NUCLEAR POWER – DEPLOYMENT, OPERATION AND SUSTAINABILITY Edited by Pavel V. Tsvetkov Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability Edited by Pavel V. Tsvetkov Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2011 InTech All chapters are Open Access articles distributed under the Creative Commons Non Commercial Share Alike Attribution 3.0 license, which permits to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work in any medium, so long as the original work is properly cited. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published articles. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Petra Zobic Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer Jan Hyrat Image Copyright Barnaby Chambers, 2010. Used under license from Shutterstock.com First published August, 2011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability, Edited by Pavel V. Tsvetkov p. cm. ISBN 978-953-307-474-0 free online editions of InTech Books and Journals can be found at www.intechopen.com Contents Preface IX Part 1 Nuclear Power Deployment 1 Chapter 1 Nuclear Naval Propulsion 3 Magdi Ragheb Chapter 2 Assessment of Deployment Scenarios of New Fuel Cycle Technologies 33 J. J. Jacobson, G. E. Matthern and S. J. Piet Chapter 3 The Investment Evaluation of Third-Generation Nuclear Power - From the Perspective of Real Options 69 Ying Fan and Lei Zhu Chapter 4 Characteristic Evaluation and Scenario Study on Fast Reactor Cycle in Japan 91 Hiroki Shiotani, Kiyoshi Ono and Takashi Namba Chapter 5 Nuclear Proliferation 113 Michael Zentner Chapter 6 Ethics of Nuclear Power: How to Understand Sustainability in the Nuclear Debate 129 Behnam Taebi Part 2 Operation and Decomissioning 151 Chapter 7 Long-Term Operation of VVER Power Plants 153 Tamás János Katona Chapter 8 A Novel Approach to Spent Fuel Pool Decommissioning 197 R. L. Demmer Chapter 9 Post-Operational Treatment of Residual Na Coolant in EBR-II Using Carbonation 211 Steven R. Sherman and Collin J. Knight VI Contents Part 3 Environment and Nuclear Energy 241 Chapter 10 Carbon Leakage of Nuclear Energy – The Example of Germany 243 Sarah von Kaminietz and Martin Kalinowski Chapter 11 Effects of the Operating Nuclear Power Plant on Marine Ecology and Environment - A Case Study of Daya Bay in China 255 You-Shao Wang Chapter 12 Microbial Leaching of Uranium Ore 291 Hadi Hamidian Part 4 Advances in Nuclear Waste Management 305 Chapter 13 Storage of High Level Nuclear Waste in Geological Disposals: The Mining and the Borehole Approach 307 Moeller Dietmar and Bielecki Rolf Chapter 14 Isotopic Uranium and Plutonium Denaturing as an Effective Method for Nuclear Fuel Proliferation Protection in Open and Closed Fuel Cycles 331 Kryuchkov E.F., Tsvetkov P.V., Shmelev A.N., Apse V.A., Kulikov G.G., Masterov S.V., Kulikov E.G. and Glebov V.B Part 5 Thorium 363 Chapter 15 Implementation Strategy of Thorium Nuclear Power in the Context of Global Warming 365 Takashi Kamei Chapter 16 Thorium Fission and Fission-Fusion Fuel Cycle 383 Magdi Ragheb Chapter 17 New Sustainable Secure Nuclear Industry Based on Thorium Molten-Salt Nuclear Energy Synergetics (THORIMS-NES) 407 Kazuo Furukawa, Eduardo D. Greaves, L. Berrin Erbay, Miloslav Hron and Yoshio Kato Part 6 Advances in Energy Conversion 445 Chapter 18 Water Splitting Technologies for Hydrogen Cogeneration from Nuclear Energy 447 Zhaolin Wang and Greg F. Naterer Chapter 19 Reformer and Membrane Modules (RMM) for Methane Conversion Powered by a Nuclear Reactor 467 M. De Falco, A. Salladini, E. Palo and G. Iaquaniello Contents VII Chapter 20 Hydrogen Output from Catalyzed Radiolysis of Water 489 Alexandru Cecal and Doina Humelnicu Preface We are fortunate to live in incredibly exciting and incredibly challenging time. The world is rapidly growing; country economies developing at accelerated growth rates, technology advances improve quality of life and become available to larger and larger populations. At the same time we are coming to a realization that we are responsible for our planet. We have to make sure that our continuous quest for prosperity does not backfire via catastrophic irreversible climate changes, and depleted or limited resources that may challenge the very existence of future generations. We are at the point in our history when we have to make sure that our growth is sustainable. Energy demands due to economic growth and increasing population must be satisfied in a sustainable manner assuring inherent safety, efficiency and no or minimized environmental impact. New energy sources and systems must be inherently safe and environmentally benign. These considerations are among the reasons that lead to serious interest in deploying nuclear power as a sustainable energy source. Today’s nuclear reactors are safe and highly efficient energy systems that offer electricity and a multitude of co-generation energy products ranging from potable water to heat for industrial applications. At the same time, catastrophic earthquake and tsunami events in Japan resulted in the nuclear accident that forced us to rethink our approach to nuclear safety, design requirements and facilitated growing interests in advanced nuclear energy systems, next generation nuclear reactors, which are inherently capable to withstand natural disasters and avoid catastrophic consequences without any environmental impact. This book is one in a series of books on nuclear power published by InTech. It consists of six major sections housing twenty chapters on topics from the key subject areas pertinent to successful development, deployment and operation of nuclear power systems worldwide: Nuclear Power Deployment 1. Nuclear Naval Propulsion 2. Deployment Scenarios for New Technologies 3. The Investment Evaluation of Third-Generation Nuclear Power - from the Perspective of Real Options 4. Characteristic Evaluation and Scenario Study on Fast Reactor Cycle in Japan X Preface 5. Nuclear Proliferation 6. Ethics of Nuclear Power: How to Understand Sustainability in the Nuclear Debate Operation and Decommissioning 7. Long-Term Operation of VVER Nuclear Power Plants 8. Novel, In-situ Spent Fuel Pool Decommissioning 9. Post-Operational Treatment of Residual Na Coolant in EBR-II Using Carbonation Environment and Nuclear Energy 10. Carbon Leakage of Nuclear Energy – The Example of Germany 11. Effects of the Operating Nuclear Power Plant on Marine Ecology & Environment- a Case Study of Daya Bay in China 12. Microbial Leaching of Uranium Ore Advances in Nuclear Waste Management 13. Storage of High Level Nuclear Waste in Geological Disposals: The Mining and the Borehole Approach 14. Isotopic Uranium and Plutonium Denaturing as an Effective Method for Nuclear Fuel Proliferation Protection in Open and Closed Fuel Cycles Thorium 15. Implementation Strategy of Thorium Nuclear Power in the Context of Global Warming 16. Thorium Fission and Fission-Fusion Fuel Cycle 17. New Sustainable Secure Nuclear Industry Based on Thorium Molten-Salt Nuclear Energy Synergetics (THORIMS-NES) Advances in Energy Conversion 18. Water Splitting Technologies for Hydrogen Cogeneration from Nuclear Energy 19. Reformer and Membrane Modules (RMM) for Methane Conversion Powered by a Nuclear Reactor 20. Hydrogen Output from Catalyzed Radiolysis of Water. Our book opens with the section on general aspects of nuclear power deployment. Later sections address selected issues in operation and decommissioning, economics and environmental effects. The book shows both advantages and challenges emphasizing the need for further development and innovation. Advances in nuclear waste management and thorium-based fuel cycles lead to environmentally benign nuclear energy scenarios and ultimately, towards nuclear energy sustainability. Improvements in applications and efficiency of energy conversion facilitate economics competitiveness of nuclear power. With all diversity of topics in 20 chapters, the nuclear power deployment, operation and sustainability is the common thread that is easily identifiable in all chapters of our book. The “system-thinking” approach allows synthesizing the entire body of provided information into a consistent integrated picture of the real-life complex engineering system – nuclear power system – where everything is working together. [...]... percent zirconium and 85 percent uranium enriched to a level of about 93 percent in U235 The burnable poisons and high enrichment allow a long core lifetime and provide enough 6 Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability reactivity to overcome the xenon poisoning reactor dead time An axial direction doping provides a long core life, and a radial doping provides for an even power and fuel burnup... low -power critical experiment, was operated at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to explore the feasibility of an air-cooled, water-moderated system for nuclear- powered merchant ships Further development was discontinued in December 1964 when decisions were made to lower the priority of the entire nuclear power merchant ship program 12 Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability Nuclear. .. Wars) and then Japanese military intervention and occupation Being the world’s second largest importer of petroleum after the USA, China seeks to protect its energy corridors by sea and free access to Southeast Asia sea lanes beyond the Indochinese Peninsula 24 Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability China’s naval fleet as of 2008 had 5 nuclear powered fast attack submarines and one... cycle time of 900 hours or 900 / 24 = 37.5 days 8 Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability A disadvantage is that the coolant becomes activated with the heat exchangers requiring heavy shielding In addition Na reacts explosively with water and ignites in air, and the fuel element removal is problematic On the other hand, high reactor and steam temperatures can be reached with a higher... absorption cross section of Xe, and its delayed generation from iodine, affect the operation of reactors both under equilibrium and after shutdown conditions 7 Iodine and xenon equilibrium concentrations Under equilibrium conditions, the rate of change of the iodine as well as the xenon concentrations is zero: dI (t ) dX(t ) 0 dt dt (4) 18 Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability This leads... the Navy’s nuclear training program until that program was reduced after the end of the Cold War 10 Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability The S5G reactor had two coolant loops and two steam generators It had to be designed with the reactor vessel situated low in the ship hull and the steam generators high in order for natural circulation of the coolant to be developed and maintained... above the alpha emission energies of U234 Most of the dose prior to operation from the fuel is caused by U235 decay gammas and the spontaneous fission of U238 The total exposure rate is 19.9 [µRöntgen / hr] of which the gamma dose rate contribution is 15.8 and the neutron dose rate is 4.1 14 Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability Isotope Composition (percent) Activity (Curies) Decay... nuclear power plants has been in nuclear naval propulsion, particularly aircraft carriers and submarines This accumulated experience may become the basis of a proposed new generation of compact-sized nuclear power plants designs The mission for nuclear powered submarines is being redefined in terms of signal intelligence gathering and special operations The nuclear powered vessels comprise about 40... entire sea based strategic nuclear deterrent All the USA Navy’s operational submarines and over half of its aircraft carriers are nuclear- powered The main considerations here are that nuclear powered submarines do not consume oxygen like conventional power plants, and that they have large endurance or mission times before fuel resupply; limited only by the available food and air purification supplies... alternate layers of steel and wood are placed on the sides of the containment The effective dose rate at the surface of the secondary sheet does not exceed 5 cSv (rem)/year The containment is airtight Personnel can remain in it for up to 30 minutes after reactor shutdown and the radiation level would have fallen to less than 0.2 cSv (rem)/hr 16 Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability The . NUCLEAR POWER – DEPLOYMENT, OPERATION AND SUSTAINABILITY Edited by Pavel V. Tsvetkov Nuclear Power – Deployment, Operation and Sustainability Edited. Understand Sustainability in the Nuclear Debate Operation and Decommissioning 7. Long-Term Operation of VVER Nuclear Power Plants 8. Novel, In-situ Spent Fuel Pool Decommissioning 9. Post-Operational. applications and efficiency of energy conversion facilitate economics competitiveness of nuclear power. With all diversity of topics in 20 chapters, the nuclear power deployment, operation and sustainability