Clinch River Breeder Story Update

1982 film, with transcript

Catalog description: This was part of the Employee Communications from Carolina Power and Light covering the Clinch River Breeder Reactor.

This is film 7480001 in our catalog.

Show transcript
00:00 This month, Update examines breeder reactors, takes a look at CP&L's new environmental lab, and chats with employees at the tillery plant fish fry.
00:15 Today, I'm Tom Hoyt.
00:26 And I'm Ray Gerstacker.
00:27 Welcome to Update for July 1982.
00:31 Last month's update featured a special look at some possible energy sources for the future.
00:36 Today, more than ever before in the history of man, it's essential to plan ahead for energy.
00:40 During this past century, the worldwide industrial revolution
00:44 and resulting changes in lifestyle gave rise to a relatively sudden upsurge in the need for energy.
00:51 But many conventional sources of energy are simply running out.
00:56 And yet, one natural resource can still be found in abundance.
01:00 Scientists agree that the energy contained in uranium has not yet reached its full potential.
01:05 And if certain groups in this country have their way, it never will.
01:09 What we're speaking of is the Breeder Reactor, one step beyond nuclear power as we know it today.
01:15 Recently, we visited Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project,
01:21 which is jointly sponsored by the U.S. government, private utilities, and manufacturers.
01:27 But before we take a look at that project, Ray and I wanted to visit here at the North Carolina State University School of Nuclear Engineering
01:34 to find out what makes the Breeder Reactor so special.
01:37 Hi, Tom.
01:42 Glad to have you at North Carolina State University.
01:45 Well, thank you very much.
01:46 Glad to be here.
01:47 We're speaking with Dr. Robert Cockrell, director of the Nuclear Reactor Program.
01:52 Bob, how about telling us what a breeder reactor is and how it might differ from the reactors in use today?
01:58 Ray, a breeder reactor is a special kind of reactor.
02:02 While it generates electricity, it actually makes more fuel than it burns.
02:07 It differs somewhat from the kinds of reactors you have down in Robinson and Brunswick in essentially two ways.
02:13 One is in the kind of fuel it uses, and the other is the way it cools the core of the reactor.
02:19 Let me tell you about the fuel first.
02:21 Now, the reactors that you have at Brunswick and Robinson use a mixture of two kinds of uranium.
02:27 Most of the uranium in the reactor is non-fissionable.
02:30 We call that uranium U-238.
02:33 The other part is fissionable uranium.
02:35 We call that U-235.
02:37 Now a breeder reactor uses a mixture of plutonium and non-fusionable uranium.
02:44 Now the interesting thing about that fuel is that the plutonium is
02:50 fissionable and as it's fissioning and generating heat and making electricity
02:54 at the same time it turns that non-fusionable uranium into plutonium.
03:01 It makes some more of itself. So what actually happens is that after you've
03:05 operated for say a year and you shut down and you take the fuel out of the reactor and you reprocess
03:11 it you find that you have more plutonium than you had at the beginning of the year now you can mix
03:18 that with some more of that non-fusionable uranium make more fuel stick it back into the reactor and
03:23 you have a little bit of plutonium left over now you can save that and after about 10 years you've
03:29 got enough to make another reactor for heaven's sake now let me tell you about the the coolant
03:33 to that other point. Now your operators at the Robinson and Brunswick plant are used to
03:39 using water to cool the reactor and actually your Brunswick plant is called a boiling water reactor
03:46 and the Robinson plant is a pressurized water reactor. A breeder uses liquid metal or liquid
03:53 sodium so we call the breeder a liquid metal breeder reactor. Is the breeder a brand new
04:01 technology Bob or have we already been experimenting with it here in this
04:04 country? Oh Ray, the breeder reactor is not a new technology. In fact I think the
04:09 breeder reactor is an older technology than water reactors. In fact in 1951 the
04:15 very first nuclear reactor in the whole world to generate electricity was a
04:20 breeder reactor. Started up in Idaho in 1951 and then there have been several
04:25 breed of reactors that have been started up and run for a number of years there's
04:31 another one experiment of greater reactor number two started up in the 1960s most recently a very large test reactor called the fast flux test
04:41 facility started up in 1980 in the state of Washington now this reactor is used
04:47 to test fuel for breeder reactors and materials but it does unfortunately does
04:53 not generate electricity. So we still need to build a plant that generates electricity.
05:00 Bob, since we already have a Hanford breeder reactor, why do we need to build another one
05:04 at Clinch River? The Hanford breeder reactor is a test reactor. In fact, it's called a fast
05:10 flux test facility, and its purpose is to test fuel and materials for the breeder reactor.
05:17 Now, a test reactor is designed to be run by a research scientist. It has a lot of extra
05:23 instrumentation in it. And you know also, when a scientist runs a reactor, he doesn't worry too
05:28 much if he's down for a few extra weeks while he sets up his experiment. Now, when you run a reactor
05:34 to generate electricity for the customer, you're very conscious of downtime. You're also conscious
05:40 of being able to operate and maintain that reactor with a normal everyday person, with a lot of
05:45 training, of course, like the people you have at Brunswick and Robinson. So what we need is a
05:51 reactor, a power plant, a breeder power plant that is designed for utility that
05:57 generates electricity that can be run by everyday people.
06:01 Well Bob, how long has this Clinch River project been in the planning stage?
06:07 The planning for a breeder reactor to demonstrate the capability to generate
06:12 electricity started back in the 1960s. Now the Clinch River site was selected
06:17 around oh late 1972 or 73 so the clench river breeder reactor project has been in existence
06:23 about 10 years let's go now to oak ridge and project manager bill roth for a look at the
06:30 clench river project today at what stage in the development or the construction of the project
06:37 are you in now we're in the uh the period of heavy licensing activities uh where by and large about
06:47 about 85% complete with the engineering, about 95% complete with the research associated
06:56 with the project, and we're moving into the area where we want to start construction.
07:03 But as with any nuclear plant in order to start construction you have to have a license
07:08 and that means we're interacting very heavily now with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
07:12 to give us the permission to start the construction.
07:15 I see. Now, what equipment do you have on site at this point?
07:19 We have a lot of equipment on site.
07:21 There's over a quarter of a billion dollars' worth of equipment that has been delivered
07:29 or is in the testing phase, delivered to storage or now being tested in various parts of the country.
07:38 we've a lot of it is here in Oak Ridge roughly between 50 and 100 million dollars of equipment
07:47 is stored here in Oak Ridge and the rest is in various other locations around the country we
07:55 have about a half billion dollars of a little over a half billion dollars of equipment committed in
08:01 procurements for the fabrication of it delivery which is is the majority of the major plant
08:07 components and so we're quite what well along with the the engineering
08:13 fabrication and activities leading to the thing we'd like to do next and that
08:20 start construction well do you have any projections as to when construction will
08:24 be finished we hope to operate the plant before the the end of this decade before
08:33 before 1990. And we believe we can make it if we have an efficient licensing process
08:41 that allows us to start construction very shortly. We've been ready to start construction
08:45 since 1977 with our plans and activities. And we were held up by administrative actions
08:56 in Washington, D.C. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1977 was asked to suspend the
09:02 public hearings then that day in that year would have led to the ability to
09:07 start construction the site so we've been ready since then I also asked mr.
09:11 Rolf how long the fuel that we now have sitting in storage yards would last if
09:16 we committed to an active breeder program his answer was most surprising
09:22 at today's total electricity consumption rate this fuel resource that's already
09:31 in mind and is in storage would last at least two centuries at today's consumption rates for
09:39 total electricity so we actually have the fuel sitting around america today and our
09:46 we also have the know-how and our choice is do we use stuff that we already have or do
09:52 we go a much more expensive route with coal and oil is that our choice mr rolfe thank you very
09:59 much for talking to us thank you bill ralph indicated that the clinch river breeder project
10:06 has been delayed about five years are other countries experiencing the same kind of delay
10:11 no tom the other countries are not experiencing the same delay in fact the russians started up
10:16 a demonstration breeder reactor in 1972 and then they started up a commercial breeder reactor of
10:22 600 megawatt electric size in 1976 so they've been operating that one for six years we also know that
10:29 the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan have breeder reactors now operating.
10:36 Congress still hasn't appropriated funds for the continuation of this project. Bob, if the
10:42 okay were given tomorrow, how long do you think it would be before we'd have commercial reader
10:47 reactors in this country? Ray, I have to make several assumptions. One assumption I'll make
10:52 is that we would like to first build the Clinch River breeder reactor so we can get some operating
10:57 experience before we start constructing big commercial reactors so let's say we're going
11:02 to do that well the breeder is now ready to begin construction and it's such a large plant and it's
11:12 a new plant i would guess that probably if we started preparing the site tomorrow that it would
11:18 be at least eight years before the plant went into operation that carries us to 1990. and let's assume
11:25 that along the way that we were beginning to design a large commercial breeder reactor
11:30 but we didn't want to finish the design until the clinch river reactor operates a little bit
11:35 so let's say that it would be all around 1992 or 93 before we would start building the big
11:43 breeder reactor well if it takes about eight or nine or ten years to build one of those reactors
11:49 that will carry us beyond the year 2000. so i'm going to say that it will be about the year
11:54 2005 before we could have large commercial breeder reactors in operation in the united states
12:02 if we start right now with our program build that breeder now well that still puts us 20 years
12:09 behind the rest of europe doesn't it well yes it does but i'm not nearly as concerned about being
12:16 behind the rest of europe as i am about another fact i heard the other day i heard the other day
12:21 that we have enough fissionable uranium to last us about 30 or 40 more years.
12:28 After that, uranium will become quite expensive as we have to go into the mine the ores that have less and less uranium.
12:37 That's going to affect the price of electricity, isn't it?
12:39 Well, it sure is, Ray, because we know what happened to the price of electricity
12:43 when the cost of oil zoomed up.
12:45 And we can expect the same thing to happen when the cost of uranium goes up.
12:50 It's sure going to affect our electric bills.
12:52 I think we need to get started on that breeder.
12:55 Thank you very much, Bob, for talking to us.
12:57 Ray, I enjoyed it. It was a pleasure.
12:59 Although commercial breeder reactors are not yet a reality, there are other products of human ingenuity which can be put to use today.
13:07 Many of these innovations can be found at the World's Fair in Knoxville.
13:10 Barry Perry explains.