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China touts ‘fast breeder’ nuclear reactor, but it’s an unlikely energy solution

the process hasn’t proved workable on a large scale elsewhere. Fast-breeder programs have been abandoned in a number of countries, including the U.S., and the plants that remain are small.

China’s Nuclear Scientists Unveil Latest ‘Breakthrough, WSJ, James T. Areddy, 21 July 11, “…..The China Institute of Atomic Energy said Thursday that a small, experimental “fast breeder” reactor outside Beijing had been hooked to the grid to produce electricity. ….

To supporters of nuclear power, fast-breeding is alluring. The idea is that it produces more plutonium than the plant needs to run, providing fissionable material usable elsewhere in the nation’s nuclear program. For China, which is long on nuclear ambitions but short on uranium, it’s an especially desirable technology.Yet the process hasn’t proved workable on a large scale elsewhere. Fast-breeder programs have been abandoned in a number of countries, including the U.S., and the plants that remain are small. To some critics, it is a nuclear version of the “perpetual motion machine,” a seemingly problem-solving theory that doesn’t work well outside the laboratory….

Among the practical challenges associated with fast-breeders: they are potentially riskier than more conventional light-water reactors, relying on cooling of the reactor core with a potentially dangerous loop of flammable sodium, rather than water. Plus, the fuel input is essentially weapons-grade uranium, which is difficult to handle compared with the chemically stable material that powers most nuclear plants, namely uranium dioxide….

Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says he visited China’s fast-breeder reactor in the weeks after the Fukushima disaster. He describes it as a tiny “research reactor,” ….
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/07/21/china%E2%80%99s-nuclear-scientists-unveil-latest-breakthrough/.

July 21, 2011 - Posted by | China, technology

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