[ RadSafe ] IFR and TWR with Bill and Melinda Gates Inteview on 60 minutes. What's Killing The Nuclear Industry?

[David Lee]

Jaro,

Thank you, for a such detailed and up to the date info. I got feeling, that
something is cooking there!

Here is what I looked up. So it is Washington State outfit, Bellevue
(North) pretty close to Redmond (East).
May be, I need to drop my resume there. Who knows, someone may
be interested in an old dog like me, who knows a little about a lot and not
a lot about anything.
As ya'l can see, I got no life, sitting on Radsafe on the weekend. And I
am VERY tired of working, commuting to all these "dead end" jobs with
bossholes.
*Corporate Information***

TerraPower, LLC
330 120th Ave NE, Suite 100
Bellevue, WA 98005
Phone: (425) 691-4086


On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Jaro Franta <jaro_10kbq at videotron.ca>wrote:

> I haven't seen any updates in the last couple of years on TerrPower's TWR,
> but presumably the design keeps evolving.....
>
>
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11686324/Ellis_et_al-TWRs_A_Truly_Sustai
> nable_Resource.pdf<https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11686324/Ellis_et_al-TWRs_A_Truly_Sustainable_Resource.pdf>
>
>
>
> And from another publication.....
>
>
> Fuel Cycle Analysis of Once-Through Nuclear Systems
> Prepared for
> U.S. Department of Energy
> Systems Analysis Campaign
> T. K. Kim and T. A. Taiwo
> August 10, 2010
>
>
> 3.6 TerraPower Traveling Wave Reactor Concept
>
>
> The Traveling Wave Reactor (TWR) concept being developed by TerraPower is
> intended to provide a technology pathway for fast reactors that do not
> require reprocessing facilities and a system that offers a high fuel
> utilization [Ellis 2010]. The system adopts the breed and burn concept in a
> fast reactor, relying in the use of depleted uranium fuel to generate a
> significant fraction of the system power. The system will have no external
> fuel refueling but will allow internal fuel shuffling. Similarly to all
> breed and burn concepts, the initial core of the TWR requires some amount
> of
> fissile fuel, which is currently assumed to be enriched uranium fuel. Since
> the intent is a regime with no fuel reprocessing, the use of transuranic
> elements derived from LWR used nuclear fuel is not an option. TerraPower
> speculates that the TWR should be able to achieve a uranium utilization
> that
> is 40 times greater than that of current LWRs.
>
> The current version of the TWR design is based on elements of sodium-cooled
> fast reactor technology that have been tested in a large number of
> one-of-a-kind reactors over the years. Conceptually, the core consists of
> hexagonal fuel assemblies containing enriched uranium fuel or depleted
> uranium fuel. The core arrangement is such that the breed and burn wave
> does
> not move, but is "stationary". This stationary wave is achieved by
> periodically moving fuel material in and out of the breed and burn zones
> (shuffling). Metallic fuel is considered for the design because it offers
> high heavy metal loading and excellent neutron economy. Zirconium is used
> for alloying the metallic fuel to improve the dimensional stability of the
> fuel during irradiation and to inhibit low-temperature eutectic and
> corrosion damage of the cladding.
>
> TerraPower is now considering the "repurposing" (or re-cladding or
> reconditioning) of the fuel following use. This is to allow the high burnup
> in a given pass through the core to be increased to a much higher value
> (about 50%). This repurposing could involve a simplified reprocessing step.
> In the paper by Ellis et al., the proposed approach is melt refining [Ellis
> 2010]. This is a new twist to the TWR concept. The evolving reactor design
> and associated fuel cycle for the TWR is however to be expected.
>
> The activities on the TWR design are proprietary to TerraPower LLC.
> Information is provided here to inform USDOE efforts on assessing advanced
> reactor concepts.
>
> <SNIP>
>
>
>
>  Jaro
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
> [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of David Lee
> Sent: May-18-13 2:44 PM
> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] IFR and TWR with Bill and Melinda Gates Inteview
> on
> 60 minutes. What's Killing The Nuclear Industry?
>
> George,
>
> Thank you, for explaining it so nicely. My memory, is not as well as it
> used
> to be, so I am not sure, if I ever heard of this reactor concept before.
>
> I did not know that you guys at Argonne worked on such sophisticated and
> cool things! kudos to you guys, I am very impressed!!!
> Fissile trigger and breeder in within in waves. I bet it was exciting and
> exhausting to do reactor design calculations.
> ...............
> .............
> .......
> ....
> ...
>
> On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 10:14 AM, George Stanford
> <gstanford at aya.yale.edu>wrote:
>
> > David:
> >
> >       No, not heavy water (not even heavy water could make depleted
> > uranium go critical -- CANDUs can use natural uranium).
> >
> >   .  TerraPower's TWR (Travelling Wave Reactor) is a variant of the
> > IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) developed at Argonne National Laboratory.
> > It will use metal fuel and be cooled by liquid sodium (no moderator).
> >
> >      Both IFR and TWR need an initial charge of fissile material
> > (U-235 or Pu-239), and then they breed enough new fissile to keep
> > themselves going indefinitely, using ~1 ton of depleted uranium per
> > GWe-year of energy produced.  The main difference is that the TWR
> > would be loaded with 60 years-worth of fuel from the start (i.e.
> > something like 80 tons per GWe), whereas the IFR would recycle its
> > fuel much more frequently, adding fresh depleted periodically, and thus
> would be very much smaller.
> >
> >      George S. Stanford
> >      Reactor physicist. retired from Argonne National Laboratory
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**~~~
> >
>
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