The troublesome and so far unsolved problem of nuclear waste storage may derail promising 'new' nuclear technologies.
Editor's note: This report is part of 'Hunting Clean Energy in the West,' a series by Lee Enterprises' Public Service Team Reporter Ted McDermott that examines efforts across the West to meet looming deadlines to decarbonize the region's power grid. Subsequent articles will examine hydrogen, wind and solar initiatives.
The fingerprints of EBR-II can be seen perhaps most clearly on the design for TerraPower’s proposed Natrium reactor, which is slated to be built in Kemmerer, Wyoming, in 2030 or later. That debate involves, in part, looking back at the past, to reactors like EBR-II that used materials other than water to cool the fission reaction and sometimes left behind complex waste. Since powering down in 1994, waste from EBR-II has proved both challenging and promising.
But with reactors expected to use new forms of fuel and to produce more and different kinds of waste, the United States still hasn’t come up with a plan for the nuclear byproducts reactors have already produced and continue to produce each year. A committee of “individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise,” including Macfarlane, raised those concerns in November, when they delivered a Congressionally mandated and Department of Energy-sponsored report to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the merits, viability and waste aspects of advanced nuclear reactors and of their associated fuel cycles.
A high-temperature gas reactor that did operate in Germany from 1967 to 1988 “experienced challenges with inadmissibly high core temperatures, contamination with metallic fission products and radioactive dust, and water ingress,” according to the report. Two commercial HTGRs have also operated in the United States but both shut down early after experiencing repeated struggles to produce power.
The report notes that “processes are being developed to separate TRISO fuel kernels from the graphite matrix to substantially reduce the volume of waste for disposal,” but claims that these methods are “still an immature technology" and “that much research is still required to qualify TRISO fuel for direct geologic disposal.”
“The use of liquid sodium as a coolant allows low-pressure operation and provides more effective heat transfer than water, but an SFR requires an air- and moisture-free environment because sodium metal reacts violently with air and water, and the opaqueness of the sodium coolant presents monitoring and inspection challenges,” the report notes.
“The waste the Natrium reactor does produce,” the spokesperson added, “will be stored safely and securely onsite through proven methods used at plants throughout the country until the United States identifies a permanent geologic repository.” Kim Petry, who leads the U.S. Office of Nuclear Energy's Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition, said her team is working to ensure it understands the types of spent fuel the new reactors would produce and what it would require for it to be stored safely. So far, she said no significant concerns have arisen.
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