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93-530: In 1966, ETEC began as the Liquid Metals Engineering Center (LMEC). The LMEC was created by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to provide development and non-nuclear testing of liquid metal reactor components. The Liquid Metals Information Center (LMIC) was established at the same time by the AEC. The LMIC served as a technical information library relating to liquid metals and liquid metal components for

186-433: A chain reaction , as well as the ratio of breeding to fission. On the other hand, a fast reactor needs no moderator to slow down the neutrons at all, taking advantage of the fast neutrons producing a greater number of neutrons per fission than slow neutrons. For this reason ordinary liquid water , being a moderator and neutron absorber , is an undesirable primary coolant for fast reactors. Because large amounts of water in

279-581: A CCR regulation in 2015 that would restrict the continued use of unlined ash ponds (surface impoundments) by coal-fired power plants. This regulation, was which was modified by the Trump administration in 2018, has been challenged in litigation and remanded to EPA for further revision by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit . In response to the court decision, EPA published

372-460: A blend of uranium, plutonium, and zirconium (used because it is "transparent" to neutrons). Enriched uranium can be used on its own. Many designs surround the reactor core in a blanket of tubes that contain non-fissile uranium-238, which, by capturing fast neutrons from the reaction in the core, converts to fissile plutonium-239 (as is some of the uranium in the core), which is then reprocessed and used as nuclear fuel. Other FBR designs rely on

465-455: A breeder reactor then needs to be reprocessed to remove those neutron poisons . This step is required to fully utilize the ability to breed as much or more fuel than is consumed. All reprocessing can present a proliferation concern, since it can extract weapons-usable material from spent fuel. The most common reprocessing technique, PUREX , presents a particular concern since it was expressly designed to separate plutonium. Early proposals for

558-535: A chain reaction), fission products are viewed as nuclear 'ashes' left over from consuming fissile materials. Furthermore, only seven long-lived fission product isotopes have half-lives longer than a hundred years, which makes their geological storage or disposal less problematic than for transuranic materials. With increased concerns about nuclear waste, breeding fuel cycles came under renewed interest as they can reduce actinide wastes, particularly plutonium and minor actinides. Breeder reactors are designed to fission

651-564: A fifty-year period, initially for defensive missiles, and then primarily for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—NASA space vehicles. That took place at locations in Areas I, II, and III totaling ~ 2,560 acres. The ETEC site is ~90 acres, of Area IV's 290 acre total. There has been considerable environmental impact investigations underway across SSFL, including at the ETEC sites, since

744-529: A fission reactor. Breeder reactors by design have high burnup compared to a conventional reactor, as breeder reactors produce more of their waste in the form of fission products, while most or all of the actinides are meant to be fissioned and destroyed. In the past, breeder-reactor development focused on reactors with low breeding ratios, from 1.01 for the Shippingport Reactor running on thorium fuel and cooled by conventional light water to over 1.2 for

837-416: A half-life between 91 and 200,000 years. As a result of this physical oddity, after several hundred years in storage, the activity of the radioactive waste from an FBR would quickly drop to the low level of the long-lived fission products . However, to obtain this benefit requires the highly efficient separation of transuranics from spent fuel. If the fuel reprocessing methods used leave a large fraction of

930-1190: A heavily moderated thermal design, evolved into the fast reactor concept, using light water in a low-density supercritical form to increase the neutron economy enough to allow breeding. Aside from water-cooled, there are many other types of breeder reactor currently envisioned as possible. These include molten-salt cooled , gas cooled , and liquid-metal cooled designs in many variations. Almost any of these basic design types may be fueled by uranium , plutonium , many minor actinides , or thorium , and they may be designed for many different goals, such as creating more fissile fuel, long-term steady-state operation, or active burning of nuclear wastes . Extant reactor designs are sometimes divided into two broad categories based upon their neutron spectrum, which generally separates those designed to use primarily uranium and transuranics from those designed to use thorium and avoid transuranics. These designs are: All current large-scale FBR power stations were liquid metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBR) cooled by liquid sodium . These have been of one of two designs: There are only two commercially operating breeder reactors as of 2017 :

1023-457: A light-water reactor for longer than 100,000 years, the transuranics would be the main source of radioactivity. Eliminating them would eliminate much of the long-term radioactivity from the spent fuel. In principle, breeder fuel cycles can recycle and consume all actinides, leaving only fission products. As the graphic in this section indicates, fission products have a peculiar "gap" in their aggregate half-lives, such that no fission products have

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1116-429: A proposed rule on December 2, 2019 that would establish an August 31, 2020 deadline for facilities to stop placing ash in unlined impoundments. The proposal would also provide additional time for some facilities—up to eight years—to find alternatives for managing ash wastes before closing surface impoundments. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as "Superfund,"

1209-467: A prototype. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act ( RCRA ), enacted in 1976, is the primary federal law in the United States governing the disposal of solid waste and hazardous waste . Congress enacted RCRA to address the increasing problems the nation faced from its growing volume of municipal and industrial waste. RCRA was an amendment of

1302-419: A reactor's performance is the "conversion ratio", defined as the ratio of new fissile atoms produced to fissile atoms consumed. All proposed nuclear reactors except specially designed and operated actinide burners experience some degree of conversion. As long as there is any amount of a fertile material within the neutron flux of the reactor, some new fissile material is always created. When the conversion ratio

1395-471: A sodium–related test facility require careful management because the residual sodium within the component reacts violently with water, thus is a hazard to human health and the environment. In some cases, bulk quantities of sodium required disposal. Prior to the establishment of the 1976 Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act which regulates the treatment and disposal of sodium waste, ETEC personnel operated an on-site treatment and disposal site. The site

1488-571: A third of the world's thorium reserves are in India, which lacks significant uranium reserves. The third and final core of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station 60 MWe reactor was a light water thorium breeder, which began operating in 1977. It used pellets made of thorium dioxide and uranium-233 oxide; initially, the U-233 content of the pellets was 5–6% in the seed region, 1.5–3% in

1581-544: A thorium thermal breeder. Liquid-fluoride reactors may have attractive features, such as inherent safety, no need to manufacture fuel rods, and possibly simpler reprocessing of the liquid fuel. This concept was first investigated at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment in the 1960s. From 2012 it became the subject of renewed interest worldwide. Breeder reactors could, in principle, extract almost all of

1674-753: Is called "interim status." Interim status requirements appear in 40 CFR Part 265. The permitting requirements for TSDFs appear in 40 CFR Parts 264 and 270. TSDFs manage (treat, store, or dispose) hazardous waste in units that may include: container storage areas, tanks, surface impoundments, waste piles, land treatment units, landfills, incinerators, containment buildings, and/or drip pads. The unit-specific permitting and operational requirements are described in further detail in 40 CFR Part 264, Subparts J through DD. City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey , 437 U.S. 617 (1978). The United States Supreme Court held that states could not discriminate against another state's articles of commerce. A New Jersey statute that prohibited

1767-541: Is called the Former Sodium Disposal Facility (FSDF) and was located at the extreme western edge of Area IV. The components were cleaned at the FSDF by reacting the sodium inside with steam or by tossing them into a large pool of water. The steam (or water) reacts with the sodium and removes the hazardous residues. In 1978, in compliance with the new Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act ETEC established

1860-560: Is due to the nation's large reserves, though known worldwide reserves of thorium are four times those of uranium. India's Department of Atomic Energy said in 2007 that it would simultaneously construct four more breeder reactors of 500 MWe each including two at Kalpakkam . BHAVINI , an Indian nuclear power company, was established in 2003 to construct, commission, and operate all stage II fast breeder reactors outlined in India's three-stage nuclear power programme . To advance these plans,

1953-403: Is enough fuel for breeder reactors to satisfy the world's energy needs for 5 billion years at 1983's total energy consumption rate, thus making nuclear energy effectively a renewable energy . In addition to seawater, the average crustal granite rocks contain significant quantities of uranium and thorium that with breeder reactors can supply abundant energy for the remaining lifespan of the sun on

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2046-457: Is greater than 1, it is often called the "breeding ratio". For example, commonly used light water reactors have a conversion ratio of approximately 0.6. Pressurized heavy-water reactors running on natural uranium have a conversion ratio of 0.8. In a breeder reactor, the conversion ratio is higher than 1. "Break-even" is achieved when the conversion ratio reaches 1.0 and the reactor produces as much fissile material as it uses. The doubling time

2139-626: Is necessary to protect human health and the environment. The amendments established a trust fund to pay for the cleanup of leaking UST sites where responsible parties cannot be identified. It is also recommended that above-ground storage tanks are used whenever possible. RCRA Subtitle J regulated medical waste in four states ( New York , New Jersey , Connecticut , Rhode Island ) and Puerto Rico , and expired on March 22, 1991. ( See Medical Waste Tracking Act .) State environmental and health agencies regulate medical waste, rather than EPA. Other federal agencies have issued safety regulations governing

2232-440: Is the amount of time it would take for a breeder reactor to produce enough new fissile material to replace the original fuel and additionally produce an equivalent amount of fuel for another nuclear reactor. This was considered an important measure of breeder performance in early years, when uranium was thought to be scarce. However, since uranium is more abundant than thought in the early days of nuclear reactor development, and given

2325-445: Is transuranics (atoms heavier than uranium), which are generated from uranium or heavier atoms in the fuel when they absorb neutrons but do not undergo fission. All transuranic isotopes fall within the actinide series on the periodic table , and so they are frequently referred to as the actinides. The largest component is the remaining uranium which is around 98.25% uranium-238, 1.1% uranium-235, and 0.65% uranium-236. The U-236 comes from

2418-400: The activity of the waste is about the same as that produced by a light-water reactor. Waste from a breeder reactor has a different decay behavior because it is made up of different materials. Breeder reactor waste is mostly fission products, while light-water reactor waste is mostly unused uranium isotopes and a large quantity of transuranics. After spent nuclear fuel has been removed from

2511-523: The BN-600 reactor , at 560 MWe, and the BN-800 reactor , at 880 MWe. Both are Russian sodium-cooled reactors. The designs use liquid metal as the primary coolant, to transfer heat from the core to steam used to power the electricity generating turbines. FBRs have been built cooled by liquid metals other than sodium—some early FBRs used mercury ; other experimental reactors have used a sodium-potassium alloy . Both have

2604-469: The Chinese Academy of Sciences annual conference in 2011. Its ultimate target was to investigate and develop a thorium-based molten salt nuclear system over about 20 years. South Korea is developing a design for a standardized modular FBR for export, to complement the standardized pressurized water reactor and CANDU designs they have already developed and built, but has not yet committed to building

2697-905: The Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) is the primary authority enforcing the RCRA requirements, as well as the California Hazardous Waste Control Law (HWCL) of 1972. Arguably the most notable provisions of the RCRA statute are included in Subtitle C, which directs EPA to establish controls on the management of hazardous wastes from their point of generation, through their transportation and treatment, storage and/or disposal. Because RCRA requires controls on hazardous waste generators (i.e., sites that generate hazardous waste), transporters, and treatment, storage and disposal facilities (i.e., facilities that ultimately treat/dispose of or recycle

2790-448: The FBR-600 is a pool-type sodium-cooled reactor with a rating of 600 MWe. The China Experimental Fast Reactor is a 25 MW(e) prototype for the planned China Prototype Fast Reactor. It started generating power in 2011. China initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt thermal breeder-reactor technology (liquid fluoride thorium reactor), formally announced at

2883-670: The International Panel on Fissile Materials said "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them have been steadily cut back in most countries". In Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, breeder reactor development programs have been abandoned. The rationale for pursuing breeder reactors—sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit—was based on

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2976-573: The Sodium Pump Test Facility , capable of circulating up to 55,000 gallons of liquid sodium per minute at temperatures up to 1,300 °F (704 °C), was the largest sodium pump test facility in the world. The LMEC was originally operated by the Atomics International division of North American Aviation and later by way of corporate merger, by Rockwell International . In 1996, The Boeing Company purchased Rocketdyne and assumed

3069-477: The Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965 . The act set national goals for: The RCRA program is a joint federal and state endeavor, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) providing basic requirements that states then adopt, adapt, and enforce. RCRA is now most widely known for the regulations promulgated under it that set standards for the treatment, storage and disposal of hazardous waste in

3162-479: The supercritical water reactor (SCWR) has sufficient heat capacity to allow adequate cooling with less water, making a fast-spectrum water-cooled reactor a practical possibility. The type of coolants, temperatures, and fast neutron spectrum puts the fuel cladding material (normally austenitic stainless or ferritic-martensitic steels) under extreme conditions. The understanding of the radiation damage, coolant interactions, stresses, and temperatures are necessary for

3255-427: The types of tanks permitted. EPA established a tank notification system to track UST status. UST regulatory programs are principally administered by state and U.S. territorial agencies. The regulations set standards for: The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) required owners and operators of USTs to ensure corrective action is completed when a tank is in need of repair, or removal, when it

3348-407: The 1960s as more uranium reserves were found and new methods of uranium enrichment reduced fuel costs. Many types of breeder reactor are possible: A "breeder" is simply a nuclear reactor designed for very high neutron economy with an associated conversion rate higher than 1.0. In principle, almost any reactor design could be tweaked to become a breeder. For example, the light-water reactor ,

3441-402: The 1990s to develop cleanup criteria, characterization measurement standards, and methods to use to reach contractual terms of completion. In the interim, some small site specific cleanups, contaminated surface water flow remediation, and minor habitat restoration efforts have been tried. The cleanup data gathering, and eventual cleanup projects (of chemical &/or radiological toxins), are under

3534-593: The ETEC contract with the Department of Energy. Two distinct organizations within Atomics International were supported by the DOE at SSFL Area IV: one focused on the development of civilian nuclear power and the other, LMEC/ETEC, was the center of excellence for research and testing of non-nuclear components relating to liquid metals. Although ETEC was operated by Atomics International (and later by Rockwell International),

3627-476: The FSDF cleanup prepared by Boeing notes that "a small amount of very low level radioactive waste was inadvertently disposed of at the site…" The impacted soils were removed from the FSDF by Rocketdyne for the DOE in 1992. A video explaining the 1992 FSDF cleanup was produced by Rocketdyne. In 1998, the California Department of Public Health, Radiologic Health Branch determined the site to be clean up to

3720-591: The Hazardous Waste Management Facility (HWMF), a specialized facility to remove residual sodium from used components. The HWMF operated under the Federal RCRA regulations and closed in 1998. The research and development activities at ETEC resulted in contamination to the surrounding environment. While the FSDF was not intended for the disposal of chemicals or radioactive materials, it is clear these materials were present there. The Final Report for

3813-566: The RCRA regulatory program with enactment of the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA). At that time there were about 2.1 million tanks subject to federal regulation, and the EPA program led to closure and removal of most substandard tanks. As of 2009 there were approximately 600,000 active USTs at 223,000 sites subject to federal regulation. The federal UST regulations cover tanks storing petroleum or listed hazardous substances, and define

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3906-699: The SSFL property the R.P.s are Boeing and/or NASA fL, depending on: the Area (I, II, &/or III); contaminant types, and physical toxin location (i.e.: surface soils, aquifers , deep bedrock, etc.). 34°14′03″N 118°42′26″W  /  34.2341°N 118.7071°W  / 34.2341; -118.7071 Fast Breeder Reactor A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes. These reactors can be fueled with more-commonly available isotopes of uranium and thorium , such as uranium-238 and thorium-232 , as opposed to

3999-541: The Soviet BN-350 liquid-metal-cooled reactor. Theoretical models of breeders with liquid sodium coolant flowing through tubes inside fuel elements ("tube-in-shell" construction) suggest breeding ratios of at least 1.8 are possible on an industrial scale. The Soviet BR-1 test reactor achieved a breeding ratio of 2.5 under non-commercial conditions. Fission of the nuclear fuel in any reactor unavoidably produces neutron-absorbing fission products . The fertile material from

4092-613: The Subtitle C regulations, such as hazardous wastes from households and from conditionally exempt small quantity generators. In 1980 Congress designated several kinds of industrial wastes as "special wastes," which are exempt from Subtitle C, including oil and gas exploration and production wastes (such as drill cuttings, produced water , and drilling fluids ), coal combustion residuals generated by electric power plants and other industries, mining waste , and cement kiln dust. See Solid Waste Disposal Amendments of 1980 . The operation of underground storage tanks (USTs) became subject to

4185-427: The U.S. Government required the ETEC be operated separately from Atomics International in order to avoid giving the company an unfair advantage through preferential access to government-sponsored research. Thus, the ETEC operated as an autonomous entity within Atomics International. At its height in 1973, ETEC employed four hundred fifty people. Parent Atomics International employed some 9,000 people during its height in

4278-725: The United States government. Both the LMEC and LMIC supported the United States Government's Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor program. The LMEC and the LMIC were established within a western portion of Santa Susana Field Laboratory called Area IV. In 1978, the LMEC charter was expanded to include general energy-related technology and the center was renamed the Energy Technology Engineering Center. Research and development at ETEC primarily involved metallic sodium because

4371-701: The United States. However, it also plays an integral role in the management of municipal and industrial waste as well as underground storage tanks . EPA has published waste management regulations , which are codified in Title ;40 of the Code of Federal Regulations at parts 239 through 282. Regulations regarding management of hazardous waste begin in part 260. States are authorized to operate their own hazardous waste programs, which must be at least as stringent as federal standards, and are tasked with creating state implementation plans for managing solid waste. In California,

4464-458: The actinide wastes as fuel and thus convert them to more fission products. After spent nuclear fuel is removed from a light water reactor, it undergoes a complex decay profile as each nuclide decays at a different rate. There is a large gap in the decay half-lives of fission products compared to transuranic isotopes. If the transuranics are left in the spent fuel, after 1,000 to 100,000 years the slow decay of these transuranics would generate most of

4557-406: The advantage that they are liquids at room temperature, which is convenient for experimental rigs but less important for pilot or full-scale power stations. Three of the proposed generation IV reactor types are FBRs: FBRs usually use a mixed oxide fuel core of up to 20% plutonium dioxide (PuO 2 ) and at least 80% uranium dioxide (UO 2 ). Another fuel option is metal alloys , typically

4650-428: The amount of plutonium available in spent reactor fuel, doubling time has become a less important metric in modern breeder-reactor design. " Burnup " is a measure of how much energy has been extracted from a given mass of heavy metal in fuel, often expressed (for power reactors) in terms of gigawatt-days per ton of heavy metal. Burnup is an important factor in determining the types and abundances of isotopes produced by

4743-414: The blanket region, and none in the reflector region. It operated at 236 MWt, generating 60 MWe, and ultimately produced over 2.1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. After five years, the core was removed and found to contain nearly 1.4% more fissile material than when it was installed, demonstrating that breeding from thorium had occurred. A liquid fluoride thorium reactor is also planned as

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4836-497: The breeder-reactor fuel cycle posed an even greater proliferation concern because they would use PUREX to separate plutonium in a highly attractive isotopic form for use in nuclear weapons. Several countries are developing reprocessing methods that do not separate the plutonium from the other actinides. For instance, the non-water-based pyrometallurgical electrowinning process, when used to reprocess fuel from an integral fast reactor , leaves large amounts of radioactive actinides in

4929-424: The core are required to cool the reactor, the yield of neutrons and therefore breeding of Pu are strongly affected. Theoretical work has been done on reduced moderation water reactors , which may have a sufficiently fast spectrum to provide a breeding ratio slightly over 1. This would likely result in an unacceptable power derating and high costs in a liquid-water-cooled reactor, but the supercritical water coolant of

5022-564: The direction of the DTSC—California Department of Toxic Substances Control of CalEPA, with a 2017 completion deadline/goal. Interim remediation means, contaminant characterization studies, and all mandated cleanup work is funded by the R.P.s—Responsible Parties. They are the DOE—U.S. Department of Energy and The Boeing Company for the ETEC site (~90 acres) within Area IV. For the rest of

5115-493: The energy contained in uranium or thorium, decreasing fuel requirements by a factor of 100 compared to widely used once-through light water reactors, which extract less than 1% of the energy in the actinide metal (uranium or thorium) mined from the earth. The high fuel-efficiency of breeder reactors could greatly reduce concerns about fuel supply, energy used in mining, and storage of radioactive waste. With seawater uranium extraction (currently too expensive to be economical), there

5208-467: The federal government's sovereign immunity from liability for civil fines imposed by a state for past violations of the Clean Water Act (CWA) or RCRA. Meghrig v. KFC Western, Inc. , 516 U.S. 479 (1996). The Supreme Court held that the RCRA does not authorize a citizen suit to recover past cleanup costs when the toxic waste does not, at the time of suit, continue to pose an endangerment to health or

5301-426: The fertile material in the uranium fuel cycle has an atomic weight of 238. That mass difference means that thorium-232 requires six more neutron capture events per nucleus before the transuranic elements can be produced. In addition to this simple mass difference, the reactor gets two chances to fission the nuclei as the mass increases: First as the effective fuel nuclei U233, and as it absorbs two more neutrons, again as

5394-428: The following key assumptions: Some past anti-nuclear advocates have become pro-nuclear power as a clean source of electricity since breeder reactors effectively recycle most of their waste. This solves one of the most-important negative issues of nuclear power. In the documentary Pandora's Promise , a case is made for breeder reactors because they provide a real high-kW alternative to fossil fuel energy. According to

5487-474: The fuel nuclei U235. A reactor whose main purpose is to destroy actinides rather than increasing fissile fuel-stocks is sometimes known as a burner reactor . Both breeding and burning depend on good neutron economy, and many designs can do either. Breeding designs surround the core by a breeding blanket of fertile material. Waste burners surround the core with non-fertile wastes to be destroyed. Some designs add neutron reflectors or absorbers. One measure of

5580-554: The fuel such a 1 gigawatt reactor would need. Such self-contained breeders are currently envisioned as the final self-contained and self-supporting ultimate goal of nuclear reactor designers. The project was canceled in 1994 by United States Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary . The first fast reactor built and operated was the Los Alamos Plutonium Fast Reactor (" Clementine ") in Los Alamos, NM. Clementine

5673-444: The geometry of the fuel (which also contains uranium-238), arranged to attain sufficient fast neutron capture. The plutonium-239 (or the fissile uranium-235) fissile cross-section is much smaller in a fast spectrum than in a thermal spectrum, as is the ratio between the Pu/ U fission cross-section and the U absorption cross-section. This increases the concentration of Pu/ U needed to sustain

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5766-522: The handling of medical waste, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , Occupational Safety and Health Administration , and the Food and Drug Administration . Congress exempted several types of wastes from classification as hazardous under Subtitle C in its 1980 amendment to RCRA. The Solid Waste Disposal Amendments of 1980 designated the following categories as "special wastes" and not subject to

5859-953: The hazardous waste), the overall regulatory framework has become known as the "cradle to grave" system. States are authorized to implement their own hazardous waste programs. The statute imposes stringent recordkeeping and reporting requirements on generators, transporters, and operators of treatment, storage and disposal facilities handling hazardous waste. Subtitle D provides criteria for landfills and other waste disposal facilities, and banned open landfills. EPA published its initial standards in 1979 for "sanitary" landfills that receive municipal solid waste. The "solid waste" definition includes garbage (e.g., food containers, coffee grounds), non-recycled household appliances, residue from incinerated automobile tires, refuse such as metal scrap, construction materials, and sludge from industrial and sewage treatment plants and drinking water treatment plants. Subtitle D also exempted certain hazardous wastes from

5952-478: The high temperatures for long periods of time was also performed. The Components were designed and fabricated then installed into a test facility and evaluated under operating conditions with the overall goal of improving the reliability and safety of the components and ultimately, the nuclear reactor the components would be used in. The ETEC personnel operated several unique test facilities to evaluate nuclear reactor component tests using metallic sodium. One facility,

6045-602: The importation of waste that originated or was collected outside New Jersey was held to violate the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. Hallstrom v. Tillamook County , 493 U.S. 20 (1990). The Supreme Court held that a citizen suit under the RCRA must be dismissed if the plaintiff fails to meet the statute's notice and 60-day delay requirements. Department of Energy v. Ohio , 503 U.S. 607 (1992). The Supreme Court held that Congress did not waive

6138-530: The investigation and subsequent remediation, if any, could not be found. By 2007, all of the sodium-related facilities have been removed from Area IV with the exception of the Sodium Pump Test Facility and the Hazardous Waste Management Facility. All of the metallic sodium has been removed from ETEC. Most of the 2,850-acre (11.5 km) Santa Susana Field Laboratory—SSFL was used for the testing and development of rocket engines by Rocketdyne over

6231-529: The late 1970s. The distinction between ETEC and AI nuclear division is blurred by the demise of Atomics International and the cleanup of radioactive materials under DOE's "ETEC Closure" contract with The Boeing Company. The US Department of Energy has assumed responsibility for the identification and, if necessary, cleanup of impacts to the environment resulting from the sodium- or radioactive material-related activities within SSFL Area IV. Components removed from

6324-426: The long term. Germany, in contrast, abandoned the technology due to safety concerns. The SNR-300 fast breeder reactor was finished after 19 years despite cost overruns summing up to a total of € 3.6 billion, only to then be abandoned. The advanced heavy-water reactor is one of the few proposed large-scale uses of thorium. India is developing this technology, motivated by substantial thorium reserves; almost

6417-490: The main sequence of stellar evolution. No fission products have a half-life in the range of 100 a–210 ka ... ... nor beyond 15.7 Ma In broad terms, spent nuclear fuel has three main components. The first consists of fission products , the leftover fragments of fuel atoms after they have been split to release energy. Fission products come in dozens of elements and hundreds of isotopes, all of them lighter than uranium. The second main component of spent fuel

6510-416: The minor actinides (neptunium, americium, curium, etc.). Since breeder reactors on a closed fuel cycle would use nearly all of the isotopes of these actinides fed into them as fuel, their fuel requirements would be reduced by a factor of about 100. The volume of waste they generate would be reduced by a factor of about 100 as well. While there is a huge reduction in the volume of waste from a breeder reactor,

6603-403: The movie, one pound of uranium provides as much energy as 5,000 barrels of oil . The Soviet Union constructed a series of fast reactors, the first being mercury-cooled and fueled with plutonium metal, and the later plants sodium-cooled and fueled with plutonium oxide. BR-1 (1955) was 100W (thermal) was followed by BR-2 at 100 kW and then the 5 MW BR-5. BOR-60 (first criticality 1969)

6696-448: The non-fission capture reaction where U-235 absorbs a neutron but releases only a high energy gamma ray instead of undergoing fission. The physical behavior of the fission products is markedly different from that of the actinides. In particular, fission products do not undergo fission and therefore cannot be used as nuclear fuel. Indeed, because fission products are often neutron poisons (absorbing neutrons that could be used to sustain

6789-409: The past. In 1984 Congress expanded the scope of RCRA with the enactment of Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA). The amendments strengthened the law by covering small quantity generators of hazardous waste and establishing requirements for hazardous waste incinerators , and the closing of substandard landfills . The Land Disposal Program Flexibility Act of 1996 allowed some flexibility in

6882-507: The power produced by commercial nuclear reactors comes from fission of plutonium generated within the fuel. Even with this level of plutonium consumption, light water reactors consume only part of the plutonium and minor actinides they produce, and nonfissile isotopes of plutonium build up, along with significant quantities of other minor actinides. Breeding fuel cycles attracted renewed interest because of their potential to reduce actinide wastes, particularly various isotopes of plutonium and

6975-496: The procedures for land disposal of certain wastes. For example, a waste is not subject to land disposal restrictions if it is sent to an industrial wastewater treatment facility, a municipal sewage treatment plant, or is treated in a "zero discharge" facility. Treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) manage hazardous waste under RCRA Subtitle C and generally must have a permit in order to operate. While most facilities have RCRA permits, some continue to operate under what

7068-441: The proposed Fast Breeder Reactor required liquid sodium to operate. Sodium was chosen because it has desirable heat transfer properties, a low operating pressure when compared to water, and sodium has a relatively low melting point . The liquid metal components tested included steam generators , pumps, valves, flow meters and a variety of instrumentation. Investigation into the metallurgical properties of piping exposed to

7161-529: The protactinium remains in the reactor, small amounts of uranium-232 are also produced, which has the strong gamma emitter thallium-208 in its decay chain. Similar to uranium-fueled designs, the longer the fuel and fertile material remain in the reactor, the more of these undesirable elements build up. In the envisioned commercial thorium reactors , high levels of uranium-232 would be allowed to accumulate, leading to extremely high gamma-radiation doses from any uranium derived from thorium. These gamma rays complicate

7254-453: The radioactivity in that spent fuel. Thus, removing the transuranics from the waste eliminates much of the long-term radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel. Today's commercial light-water reactors do breed some new fissile material, mostly in the form of plutonium. Because commercial reactors were never designed as breeders, they do not convert enough uranium-238 into plutonium to replace the uranium-235 consumed. Nonetheless, at least one-third of

7347-672: The rare uranium-235 which is used in conventional reactors. These materials are called fertile materials since they can be bred into fuel by these breeder reactors. Breeder reactors achieve this because their neutron economy is high enough to create more fissile fuel than they use. These extra neutrons are absorbed by the fertile material that is loaded into the reactor along with fissile fuel. This irradiated fertile material in turn transmutes into fissile material which can undergo fission reactions . Breeders were at first found attractive because they made more complete use of uranium fuel than light-water reactors , but interest declined after

7440-418: The reactor fuel. More conventional water-based reprocessing systems include SANEX, UNEX, DIAMEX, COEX, and TRUEX, and proposals to combine PUREX with those and other co-processes. All these systems have moderately better proliferation resistance than PUREX, though their adoption rate is low. In the thorium cycle, thorium-232 breeds by converting first to protactinium-233, which then decays to uranium-233. If

7533-487: The reactor. This process is an obvious chemical operation which is not required for normal operation of these reactor designs, but it could feasibly happen beyond the oversight of organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and thus must be safeguarded against. Like many aspects of nuclear power, fast breeder reactors have been subject to much controversy over the years. In 2010

7626-508: The safe handling of a weapon and the design of its electronics; this explains why uranium-233 has never been pursued for weapons beyond proof-of-concept demonstrations. While the thorium cycle may be proliferation-resistant with regard to uranium-233 extraction from fuel (because of the presence of uranium-232), it poses a proliferation risk from an alternate route of uranium-233 extraction, which involves chemically extracting protactinium-233 and allowing it to decay to pure uranium-233 outside of

7719-408: The safe operation of any reactor core. All materials used to date in sodium-cooled fast reactors have known limits. Oxide dispersion-strengthened alloy steel is viewed as the long-term radiation resistant fuel-cladding material that can overcome the shortcomings of today's material choices. One design of fast neutron reactor, specifically conceived to address the waste disposal and plutonium issues,

7812-519: The salt carrier with heavier metal chlorides (e.g., KCl, RbCl, ZrCl 4 ). Several prototype FBRs have been built, ranging in electrical output from a few light bulbs' equivalent ( EBR-I , 1951) to over 1,000  MWe . As of 2006, the technology is not economically competitive to thermal reactor technology, but India , Japan, China, South Korea, and Russia are all committing substantial research funds to further development of fast breeder reactors, anticipating that rising uranium prices will change this in

7905-431: The site of the breeder reactor. Breeder reactors incorporating such technology would most likely be designed with breeding ratios very close to 1.00, so that after an initial loading of enriched uranium and/or plutonium fuel, the reactor would then be refueled only with small deliveries of natural uranium . A quantity of natural uranium equivalent to a block about the size of a milk crate delivered once per month would be all

7998-609: The standards then in effect. Further cleanup to remove traces of mercury and Polychlorinated biphenyls from the surrounding site was completed in 1999. Other locations within Area IV (and the remainder of SSFL) have been undergoing an environmental Facility Investigation under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act since 1994. The investigation is overseen by the California State Department of Toxic Substances Control . A firm estimated completion date for

8091-483: The stricter permitting requirements of Subtitle C: These legislative exemptions, known as the "Bevill exclusion" and the "Bentsen exclusion", were intended to be temporary, pending studies conducted by EPA and subsequent determinations as to whether any of these waste categories should be classified as hazardous. In its reviews following the 1980 amendments, EPA determined that most of the exempted waste types would continue to be classified as non-hazardous. EPA published

8184-494: The transuranics in the final waste stream, this advantage would be greatly reduced. The FBR's fast neutrons can fission actinide nuclei with even numbers of both protons and neutrons. Such nuclei usually lack the low-speed "thermal neutron" resonances of fissile fuels used in LWRs. The thorium fuel cycle inherently produces lower levels of heavy actinides. The fertile material in the thorium fuel cycle has an atomic weight of 232, while

8277-479: The waste. Some of these fission products could later be separated for industrial or medical uses and the rest sent to a waste repository. The IFR pyroprocessing system uses molten cadmium cathodes and electrorefiners to reprocess metallic fuel directly on-site at the reactor. Such systems co-mingle all the minor actinides with both uranium and plutonium. The systems are compact and self-contained, so that no plutonium-containing material needs to be transported away from

8370-494: Was 60 MW, with construction started in 1965. India has been trying to develop fast breeder reactors for decades but suffered repeated delays. By December 2024 the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor is due to be completed and commissioned. The program is intended to use fertile thorium-232 to breed fissile uranium-233. India is also pursuing thorium thermal breeder reactor technology. India's focus on thorium

8463-419: Was enacted in 1980 to address the problem of remediating abandoned hazardous waste sites, by establishing legal liability , as well as a trust fund for cleanup activities. In general CERCLA applies to contaminated sites, while RCRA's focus is on controlling the ongoing generation and management of particular waste streams. RCRA, like CERCLA, has provisions to require cleanup of contaminated sites that occurred in

8556-424: Was fueled by Ga-stabilized delta-phase Pu and cooled with mercury. It contained a 'window' of Th-232 in anticipation of breeding experiments, but no reports were made available regarding this feature. Another proposed fast reactor is a fast molten salt reactor , in which the molten salt's moderating properties are insignificant. This is typically achieved by replacing the light metal fluorides (e.g. LiF, BeF 2 ) in

8649-474: Was the integral fast reactor (IFR, also known as an integral fast breeder reactor, although the original reactor was designed to not breed a net surplus of fissile material). To solve the waste disposal problem, the IFR had an on-site electrowinning fuel-reprocessing unit that recycled the uranium and all the transuranics (not just plutonium) via electroplating , leaving just short- half-life fission products in

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