The Fast Breeder
The possibility of breeding in a fast reactor has been adequately
nically operable for producing power and which will still breed.
For success,
the Fast Breeder must operate at a very high power density, e.g., 1000 KW of
heat per liter of total core volume.
The effect of "diluting" the core with
other materials for the heat extraction function is critical on the neutron
spectrum and on breeding performance, and is as yet very uncertain.
The present program is concentrating on a second Experimental Breeder
Reactor (EBR~II), to be built at Arco at a cost of about $19 million,
It
will be primarily a test of engineering components to demonstrate technical
feasibility as a power producer,
Since feasibility must involve recycling
of fuel,it will be an integrated plant, with refabrication of fuel elements
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by remote control.
The heat production will be some 60 megawatts and electric
power will be generated.
Current thinking on fuel element design envisages cylindrical pins which
are centrifugally cast and only 0.164" in diameter, in long tubes of 0,188"
OD, with sodium bonding in the annulus and sodium cooling outside the tubes.
An alternate design uses thin perforated wafers, prepared by powder metallurgy,
which are held together with tubes pushed through the perforations in the
uranium wafer matrix.
Sodium coolant flows through the tubes.
In either
case the mid-section of the length will contain active material and the ends
will contain depleted uranium blanket material.
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The question
now is whether a fast reactor can be designed and built which will be tech-
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demonstrated in the first Experimental Breeder Reactor (EBR-I).
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