The
Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) is a type of nuclear reactor
called a 'breeder'. It has many important advantages
over the standard type of light water reactor (LWR)
used all around the world at present. The 'burning'
(fission) process in an LWR
uses under one percent of all its uranium fuel
that has to be dug out of the ground in big mines.
This is because almost all uranium is made up of its
non-fissile (which means it won't 'burn' in a reactor)
isotope, uranium 238. The fissile isotope, uranium
235, needs to be enriched so that the nuclear fission
'burn' reaction will start inside the reactor. The
remaining 99 percent of the mined uranium becomes radioactive
nuclear waste which is one main reason people don't
like nuclear power. So what can IFR breeders do that
older LWRs can't?
- IFRs can 'burn'
almost all their fuel. So they can make a whopping
50 times more energy than LWRs from
the same amount of fuel. Among other things,
this means much less uranium needs to be mined
. What's more, this reactor can use the much more
common metallic element, thorium
- IFRs can
'burn' the long-lasting
nuclear waste (actinides) produced by older
inefficient reactors like LWRs. It can also
'burn' plutonium which people made specially
for nuclear bombs. Now that there are agreements
to get rid of many nuclear weapons, the dangerous
plutonium needs to be destroyed if possible.
What better way to do it than 'burn' it up
in an IFR and make lots of electricity? The
end result is a small amount of radioactive
waste
whose radioactivity decays rapidly. It will be no
more radioactive than the original uranium ore within
200 years. That may seem a lot but
existing
waste remains dangerous for tens
of thousands of years
- IFRs are passively safe. This
means that even if the main cooling pumps fail,
the heat from the reactor will just convect away
so the core can't melt down. It was core meltdowns
which happened in the three biggest reactor accidents:
Three Mile Island (USA, 1979), Chernobyl (Ukraine,
1986) and Fukushima (Japan, 2011). They are another
reason why people are scared of nuclear power
For more on IFRs, click here