ERRORS in rebuttal to "Pandora's Promise"

[kristopher]

65. "what comes out of an Integral Fast Reactor"

You wrote, "There is a DIFFERENCE in the composition of what comes out of a Light Water Reactor, and what comes out of an Integral Fast Reactor."

I'm well aware of that. But tell me what is Integrated with the Fast-breeder Reactor and where does the fuel come from before it is loaded and where does it go when it "comes out" of the reactor? Also, in conceptualizing way IFRs are to be actually deployed at scale how many are going to be needed? Isn't it true that they are visualized as being mated with about 4 LWR reactors and are, in fact, not really thought of by even most experts that support them as "the" fuel cycle that will address the 4 Horsemen of the Atomic Era?
Anyway, Integrating the Fast (breeder) Reactor with the pyroprocessing is an entirely different animal than just a breeder reactor. There are some good aspects to the technology, but there are also some very real drawbacks, including the potential proliferation situation that would be created in future cases like Iran.

Efforts in the United States to resuscitate fast reactors
Since the cancellation of the CRBR in 1983, ANL and the Nuclear Energy program office in the DOE have continued to seek ways to revive fast-neutron reactor development in the United States, first by promoting the Integral Fast Reactor concept,72 then through the Generation IV International Forum, and most recently the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).

Integral Fast Reactor and pyroprocessing
In the wake of the demise of the Clinch River Reactor project, ANL scientists developed and promoted the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) concept. Patterned after the EBR-II with its Integral Fast Reactor fuel cycle facility (see EBR-II discussion), the IFR would integrate the plutonium-breeder reactor with an on-site spent fuel pyroprocessing and electro-refining process. In this process, plutonium and the minor transuranic elements would be separated and recycled together into new fuel.

The IFR was advanced as the key to making the breeder reactor economical, proliferation-resistant and environmentally acceptable.73 There were ample grounds for skepticism, however. Most importantly, pyroprocessing looked still more expensive than conventional reprocessing. Moreover, were the IFR technology to be adopted by a non-weapon state it would provide the country with access to tons of plutonium in each co-located reactor and reprocessing facility. A cadre of experts trained in transuranic chemistry and plutonium metallurgy could separate out the plutonium from the other transuranic elements using hot cells and other facilities on-site. A 1992 study commissioned jointly by the U.S. Departments of Energy and State describes a variety of ways to use a pyroprocessing plant to produce relatively pure plutonium.74

Fast Reactor Development in the United States
Despite these problems, ANL was able to attract federal support for the IFR concept for a decade until the Clinton Administration cancelled the IFR program and the Congress terminated its funding in 1994. As a political compromise with Congress, it was agreed that while EBR-II would be shut down, funding of the fuel reprocessing research would continue—renaming it the “actinide recycling project.”75 A decade later this program would be re-characterized and promoted as necessary for long-term management of nuclear waste—becoming the centerpiece of the George W. Bush Administration’s GNEP.

After Congress terminated funding for the IFR program, the DOE kept its pyroprocessing program alive by selecting it to process 3.35 metric tons of sodium-bonded EBR-II and FFTF spent fuel at INL. In 2006, the DOE estimated that pyroprocessing could treat the remaining 2.65 tons of this fuel in eight years at a cost of $234 million, including waste processing and disposal for a reprocessing cost of approximately $88,000/kg.76
Pg 103, 104

Conclusion
Although there are safety issues generic to liquid metal fast reactors, it does not appear that they were the predominant reasons for the demise of the breeder program in the United States. More important were proliferation concerns and a growing conviction that breeder reactors would not be needed or economically competitive with light-water reactors for decades, if ever.

Under GNEP, the DOE expressed renewed interest in fast reactors, initially as burner reactors to fission the actinides in the spent fuel of the light-water reactors. So far, the new designs are mostly paper studies, and the prospect of a strong effort to develop the burner reactors is at best uncertain. The Obama Administration has terminated the GNEP Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and efforts by DOE to move to near-term commercialization of fast reactors and the closed fuel cycle for transmutation of waste. As this report went to press, it was debating whether to even continue R&D on fast-neutron reactors.83 The economic and nonproliferation arguments against such reactors remain strong.
Pg 105


relevant notes:
72 This is the concept in which the spent fuel would be recycled onsite, Jack M. Holl, Argonne National Laboratory, 1946–96 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 425, 426, 443–446.

73 Ibid.

74 R.G. Wymer et al., “An Assessment of the Proliferation Potential and International Implications of the Proliferation Potential and International Implications of the Integral Fast Reactor,” Martin Marietta K/IPT-511 (May 1992); prepared for the Departments of State and Energy.

75 J. M. Holl, op. cit., 456.

76 U.S. Department of Energy, “Preferred Disposition Plan for Sodium-Bonded Spent Nuclear Reactor Fuel,” Report to Congress (March 2006), tables 1 and 3. Pyroprocessing would account for 57 percent of the total cost<http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/DisPlanForSodBondedSNFMarch2006.pdf> (accessed 14 June 2009).


From "Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status"
Thomas B. Cochran, Harold A. Feiveson, Walt Patterson, Gennadi Pshakin, M.V. Ramana, Mycle Schneider, Tatsujiro Suzuki, Frank von Hippel

International Panel on Fissile Materials Feb 2010

You wrote,

In addition; the ONLY study of the proliferation risk of the Integral Fast Reactor, specifically, that I'm aware was done by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the early '90s. I've NEVER seen any other proliferation risk studies on the IFR.

See reference 74 above, I'm guessing that's what you're referring to. Contrary to your experience, there are quite a few credible proliferation assessments prepared by or under contract to DOE ranging from 1986 to 2003.

The most recent (which dovetails with the Bush push for the GNEP program mentioned by von Hippel) has this to say:

In the most basic analysis, only extrinsic barriers are effective against national proliferation, whether overt or covert. By extrinsic barriers, we mean the international nuclear nonproliferation regime that includes a collection of treaties, agreements, national policies and laws, multilateral inspections, and export control practices. The host country is responsible for safeguarding and securing the nuclear materials in the fuel cycle from sub-national or terrorist groups, again through
such extrinsic barriers as access control, a protective force, and an effective nuclear materials accountancy program. Intrinsic barriers such as high radiation fields potentially can make this task easier and perhaps less costly. However, some traditionalists dislike inherent proliferation-resistant characteristics because they make precise measurements more difficult due to high background signals and the problem of obtaining a representative sample from a heterogeneous matrix. This argument, which when carried to its extreme would seem to favor pure plutonium metal, fails to consider the effect on the overall system of safeguards or the potential for new developments.

International deployment is a key issue in nonproliferation analysis. But the idea that to be developed, a technology must be deployable anywhere simply doesn’t pass muster. Performing a proliferation-resistance assessment for deployment of an IFR nuclear park in a country that otherwise does not possess a significant nuclear infrastructure is not a particularly useful exercise— in spit of the fact that its intrinsic barriers would be relatively effective in such a situation. Advanced closed fuel cycles in today’s context would only seem to make sense in countries with a substantial nuclear energy investment and where nuclear waste management and national energy security are priorities.

I was going to be like you here, and not tell you anything else because, hey, "it's classified."

But I won't; the final quoted section is from:
PROLIFERATION RESISTANCE ASSESSMENT OF THE INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR
Harold F. McFarlane Argonne National Laboratory P. O. Box 2528 Idaho Falls, Idaho 83415, USA

BTW, I want to congratulate you on your dedication to the use of inapt metaphors; they do clarify the picture but perhaps not in the way you imagine.