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Paradigm Shift: Historic Conference on ’Nuclear Energy of the Future’ in Paris
27 November 2012
Reflecting the potential of the birth of a new paradigm in a world where the old paradigm is about to kill us all, some 300 persons attended an historical conference in Paris on November 22. Organized by the Foundation for the Ecology of the Future, a new entity set up by the Institute de France, the conference brought together some of the best minds engaged in new nuclear science and technology known as Generation IV. After a short keynote by climate skeptic, former French Science Minister Claude Allègre, who said the issue was not to argue for this or this technology but merely to explore the various promising options for progress in this field, former head of Electricité de France (EDF) Marcel Boiteux introduced the day. Debunking the idea that energy and kilowatts were synonymous, Boiteux said that what was really key for the evolution of mankind, was the increase of what he called "mechanical" energy (as opposed to thermal). To burn wood and use heat is one thing he said, but what is really key is power to accomplish work. Nuclear power is taking not only less resources but also less space, he said. Once he showed some of his engineers the French nuclear power plant of Paluel (4 reactors of 1300 MW) and told them: Here you see, on a very tiny piece of land, the equivalent of power of the entire coal belt of Lorraine! The Italian Nobel Prize laureate Carlo Rubbia, a nuclear physicist working in Geneva, then presented the perspective of a dual revolution in nuclear technology: 1) Shift the current nuclear energy cycle, based on transforming uranium-238 into mostly heat, radiation and plutonium-239, towards the use of thorium-232 (three times more abundant than natural uranium), which by isotopic transmutation can be easily "fertilized" into fissile uranium-233; 2) Instead of using solid fuel, use fuel in a liquid form. To propound this perspective, Rubbia presented a long quote from a scientific paper co-authored by Edward Teller only a month before his death in 2004 and already blind, strongly promoting "the burning of this thorium as a fluoride in molten salt." According to Teller, such a plant, constructed 10 meters underground, could "operate for up to 200 years with no transport of fissile material to the reactor or of waste from the reactor during this period." Calling the thorium perspective interesting but for a distant future, Jacques Bouchard, the former head of the nuclear energy division at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and the Christophe Béhar, current CEA head of nuclear energy, exposed the latest French breakthroughs on the development of fast breeders now called fast neutron reactors (RNR). Russia never stopped developing fast breeders, said Béhar and cooperation with France is intensifying. The CEA also worked with India to test enrichment of the solid thorium fuel that India will use in its own nuclear program. Since the French fast breeder SuperPhénix was shut down, the CEA has been working on improved designs to make such breeders even safer. To operate RNRs, which use the highly combustible sodium as a coolant, more safely, the CEA developed gas-driven turbines in order to reduce the risk of any contact between sodium and air or water. Daniel Heuer, of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Grenoble, then exposed the new designs made by his poorly funded team for a new generation of molten salt fast reactors (MSFR). He underlined that his design was chosen by the Generation IV international forum as one of the six models that are acceptable for the nuclear of the future in terms of both safety and efficiency. Most prominently, since the fuel is liquid, it becomes very easy to deal with accidents. In case of a problem with a molten salt reactor, a hole in the reactors allows releasing the fuel into special tanks underneath whose geometrical design stops the nuclear reaction. Through this "passive security" design, a Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima type of accident or meltdown becomes physically impossible. The thorium reactor even can burn nuclear waste as a fuel and its own waste is short-lived and 300 times less abundant than normal reactors. As a bridge between the current nuclear energy production and fusion power, RNRs and MSFRs can play a major role to secure humanity’s existence. Provoked by Russian, Japanese, U.S. and Chinese investment in this field, France might be the last country to enter this market. Russia of course, is in the process of building floating nuclear power stations on barges, both for Arctic development but also for isolated cities located on rivers inside the Eurasian continent. Industrial heat from SMRs could do a great job for water desalination, fertilizer production and petrochemical development said Bonin. In France, Areva and the DCNR (the French Navy construction firm) are ready to go for the Flex Blue program, i.e. underwater SMRs based on French nuclear submarine technology, which are easy to handle and protected from storms and tsunamis. While a small group of radical Greenies tried to shut down the event by throwing stink bombs inside the room, Cheminade’s program for a nuclear renaissance was welcomed with great enthusiasm and many contacts made. |