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Super-Phoenix Fast Reactor

(Figure 1. Super Phoenix)

Shawn Robinson

Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Colorado School of Mines

Term paper for nuclear fuel cycle: The Super-Phoenix nuclear power station in France

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Super-Phoenix Fast Reactor Reactor. In the late 1960’s, France was establishing their

energy economy and decided nuclear power was a long term solution. The main issue

surrounding energy was the ability to secure fuel during high oil prices, so in 1968 France started

design on the super-phoenix, while they were building the smaller phoenix which was a liquid

metal fast breeder reactor. The Super-Phoenix was supposed to be a long-term solution to energy

independence alloying the French to utilize spent nuclear fuel for commercial power production.

The nuclear power station was built in France near the Swiss border. The power station was

commercially operational from 1986-1996, and was stopped commercially in 1997. The Super-

Phoenix was a sodium cooled fast reactor constructed on the Rhone River in Creys-Malville of

France. The life of this reactor is made more famous by the political theatre surrounding the

nuclear power station which became the target of the countries’ Green Party that even committed

acts of environmental terrorism against it and protested during its construction that even had

some casualties. In this summary we will look at some of the key events of the power station’s

lifetime, including design, construction, and operation, as well as major political events that led

to the Super-Phoenix being shut down commercially in 1997.

Need / Background. In the late 1930’s the United States and League of Nations put a

fuel embargo on Japan for military advances in China. Ever since then, politicians of many

countries worry about getting cut from the oil supplies necessary to maintain operations of the

country in the case of a local or global emergency. Fuel and energy security are big issue for

many countries that have to rely on imports for fuel. Back in the 1930’s the fuel embargo on

Japan was so severe to them that it provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and their

invasion of the Dutch East Indies for crude oil. Many countries saw nuclear energy as an option

to liberate a high amount of energy from small amount of imports, and was seen as an investment

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safeguard in case of a major event. Even so, today 40% of Japan’s energy comes from uranium

imports, and if they were cut off from oil again they could not make it through the winter on

Nuclear power alone. Despite these attempts at energy independence, Japan is still dependent on

import of about 9000 metric tons of uranium dioxide per year, importing mainly from Australia,

United States and Canada. This has led to some questionable aspect of their nuclear industry

trying to become independent of uranium imports. Many countries had begun to build nuclear

power stations by the 1970’s in an effort to lower their total dependence on imported oil, but

there were many countries that were concerned about securing a long-term supply of uranium

and threats of a shortage. For these reasons several countries pursued the development of the fast

breeder reactor, which is able to reprocess and create more plutonium fuel than it uses uranium

while generation usable power. There was this idea of the Plutonium Economy that the French

saw as an opportunity to have a long-term secure fuel source, by processing spent fuel and

creating more plutonium through this breeding. This Plutonium Economy was mainly driven by

high oil prices, and a market price of uranium imports being three times what it is today. This

was seen as a miracle technology by some and had many skeptics, and despite the big upfront

cost of construction of a nuclear facility, it was worth it to the French if you could create more

fuel in house through reprocessing. The French began to build the small phoenix, a liquid metal

breeder, and the sodium cooled Super-Phoenix. However, the planning and over spending

backfired as many of the market conditions that would make breeder reactors failed to exist as

previous predictions warned. There was no materialization of the prediction of a long term fossil

fuel shortage, and the uranium market price had not exploded as expected. The prediction of the

energy demand doubling every ten years did not happen either, and increases in efficiency of gas

fired turbines and combined cycle power cycles led to a leveling off of fuel usage, giving gas

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power plants the ability to undercut the upfront cost of a nuclear power station, making nuclear

power uncompetitive at the time. A glut was left in the uranium market that developed in the

decade following the 70’s and the prices has remained flat, with enriched yellow cake costing a

third to fourth of what it did several years ago with it now around $20 per kg. After the incident

at Three Mile Island in 1979 and the explosion in 1986 of Chernobyl turned public opinion

against nuclear power, which then sought to shut down and dry up nuclear programs. This target

was easy to justify because of the high maintenance and operation cost of the super phoenix as

well as the huge French Green Party protest that caused trouble during its lifetime, political and

social back push from the time of its construction to the eventual election of the Green Party’s

representative who saw through with the end of the Super-Phoenix.

Design. French nuclear Physicists have been considered the pioneers of the field with the

1986 Nobel Prize winner, Henry Becquerel, for discovering radiation. During the time the

French were committed to the development of a nuclear course and a overwhelming public

acceptance of nuclear risk, with 64% of the French being in favor of nuclear power production

and only 27% being opposed to it. French suppression of data also led to a less effective anti-

nuclear forces than other countries. The super phoenix came online the same year that the

incident at Chernobyl happened, but did not discourage the advance of the nuclear program.

When asked about the dangers of proceeding given the recent events, the French replied “The

accident in Russia occurred in a specific type of reactor, a type we do not have in France.” This

led to abandonment of graphite gas reactor designs. After the approval of the construction of the

super phoenix in 1972, construction of the facility spanned from 1974-1981. During the

construction, costs rose significantly due to protest hindrance and heavy snow damage. The

facility did not go online until 1986. The construction of the Super-Phoenix sparked several

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protest from the Anarchist group, leading to their use of Molotov cocktails on the construction

site, and was broken up in July of 1977 by the death of a protestor and several hundred injuries

cause by French government firing tear gas into the crowd. On January 18, 1982, five rocket

propelled grenades were fired from across the Rhone river at the super-phoenix during

construction. Two of the five RPGs hit the reinforced concrete outer shell, missing the empty

core. This event created more tension as it rose more questions about safety and risk.

Operation. The Super-Phoenix was designed produce commercial power while

producing more plutonium fuel, by reprocessing spent fuel in a process known as breeding. This

process spent fuel is put in a fast flux, liberating energy by fission atoms that would normally not

be broken down in a thermal neutron environment, while reprocessing more plutonium fuel out

of what was put in. The reactor was a sodium cooled reactor, allowing it to operate at higher

temperature than a normal thermal reactor because the molten salt had a higher heat capacity

than water, and they did not have to worry about creating hydrogen gas. The fast flux of the core

allowed it to breakdown or destroy transuranic elements because the flux is higher energy on the

attenuation cure, so the atoms are less likely to absorb the neutrons and more likely to fission.

The Super phoenix was designed with 650 fuel rods, to have an output of 1.2GW of

power, but over its lifetime, only had an availability of 33% due to maintenance issues, mostly

cause by corrosion and leaks of the sodium cooling system. The facility suffered structural

damage from snowfall in December of 1990, and was not approved to resume power production

until 1992. The plant was connected to the grid in Dec 1994 producing 4300 GWh of electricity,

and 3400 GWh in 1996. In December of 1996 the sodium caused issues were fixed and the

reactor reached 90% of nominal power. Despite the fixes, two previous incidents arose in a third

and triggered an automatic shutdown, and was not re-approved to resume production in 1997 by

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Supreme Court of the State, in a court case led by the leader of the green party Lionel Jospin and

was shut down in September of 1998. During 11 of operation, the plant was nominal for 63

months, down for 25 months of for maintenance, and additional 66 months due to administrative

and political problems during the life of the reactor. Lionel became prime mister promising to

shut down the reactor because of excessive cost, and the last of the fuel rods was removed in

2003, and transferred to spent pools, and plans for the repurposing of the 5,500 tons of sodium

and 70,000 concrete were launched in 2004.

Conclusion. The Super Phoenix was supposed to be a model for the breeder reactor

program, but high maintenance cost caused by the combination of sodium corrosion and

unpredicted structural load due to heavy snow, the political and physical back push of the Green

Party and the overall questioning in safety of the nuclear industry during this time period, the

facility was shut down, and lived a poor example of what the program could have been and

adding another nuclear program to the list unlucky circumstance that seem the almost defines

that decade of nuclear technology. It’s a disappointment to see such a technical feat go to waste,

the ability to reprocess and make more fuel, by liberating energy from the more radioactive

atoms you don’t really want anyways. This would have not only contributed to their energy

independence, but also cut down on the nuclear waste they were producing. Some of the biggest

cost of nuclear power comes from the construction of the facility. Once its built and working, it

would seem to be wasteful to terminate it, but hopefully we’ve learned from the lifetime of this

plant, both technically and politically. The Super Phoenix gets a bad name as a failure, even

though it is often overlooked by public opinion how new nuclear technology was, at the time of

these events, and how significant it was that scientist were able to make these advances in fast

flux with the technology barely being created to developed it. Most, if not all technology needs a

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trial and error period to get off the ground and running. Nothing has worked perfectly the first

time expect nuclear technology is expected to, triggering alarms in public opinion when a

mistake is made. Hopefully now we’ve learned enough to give nuclear technology room to grow.

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References

Tsoulfanidis, Nicholas. The Nuclear Fuel Cycle. LaGrange Park: American Nuclear Society,

2013. Print

Freiwald, A. (1986). The French Cling to Nuclear dream. The Neclear Quagmire, 7(9).

Retrieved October 1, 2015.

N. von Hippel, F. (2001). Plutonium and Reprocessing of Spent Nuclear Fuel. Science, issue

293 (5539), 2397-2398.

J. GUIDEZ, P. LE COZ, and L. MARTIN. LIFETIME EXTENSION OF THE PHÉNIX PLANT.

(2005). Nuclear Technology, 150, 37-43.

Images taken from public domain