XYLENE POWER LTD.

FNR DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT DELAYS

By Charles Rhodes, P.Eng., Ph.D.

SEQUENTIAL INVESTMENTS
There are a number of sequential investments that must be made in order to deploy fuel sustainable FNRs:
1) TRU Concentration
2) Automated pyro processing
3) Automated fuel rod fabrication
4) Automated fuel bundle fabrication
5) Interim radio isotope storage
6) Prototype FNR detailed design
7) Prototype FNR assembly
8) Prototype FNR operation and maintenance
9) Power FNR First-Of-A-Kind (FOAK) licensing
10) FOAK power FNR deployment

Currently no one is financing steps #1 to #6 which collectively amount to several billion dollars. The utilities are ducking the issue of fuel sustainability and are trying to avoid the costs of steps #7, #8, #9 and #10 by using thermal neutron reactors and existing approved thermal reactor subassemblies. There have been announcements of plans to temporarily replace steps #1 and #2 by uranium enrichment, but until the invasion of Ukraine by Russia most parties relied on Russia for uranium enrichment capacity.

God willing, with government financial assistance we might be able to do Step #1 in Canada, which then might then allow INL to get the US government to finance Step #2. However, even if those two steps are successful, steps #3 to #10 will still require serious billions of long term investment capital. Raising this capital may even be a challenge for the Terrapower which is financially backed by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Terrapower has announced a plan to use HALEU fuel but Terrapower may yet discover that it needs TRU to meet FNR safety requirements.

The required capital likely will not be available until politicians remove uncertainty from the advanced reactor licensing process. Better yet, advanced reactor licensing needs to become a insurance driven safety approval process comparable to licensing of a marine oil rig.

The nuclear regulatory framework must recognize that when there is a large number of operating FNRs, sooner or later there will be a significant accident. The issue is that from a legal perspective a FNR accident should be no more expensive or complex than a comparable chemical plant accident, airplane crash or building collapse. These are insurable risks that engineers typically use material strength safety factors of three to avoid.
 

FINANCING DELAYS:
An issue of supreme importance today is the cumulative delay in financing of FNR development and deployment. The financing delay problem is as follows:

1) The only parties with the capacity to finance FNR deployment on the scale necessary to halt further rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration are life insurance companies and pension funds. They will not heavily invest until FNR prototypes are licensed and have worked long enough to demonstrate practical maintainability. A reasonable assumption is that after 10 years of FNR prototype development and demonstration life insurance companies and pension funds will invest on a large scale and will attempt to saturate the market during the following 30 years.

2) Detailed FNR design, FOAK prototype assembly, demonstration and commercial licencing will likely take 10 years and cost about $2 billion. However, no one will provide this financing without certainty regarding timely and economic availability of TRU based FNR fuel.

3) Building a fully automated FOAK facility for economic large scale production of TRU based FNR fuel is likely a 5 year $2 billion exercise. No one will provide this financing unless:
a) There is a committed fuel purchaser as described in #2 above.
b) There is a certain source of TRU concentrates.
c) There is a committed permanently accessible storage facility for radioactive TRU related fuel components and fission products.

4) Building a fully automated FOAK facility for economic large scale separation of TRU concentrates from used CANDU (and possibly Light Water Reactor (LWR)) fuel is likely a 5 year two-hundred million dollar exercise. No one will provide this financing unless:
a) There is a committed TRU concentrate purchaser as described in #3 above;
b) The proponents have legal possession of the used CANDU or LWR fuel;
c) There is a committed permanently accessible storage facility for the highly radioactive TRU concentrates and the weakly radioactive extracted uranium.

5) Proponents can't obtain legal possession of the Canadian used CANDU fuel, as envisaged in #4 above, until:
a) The government of Canada changes the objective of the NWMO (Nuclear Waste Management Organization) from used fuel burying to used fuel recycling;
b) The government of Canada negotiates with the owners of suitable permanently accessible depleted mine storage facilities.
This process would likely take 2 years.
 

Thus under present circumstances the minimum total time required to reach a condition of sustainable nuclear power holding climate change at bay is likely at least:
30 years + 10 years + 5 years + 5 years + 2 years = 52 years.
Hence, under preent circumstances the earliest date of stabilization of the atmospheric CO2 concentration is:
2023 + 52 = 2075.

The most important issue today is to commence this work. Every day of delay in work commencement delays the entire process.

Under the present energy usage pattern and with mainly LWRs, not CANDUs, the known U-235 resource is only sufficient hold climate change at bay for 5 to 10 years. Hence, if mankind is to survive, even with the aid of sustainable nuclear power, in the near term it is urgent to reduce average annual energy consumption by at least a factor of four.

Meeting this energy consumption reduction target requires a combination of electrification of transportation, human population reduction and urban nuclear district heating.
 

This web page last updated July 30, 2023