Russia made a breakthrough in nuclear power

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The "Breakthrough" project - the Brest-300 nuclear reactor under construction near Tomsk, will open a new page in the energy sector of the Earth. Russia is creating the world's first Perpetuum Mobile with a capacity of 300 MW - a nuclear power plant with a closed fuel cycle. The project with the self-explanatory name "Breakthrough" promises energy without danger, without uranium mining and outpaces competitors for decades …

Forty-three hectares of territory, gray monolithic walls, fittings abundantly sticking out into the sky, cranes and 600 workers. Three years later, in this place, in a closed city Seversk, 25 kilometers from Tomsk, will start working the first in the worldPerpetuum Mobile with a capacity of 300 megawatts is a nuclear power plant with a closed fuel cycle and molten lead as a coolant. The enterprise is called an experimental one, since the supertechnologies for it are so far calculated only on mathematical models. However, having checked them on an operating reactor, our nuclear scientists will receive a reference nuclear power plant of a new generation, breaking away from competitors from Toshiba, Areva and others for decades. The project, which has a self-explanatory name " Breakthrough", Promises energy without dangerand, most importantly, without uranium mining.

Skeptics and the peaceful atom

A few words for those who consider the peaceful atom a relic. Humanity's need for energy doubles every 20 years. Burning oil and coal leads to the annual formation of about half a billion tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, that is, 70 kilograms of harmful substances for each inhabitant of the earth. The use of nuclear power plants removes this problem. Moreover, oil reserves are limited, and the energy intensity of one ton of uranium-235 is approximately equal to the energy intensity of two million tons of gasoline.

Cost is also important. At a hydroelectric power station, a kilowatt-hour of electricity costs 10-25 kopecks, but the hydropower potential in the developed world is practically exhausted. At coal or fuel oil stations - 22-40 kopecks, but environmental problems arise. At industrial wind and solar power plants - 35-150 kopecks, a little expensive, and who guarantees constant wind and the absence of clouds. The prime cost of atomic energy is 20-50 kopecks, it is stable, creates much less environmental problems than burning oil and coal, its potential is limitless.

Finally, the Russian peaceful atom turned out to be almost out of competition. In 2010, when, after a 24-year cold snap, many countries again wanted to build nuclear power plants, our reactors turned out to be cheaper and no worse than Japanese, French and American prototypes. Moreover, we, unlike competitors , all these years we have been building nuclear power plants - Rosatom had something to show to a potential customer.

The management of the state corporation competently disposed of the resulting handicap. As a result, Westinghouse Electric went bankrupt last year. Toshiba, which previously bought out Westinghouse Electric, is on its way. Areva's financial condition is also not enviable. On the other hand, delegations from 52 countries came to Atomexpo-2016. 20 of these countries have not yet had nuclear power. They will now appear for the first time in Egypt, Vietnam, Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh - our Russian nuclear power plants.

Deep hell

The main problem of nuclear energy today is fuel … There are 6, 3 million tons of economically recoverable uranium on earth. If consumption growth is taken into account, it will last for about 50 years. The cost is about $ 50 per kilogram of ore today, but as less profitable deposits are involved in the extraction, it will rise to $ 130 per kilogram and more. There are, of course, mined reserves, and not small ones, but they are not forever.

Uranium is hard to mine or very hard … In the rock of uranium ore there is about 0.1-1 percent, plus or minus. Ores occur at a depth of about a kilometer. The temperatures in the mines are above 60 degrees Celsius. The extracted rock must be dissolved in acid, more often sulfuric acid, in order to isolate uranium ore from the solution. In some deposits, sulfuric acid is immediately pumped into the ground, so that later it can be taken along with the dissolved uranium. However, there are uranium rocks that do not dissolve in sulfuric acid …

Finally, in purified uranium only 0.72 percent the required isotope is uranium-235. The same one on which nuclear reactors work. To highlight it is a separate headache. Uranium is converted into gas (uranium hexafluoride) and passed through cascades of centrifuges rotating at a speed of about two thousand revolutions per second, where the light fraction is separated from the heavy one. The dump - uranium-238, with a residual uranium-235 content of 0.2-0.3 percent, was simply thrown away in the 50s. But then they began to store it in the form of solid uranium fluoride in special containers under the open sky. For 60 years, the earth has accumulated about two million tons of uranium-238 fluoride … Why is it kept? Then, that uranium-238 can become fuel for fast nuclear reactors, with which until now nuclear scientists have had a difficult relationship.

In total, 11 industrial fast neutron reactors were built in the world: three in Germany, two in France, two in Russia, one each in Kazakhstan, Japan, Great Britain and the United States. One of them, the SNR-300 in Germany, was never launched. Eight more are stopped. Two workers left … Where do you think? That's right, on Beloyarsk NPP.

On the one hand, fast reactors are safer than conventional thermal reactors. There is no high pressure in them, there is no risk of a steam-zirconium reaction, and so on. On the other hand, the intensity of neutron fields and the temperature in the working area is higher; steel, which would retain its properties under both parameters, is more difficult and more expensive to manufacture. In addition, water cannot be used as a coolant in a fast reactor. Remains: mercury, sodium and lead. Mercury is eliminated due to its high corrosiveness. Lead must be kept in a molten state - the melting temperature is 327 degrees. The melting point of sodium is 98 degrees, so all fast reactors have so far been made with a sodium coolant. But sodium reacts too violently with water. If the circuit was damaged … As it happened at the Japanese reactor "Monju" in 1995. In general, the fast ones turned out to be too difficult.

Don't worry won't freeze

“Don't worry, the lead in our Brest-300 reactor will not only never solidify, but it will never cool below 350 degrees,” the head of the BREST-OD-300 project tells Lente.ru Andrey Nikolaev … - Special schemes and systems are responsible for this. This is a completely new project that has nothing to do with the lead-bismuth reactors that were on the submarines. Everything here was developed taking into account the latest developments, technologies, and achievements. It will be the world's first lead-cooled fast reactor … It is not for nothing that it is called "Breakthrough". Before you is an enterprise of the future - a fourth generation nuclear power plant with closed fuel cycle.

I was not allowed to climb on the construction site - this is a classified information. They weren't allowed to take pictures either, so the pictures are not mine. They were made by a person who was explained in advance from what angles it is possible to capture an object, and from what angles it is impossible. But Andrey Nikolaev explained in detail why and in what order the three Proryv plants are being built and how a nuclear power plant can work without uranium.

The enterprise will consist of three factories: fuel production plant, reactor itself and fuel reprocessing plant. The fuel production plant will manufacture a completely new composition of fuel elements, which had no analogue in the world. This is a mixed nitride uranium-plutonium fuel - MNUP. The fissile material in the new reactor will be plutonium … And uranium-238, itself not fissile, will be irradiated with thermal neutrons and turn into plutonium-239. That is, the Brest-300 reactor will generate heat, electricity, and besides , prepare fuel for yourself.

Two birds with one stone

In the world today are working 449 peaceful industrial nuclear reactors and 60 more are under construction. During the operation of these reactors, past and future, a planned problem arises - spent fuel assemblies. First, they are put into special baths, where they “cool down” for several years. Then, the "cooled" fuel elements are stored in "dry" storage facilities, where they are accumulated in large quantities. The capacity to process waste assemblies is several times less than necessary. Why? Because it is very difficult and expensive.

The Breakthrough project will build its own fuel processing plant. As you might guess, This plant will not only destroy burnt-out fuel, but give out raw materials for new assemblies … The old fuel rods will be dissolved in acid, possibly sulfuric, then at the plant, using complex chemical technologies, the solution will be separated element by element. The unnecessary is conditioned and buried, the necessary is used. In addition to raw materials for the new fuel, the enterprise will extract from old assemblies the rarest isotopes of heavy elements that are in demand in medicine, science and industry.

By the way, the reactor power of 300 megawatts was not chosen by chance. At this power, it will produce as much plutonium as it consumes. The same reactor with a higher power will produce more fuel than it will consume. So, once loaded, the Brest reactor will operate like an ordinary Perpetuum Mobile. Only a small supply of depleted uranium will be required. Well, and uranium-238, as I have already mentioned, is accumulated by the nuclear industry in such an amount that will last forever.

Large saucepan

- So that you can imagine a reactor, - Andrei Nikolaev continues. - This is a pan 17 meters high and 26 meters in diameter. Fuel assemblies will be lowered into it. A heat exchanger - molten lead will circulate through it. All equipment from and to only Russian production. It will be a completely safe reactor with a reactivity margin of less than unity. That is, in accordance with the laws of physics, it simply does not have enough reactivity to accelerate. Large-scale accidents on it are not possible. Evacuation of the population will never be required. Any failure, if it happens, will not go beyond the boundaries of the enterprise building. Even emissions into the atmosphere as a result of a hypothetical accident will not occur.

Automatic cleaning of the coolant will be introduced in the Brest-300 reactor. The coolant of the new reactor, that is, lead, will never need to be replaced. This eliminates another problematic waste of traditional nuclear power - LRW.

Problems are solved along the way

The authors of the Brest-300 project are NIKIET named after Dollezhal. The money is allocated on time, construction is proceeding at the planned pace, the fuel fabrication plant will be the first to start operating. The launch of the reactor is scheduled for 2024 … Then the fuel reprocessing module will be completed. In parallel with construction, R&D work continues. As a result of these works, changes are periodically made to the construction, so the final final time point is not named.

The Brest project has detractors in academic circles. This is understandable, the project won the competition, in which several more eminent institutes participated. Critics say the technologies used in Brest are unfinished. In particular, they question the use of lead melt as a heat carrier, and so on and so forth. We will not go into details, they are too complex and ambiguous. On the other hand, why should we not trust our atomic scientists? All the projects that the USSR, and after it Russia did in the nuclear industry, were one step ahead of their western and eastern counterparts. So what reason do we have to believe that things will turn out differently this time? It seems to me that you should just be happy for Rosatom and TVEL and at the same time for yourself, because this is our corporation.