The Atomic Show #145 – NGNP Fuel Testing Success
On December 4, 2009, I spoke with Dr. Madeline Feltus, the Department of Energy technical program manager assigned the responsibility of coordinating the efforts of a team of scientists and engineers working on the refinement and testing of TRISO fuel particles for high temperature gas cooled reactors.
During the interview, Dr. Feltus mentioned a few web sites. Here’s one of the links that will help you find what she was discussing.
News Release Dated November 17, 2009 – Advanced nuclear fuel sets global performance record
Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:35 — 47.3MB)
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I ask you to send out an email to ALL your contacts to I ask them to Send an email to ask ALL their contacts to use the “Low Cost Energy- No CO2- All Energy, No Bomb Potentials– LFTR and Thorium– USA Must Lead this Project” as their subject line AND their message footer in their email with the link at http://www.archive.org/details/ThoriumRemix2009 in the email footer . The exponential email chain resulting will gain exposure and support for this technology.
Hi Rod
Very interesting to hear a technical discussion because like you I find this aspect most fascinating. Would like to ask how nuclear engineers might attempt to get very high burnups using the Triso particles without depending on up to 20% enriched U235. ie more conversion of U238 to PU239. I have read that the French are in the process of verifying that a burn up of 100 GW days/MT is possible with 8% enrichment with beefed up fuel rods in a LWR. Burn up seems intrinsically related to enrichment of the rarer isotope U235. I would like to see higher burnups be achieved through the conversion of U238 and if Triso is better for this due to its resistance to radiation damage then it sounds a good way to go. What do you think?
Alex
Have there been any economic estimates on commercial TRISO fuel production costs? How was Eskom planning on procuring their fuel? In house manufacture? Sure the little kernels of uranium and thorium are cheap but crafting them into pebbles seems fairly complex compared to simple ceramic slugs stacked inside zircaloy tubes, not to mention highly enriching the initial core load. How automated is the process of pebble manufacture and inspection?
Also the spent TRISO HLW volume would increase orders of magnitude relative to that of LWRs as hundreds of these spent pebbles per year would have to be stored presumably somewhere on site. This seemingly necessitates fairly quick turnaround in comparison with LWR assemblies which could easily be dry-casked for a century. What are the economics of recycling these pebbles, pulverizing and burning off all these pyrolytic layers and graphite and recasting it into 2nd generation fuel loads? 100-300MW power plant locations would not likely be economically integrated into a closed fuel cycle as IFRs or LFTRs, which means a lot of pebbles being trucked around the countryside.
To say nothing of the world’s finite helium resources, why has General Atomics sunk so much into R&D for their GT-MHR? I understand the Adams Engine uses nitrogen. Could a PBMR be adapted to utilize supercritical CO2 as coolant in a single loop?
Check out some additional pertinent criticism:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=151128