA, Foundations, Federal and State governments, etc) Virginia research facility Powerful motivation for existing and NEW multi-
disciplinary research avenues
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