Nuclear Power Deployment Operation and Sustainability Part 2 pot

China’s naval fleet as of 2008 had 5 nuclear powered fast attack submarines and one ballistic missiles submarine carrying 12-16 nuclear tipped missiles with a range of 3,500 km.. Assessm

China’s naval fleet as of 2008 had 5 nuclear powered fast attack submarines and one ballistic missiles submarine carrying 12-16 nuclear tipped missiles with a range of 3,500 km This is

in addition to 30 diesel electric submarines with 20 other submersibles

The Chinese submarine fleet is expected to exceed the number of USA’s Seventh Fleet ships

in the Pacific Ocean by 2020 with the historic patience and ambition to pursue a long term strategy of eventually matching and then surpassing the USA’s regional dominance

11 Nuclear cruise missile submarines

The nuclear powered Echo I and II, and the Charlie I and II can fire eight antiship weapons cruise missiles while remaining submerged at a range of up to 100 kilometers from the intended target These cruise missile submarines also carry ASW and anti-ship torpedoes

The nuclear cruise missile submarines are meant to operate within range of air bases on land Both forces can then launch coordinated attacks against an opponent's naval forces Reconnaissance aircraft can then provide target data for submarine launched missiles

12 Nuclear ballistic missile submarines

Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) on Nuclear Powered Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs) have been the basis of strategic nuclear forces Russia had more land based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the SLBM forces (Weinberger, 1981) The Russian ICBM and SLBM deployment programs initially centered on the SS-9 and SS-11 ICBMs and the SS-N-6/Yankee SLBM/SSBN weapons systems They later used the Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) SS-N-18 on the Delta Class nuclear submarines, and the SS-NX-20 on the nuclear Typoon Class SSBN submarine

The Russian SLBM force has reached 62 submarines carrying 950 SLBMs with a total of almost 2,000 nuclear warhead reentry vehicles Russia deployed 30 nuclear SSBNs, and the

20 tube very large Typhoon SSBN in the 1980s These submarines were capable to hit targets across the globe from their homeports

The 34 deployed Yankee Class nuclear submarines each carried 16 nuclear tipped missiles The SS-N-6/Yankee I weapon system is composed of the liquid propellant SS-N-6 missile in

16 missile tubes launchers on each submarine One version of the missiles carries a single Reentry Vehicle (RV) and has an operational range of about 2,400 to 3,000 kilometers Another version carries 2 RVs , and has an operational range of about 3,000 kilometers The Delta I and II classes of submarines displaced 11,000 tons submerged and have an overall length of about 140 meters These used the SS-N-8 long range, two stages, liquid propellant on the 12-missile tube Delta I and the 16 missile tube Delta II submarines The SS-N-8 has a range of about 9,000 kilometers and carries one RV The SS-N-18 was used on the

16 missile tube Delta III submarines, and has MIRV capability with a booster range of 6,500

to 8,000 kilometers, depending on the payload configuration The Delta III nuclear submarines could cover most of the globe from the relative security of their home waters with a range of 7,500 kilometers

The Typhoon Class at a 25,000 tons displacement, twice the size of the Delta III with a length

of 170 m and 20 tubes carrying the SS-NX-20 missile each with 12 RVs, has even greater range at 8,300 kms, higher payload , better accuracy and more warheads

Nuclear Naval Propulsion 25

13 Nuclear attack submarines

At some time the Russian Navy operated about 377 submarines, including 180 nuclear powered ones, compared with 115 in the USA navy The Russian navy operated 220 attack submarines, 60 of them were nuclear powered These included designs of the November, Echo, Victor, and Alfa classes The Victor class attack submarine, was characterized by a deep diving capability and high speed

14 Alfa class submarines

The Alfa Class submarine is reported to have been the fastest submarine in service in any navy It was a deep diving, titanium hull submarine with a submerged speed estimated to

be over 40 knots The titanium hull provided strength for deep diving It also offered a reduced weight advantage leading to higher power to weight ratios resulting in higher accelerations The higher speed could also be related to some unique propulsion system The high speeds of Russian attack submarines were meant to counter the advanced propeller cavitation and pump vibration reduction technologies in the USA designs, providing them with silent and stealth hiding and maneuvering

Fig 8 The Nuclear Powered Russian VICTOR I class Attack Submarine (Weinberger, 1981) The Alfa Class of Russian submarines used a lead and bismuth alloy cooled fast reactors They suffered corrosion on the reactor components and activation through the formation of the highly toxic Po210 isotope Refueling needed a steam supply to keep the liquid metal molten above 257 oF

Advantages were a high cycle efficiency and that the core can be allowed to cool into a solid mass with the lead providing adequate radiation shielding This class of submarines has been decommissioned

15 Seawolf class submarines

The Seawolf class of submarines provided stealth, endurance and agility and are the most heavily armed fast attack submarines in the world

They provided the USA Navy with undersea weapons platforms that could operate in any scenario against any threat, with mission and growth capabilities that far exceed Los Angeles-class submarines The robust design of the Seawolf class enabled these submarines

to perform a wide spectrum of military assignments, from underneath the Arctic icepack to littoral regions of the world These were capable of entering and remaining in the backyards

of potential adversaries undetected, preparing and shaping the battle space and striking

rapidly Their missions include surveillance, intelligence collection, special warfare, cruise missile strike, mine warfare, and anti-submarine and anti-surface ship warfare

Builder General Dynamics, Electric Boat Division

Power plant One S6W nuclear reactor, one shaft

Length SSN 21 and SSN 22: 353 feet (107.6 meters)

SSN 23: 453 feet (138 meters)

Submerged Displacement SSN 21 and SSN 22: 9,138 tons (9,284 metric tons)

SSN 23 12,158 tons (12,353 metric tons) Speed 25+ knots (28+ miles / hour, 46.3+ kilometers / hour)

Armaments Tomahawk missiles, MK-48 torpedoes, eight torpedo tubes Commissioning dates Seawolf: July 19, 1997

Connecticut: December11, 1998;

Jimmy Carter: February 19, 2005

Table 5 Seawolf class of submarines technical specifications

16 Ohio class submarines

The Ohio Class submarine is equipped with the Trident strategic ballistic missile from Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space The Trident was built in two versions, Trident I (C4), which is phased out, and the larger and longer range Trident II (D5), which entered service

in 1990 The first eight submarines, (SSBN 726 to 733 inclusive) were equipped with Trident

I and the following ten (SSBN 734 to 743) carry the Trident II Conversion of the four Trident

I submarines remaining after the START II Treaty (Henry M Jackson, Alabama, Alaska and Nevada), to Trident II began in 2000 and completed in 2008 Lockheed Martin produced 12 Trident II missiles for the four submarines

The submarine has the capacity for 24 Trident missile tubes in two rows of 12 The dimensions of the Trident II missile are length 1,360 cm x diameter 210 cm and the weight is 59,000 kg The three-stage solid fuel rocket motor is built by ATK (Alliant Techsystems) Thiokol Propulsion The USA Navy gives the range as “greater than 7,360 km” but this could be up to 12,000 km depending on the payload mix Missile guidance is provided by an inertial navigation system, supported by stellar navigation Trident II is capable of carrying

up to twelve MIRVs, each with a yield of 100 kilotons, although the SALT treaty limits this number to eight per missile The circle of equal probability, or the radius of the circle within which half the strikes will impact, is less than 150 m The Sperry Univac Mark 98 missile control system controls the 24 missiles

The Ohio class submarine is fitted with four 533 mm torpedo tubes with a Mark 118 digital torpedo fire control system The torpedoes are the Gould Mark 48 torpedoes The Mark 48 is

a heavy weight torpedo with a warhead of 290 kg, which has been operational in the USA Navy since 1972 The torpedo can be operated with or without wire guidance and the system has active and/or passive acoustic homing The range is up to 50 km at a speed of 40 knots After launch, the torpedo carries out target search, acquisition and attack procedures delivering to a depth of 3,000 ft

The Ohio class submarine is equipped with eight launchers for the Mk 2 torpedo decoy Electronic warfare equipment is the WLR-10 threat warning system and the WLR-8(V)

Nuclear Naval Propulsion 27 surveillance receiver from GTE of Massachusetts The WLR-8(V) uses seven YIG tuned and vector tuned super heterodyne receivers to operate from 50MHz up to J-band An acoustic interception and countermeasures system, AN/WLY-1 from Northrop Grumman, has been developed to provide the submarine with an automatic response against torpedo attack The surface search, navigation and fire control radar is BPS 15A I/J band radar The sonar suite includes: IBM BQQ 6 passive search sonar, Raytheon BQS 13, BQS 15 active and passive high-frequency sonar, BQR 15 passive towed array from Western Electric, and the active BQR 19 navigation sonar from Raytheon Kollmorgen Type 152 and Type 82 periscopes are fitted

The main machinery is the GE PWR S8G reactor system with two turbines providing 60,000

hp and driving a single shaft The submarine is equipped with a 325 hp Magnatek auxiliary propulsion motor The propulsion provides a speed in excess of 18 knots surfaced and 25 knots submerged

It is designed for mine avoidance, special operations forces delivery and recovery It uses non acoustic sensors, advanced tactical communications and non acoustic stealth It is equipped with conformal sonar arrays which seek to provide an optimally sensor coated submarine with improved stealth at a lower total ownership cost New technology called Conformal Acoustic Velocity Sonar (CAVES) could replace the existing Wide Aperture Array technology and is to be implemented in units of the Virginia Class

Single shaft with pump jet propulsion One secondary propulsion submerged motor

Horizontal tubes Four 21 inches torpedo tubes

Vertical tubes 12 Vertical Launch System Tubes

Weapon systems 39, including:

Vertical Launch System Tomahawk Cruise Missiles

Mk 48 ADCAP Heavy weight torpedoes Advanced Mobile Mines

Unmanned Undersea Vehicles Special warfare Dry Deck Shelter

Sonars Spherical active/passive arrays

Light Weight Wide Aperture Arrays TB-16, TB-29 and future towed arrays High frequency chin and sail arrays Counter measures 1 internal launcher

14 external launchers

Table 6 Technical Specifications of the Virginia Class of Submarines

High Frequency Sonar will play a more important role in future submarine missions as operations in the littorals require detailed information about the undersea environment to support missions requiring high quality bathymetry, precision navigation, mine detection or ice avoidance Advanced High Frequency Sonar systems are under development and testing that will provide submarines unparalleled information about the undersea environment This technology will be expanded to allow conformal sonar arrays on other parts of the ship that will create new opportunities for use of bow and sail structure volumes while improving sonar sensor performance

speed of the nuclear powered icebreakers is 21 knots In 1988 the NS Sevmorpu was

commissioned in Russia to serve the northern Siberian ports It is a 61,900 metric tonnes, 260

m long and is powered by the KLT-40 reactor design, delivering 32.5 propeller MW from the

135 MWth reactor

Russia operated at some time up to eight nuclear powered civilian vessels divided into seven icebreakers and one nuclear-powered container ship These made up the world's largest civilian fleet of nuclear-powered ships The vessels were operated by Murmansk Shipping Company (MSC), but were owned by the Russian state The servicing base Atomflot is situated near Murmansk, 2 km north of the Rosta district

Icebreakers facilitated ores transportation from Norilsk in Siberia to the nickel foundries on the Kola Peninsula, a journey of about 3,000 kms Since 1989 the nuclear icebreakers have been used to transport wealthy Western tourists to visit the North Pole A three week long trip costs $ 25,000

The icebreaker Lenin, launched in 1957 was the world's first civilian vessel to be propelled

by nuclear power It was commissioned in 1959 and retired from service in 1989 Eight other civilian nuclear-powered vessels were built: five of the Arktika class, two river icebreakers and one container ship The nuclear icebreaker Yamal, commissioned in 1993, is the most recent nuclear-powered vessel added to the fleet

The nuclear icebreakers are powered by PWRs of the KLT-40 type The reactor contains fuel enriched to 30-40 percent in U235 By comparison, nuclear power plants use fuel enriched to only 3-5 percent Weapons grade uranium is enriched to over 90 percent American submarine reactors are reported to use up to 97.3 percent enriched U235 The irradiated fuel

in test reactors contains about 32 percent of the original U235, implying a discharge enrichment of 97.3 x 0.32 = 31.13 percent enrichment

Under normal operating conditions, the nuclear icebreakers are only refueled every three to four years These refueling operations are carried out at the Atomflot service base Replacement of fuel assemblies takes approximately 1 1/2 months

For each of the reactor cores in the nuclear icebreakers, there are four steam generators that supply the turbines with steam The third cooling circuit contains sea water that condenses

Nuclear Naval Propulsion 29 and cools down the steam after it has run through the turbines The icebreaker reactors' cooling system is especially designed for low temperature Arctic sea water

18 Discussion: Defining trends

Several trends may end up shaping the future of naval ship technology: the all electrical ship, stealth technology, littoral vessels and moored barges for power production Missions

of new naval systems are evolving towards signal intelligence gathering and clandestine special forces insertion behind enemy lines requiring newer designs incorporating stealth configurations and operation

The all-electric ship propulsion concept was adopted for the future surface combatant power source This next evolution or Advanced Electrical Power Systems (AEPS) involves the conversion of virtually all shipboard systems to electric power; even the most demanding systems, such as propulsion and catapults aboard aircraft carriers It would encompass new weapon systems such as modern electromagnetic rail-guns and free electron lasers

Littoral vessels are designed to operate closer to the coastlines than existing vessels such as cruisers and destroyers Their mission would be signal intelligence gathering, stealth insertion of Special Forces, mine clearance, submarine hunting and humanitarian relief Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), monitored by nuclear-powered Virginia Class submarines would use Continuous Active Sonar (CAS) arrays which release a steady stream

of energy, the sonar equivalent of a flashlight would be used as robots to protect carrier groups and turning attacking or ambushing submarines from being the hunters into being the hunted

18.1 All electric propulsion and stealth ships

The CVN-21's new nuclear reactor not only will provide three times the electrical output of current carrier power plants, but also will use its integrated power system to run an Electro Magnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) to replace the current steam-driven catapults, combined with an Electromagnetic Aircraft Recovery System (EARS) To store large amounts of energy, flywheels, large capacitor banks or other energy storage systems would have to be used

A typical ship building experience involved the design conversion of one class of submarines to an all-electric design The electric drive reduced the propulsion drive system size and weight; eliminating the mechanical gearbox However, the power system required extensive harmonic filtering to eliminate harmonic distortion with the consequence that the overall vessel design length increased by 10 feet

Tests have been conducted to build stealth surface ships based on the technology developed for the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter The first such system was built by the USA Navy as

“The Sea Shadow.” The threat from ballistic anti ship missiles and the potential of nuclear tipped missiles has slowed down the development of stealth surface ships The USA Navy cut its $5 billion each DDG-1000 stealth destroyer ships from an initially planned seven to two units

Missile defense emerged as a major naval mission at the same time that the DDG-1000’s stealth destroyer design limitations and rising costs converged, all while shipbuilding

budgets were getting squeezed The SM-3 Standard missile, fired only by warships, is the most successful naval missile defense system; having passed several important trials while other Ballistic Missile Defense, BMD weapons are under testing The ballistic-missile threat

is such that the USA Navy decided it needed 89 ships capable of firing the SM-3 and that the DDG-1000 realistically would never be able to fire and guide the SM-3 since the stealth destroyer is optimized for firing land-attack missiles not Standard missiles

Fig 9 The DDG-1000 stealth destroyer is optimized for firing land-attack missiles; not Ballistic Missile Defense, BMD missiles The Raytheon Company builds the DDG-1000’s SPY-3 radar, and Bath Iron Works, the Maine shipyard builds the DDG-1000 (Source: Raytheon)

The USA Navy has 84 large surface combatants, split between Arleigh-Burke Class destroyers and the Ticonderoga Class cruisers, capable of carrying the combination of

Standard missiles and the BMD capable Aegis radar The DDG-1000 cannot affordably be modified to fire SM-3s So the Navy needs another 12 SM-3 “shooters” to meet the requirement for missile defense, and there was no time to wait for the future CG-X cruiser With new amphibious ships, submarines, carriers and Littoral Combat Ships in production alongside the DDG-1000s, there was no room in the budget for five extra DDG-1000s

18.2 Multipurpose floating barges

The vision of floating barges with nuclear reactors to produce electrical power for industrial and municipal use, hydrogen for fuel cells, as well as fresh desalinated water at the shores of arid areas of the world may become promising future prospects The electricity can be used

to power a new generation of transportation vehicles equipped with storage batteries, or the hydrogen can be used in fuel cells vehicles An urban legend is related about a USA Navy nuclear submarine under maintenance at Groton, Connecticut, temporarily supplying the neighboring port facilities with electricity when an unexpected power outage occurred This would have required the conversion, of the 120 Volts and 400 Hz military electricity standard to the 10-12 kV and 60 Hz civilian one Submarines tied up at port connect to a

Nuclear Naval Propulsion 31 connection network that matches frequency and voltage so that the reactors can be shut down The two electrical generators on a typical submarine would provide about 3 MWe x 2

= 6 MWe of power, with some of this power used by the submarine itself In case of a loss of local power, docked vessels have to start their reactors or their emergency diesel generators anyway

The accumulated experience of naval reactors designs is being as the basis of a trend toward the consideration of a new generation of modular compact land-based reactor designs

Fig 10 The Phalanx radar-guided gun, nicknamed as R2-D2 from the Star-Wars movies, is used for close-in ship defense The radar controlled Gatling gun turret shooting tungsten armor-piercing, explosive, or possibly depleted uranium munitions on the USS Missouri, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (Photo: M Ragheb)

Murray, Raymond L., “Nuclear Energy,” Pergamon Press, 1988

Collier, John G., and Geoffrey F Hewitt, “Introduction to Nuclear Power,” Hemisphere

Publishing Corp., Springer Verlag, 1987

Broder, K K Popkov, and S M Rubanov, "Biological Shielding of Maritime Reactors,"

AEC-tr-7097, UC-41,TT-70-5006, 1970

Weinberger, Caspar, "Soviet Military Power," USA Department of Defense, US Government

Printing Office, 1981

Reid, T R., “The Big E,” National Geographic, January 2002

Poston, David I , “Nuclear design of the SAFE-400 space fission reactor,” Nuclear News,

p.28, Dec 2002

Reistad, Ole, and Povl L Olgaard, “Russian Power Plants for Marine Applications,”

NKS-138, Nordisk Kernesikkerhedsforskning, April 2006

Ragheb, Magdi, “Nuclear, Plasma and Radiation Science, Inventing the Future,”

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/www, 2011

2

Assessment of Deployment Scenarios

of New Fuel Cycle Technologies

J J Jacobson, G E Matthern and S J Piet

Idaho National Laboratory

United States

1 Introduction

There is the beginning of a nuclear renaissance High energy costs, concern over fossil fuel emissions, and energy security are reviving the interest in nuclear energy There are a number of driving questions on how to move forward with nuclear power Will there be enough uranium available? How do we handle the used fuel, recycle or send to a geologic repository? What type of reactors should be developed? What type of fuel will they need?

2 Why assess deployment scenarios?

Nuclear fuel cycles are inherently dynamic However, fuel cycle goals and objectives are typically static.1,2,3 Many (if not most) comparisons of nuclear fuel cycle options compare them via static time-independent analyses Our intent is to show the value of analyzing the nuclear fuel cycle in a dynamic, temporal way that includes feedback and time delays Competitive industries look at how new technology options might displace existing technologies and change how existing systems work So too, years of performing dynamic simulations of advanced nuclear fuel cycle options provide insights into how they might work and how one might transition from the current once-through fuel cycle

Assessments can benefit from considering dynamics in at least three aspects – A) transitions from one fuel cycle strategy to another, B) how fuel cycles perform with nuclear power growth superimposed with time delays throughout the system, and C) impacts of fuel cycle performance due to perturbations

To support a detailed complex temporal analysis of the entire nuclear fuel cycle, we have developed a system dynamics model that includes all the components of the nuclear fuel cycle VISION tracks the life cycle of the strategic facilities that are essential in the fuel cycle such as, reactors, fuel fabrication, separations and repository facilities The facility life cycle begins by ordering, licensing, construction and then various stages of on-line periods and finally decommission and disposition Models need to allow the user to adjust the times for various parts of the lifecycle such as licensing, construction, operation, and facility lifetimes Current energy production from nuclear power plants in the once through approach is linear Uranium is mined, enriched, fabricated into fuel, fed to nuclear reactor, removed from a nuclear reactor and stored for future disposal This is a once through cycle, with no real “cycle” involved Future fuel cycles are likely to be real cycles where nuclear fuel and other materials may be reused in a nuclear reactor one or more times This will increase the

dependency among the steps in the process and require a better understanding of the technical limitations, the infrastructure requirements, and the economics All three of these elements are time dependent and cyclical in nature to some degree Understanding how these elements interact requires a model that can cycle and evolve with time – a dynamic model Understanding these new fuel cycles also requires extrapolation beyond current fuel cycle operating experience The goal is not to be able to predict the exact number or size of each of the elements of the fuel cycle, but rather to understand the relative magnitudes, capacities, and durations for various options and scenarios A systems-level approach is needed to understand the basics of how these new fuel cycles behave and evolve

3 Vision nuclear fuel cycle model

The Verifiable Fuel Cycle Simulation (VISION) model was developed and is being used to analyze and compare various nuclear power technology deployment scenarios4 The scenarios include varying growth rates, reactor types, nuclear fuel and system delays Analyzing the results leads to better understanding of the feedback between the various components of the nuclear fuel cycle that includes uranium resources, reactor number and mix, nuclear fuel type and waste management VISION links the various fuel cycle components into a single model for analysis and includes both mass flows and decision criteria as a function of time

This model is intended to assist in evaluating “what if” scenarios and in comparing fuel, reactor, and fuel processing alternatives at a systems level The model is not intended as a tool for process flow and design modeling of specific facilities nor for tracking individual units of fuel or other material through the system The model is intended to examine the interactions among the components of the nuclear fuel system as a function of time varying system parameters; this model represents a dynamic rather than steady-state approximation

of the nuclear fuel system

VISION also tracks the life cycle of the strategic facilities that are essential in the fuel cycle such as, reactors, fuel fabrication, separations, spent fuel storage and conditioning and repository facilities The life cycle begins by ordering, licensing, construction and then various stages of on-line periods and finally decommission and disposition The model allows the user to adjust the times for various parts of the lifecycle such as licensing time, construction time and active lifetime

VISION calculates a wide range of metrics that describe candidate fuel cycle options, addressing waste management, proliferation resistance, uranium utilization, and economics For example, waste metrics include the mass of unprocessed spent fuel, mass in storage, final waste mass and volume, long-term radiotoxicity, and long-term heat commitment to a geologic repository Calculation of such metrics requires tracking the flow of 81 specific isotopes and chemical elements.5

Figure 1 is a schematic of a nuclear fuel cycle, which is organized into a series of modules that include all of the major facilities and processes involved in the fuel cycle, starting with

Assessment of Deployment Scenarios of New Fuel Cycle Technologies 35 uranium mining and ending with waste management and disposal The arrows in the diagram indicate the mass flow of the material Not shown, but included in each module within the model, are the information and decision algorithms that form the logic for the mass flow in VISION The mass flows are combined with waste packaging data to provide insight into transportation issues of the fuel cycle

Fig 1 Schematic of VISION modules representing the nuclear fuel cycle processes and facilities

3.2 VISION functionality

VISION is designed around the methodology of system dynamics System dynamics is a computer-based method for studying dynamic, problematic behavior of complex systems The method emerged in the 1960s from the work of Jay Forrester at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology A detailed description of the system dynamics approach was first given in "Principles of Systems".6 VISION is designed to run on

a desktop personal computer with run times less than 10 minutes for any single scenario simulated over a 200-year period Users can run scenarios by selecting pre-defined base cases or by modifying the options that make up a scenario Currently, there are approximately 60 predefined scenarios available that range from the more simple case of thermal reactors without recycling to more advanced cases that include advanced reactor types such as fast reactors with various recycle options Results are displayed in a variety of charts and graphs that are part of the interface or the user can open up the Excel charts that include many more tables and charts The charts include comparative charts of data within the scenario such as the number of light water reactors (LWR) versus Fast Reactors

VISION simulates the nuclear fuel cycle system with as many of its dynamic characteristics

as possible, to name a few, it simulates impacts from delays, isotopic decay, capacity building and fuel availability The VISION model has three modes of reactor ordering, the first takes a projected energy growth rate and nuclear power market share over the next century and builds reactors in order to meet this demand, second the user can manually set the number of reactors that are ordered each year and lastly, the user can specify an end of the century target in GWe and allow the model to build reactors to meet that projection Options are included in the model that allow the user to recycle used nuclear fuel with up to

10 different separation technologies, use up to 10 different reactor and fuel types, and have

up to 15 different waste management options The technology performance can be varied each year The results of the model will help policy makers and industry leaders know and understand the impacts of delays in the system, infrastructure requirements, material flows, and comparative metrics for any combination of advanced fuel cycle scenarios

The subsections below describe key algorithms and approaches that comprise VISION’s functionality The first several subsections address the issue of when new facilities are ordered VISION has a complex look-ahead ordering algorithm for new facilities The user can override this instead and force the model to build facilities by inputting the capacity for each type of facility The discussion on facility ordering entails subsections on facilities themselves as an introduction, supplies needed for the facility, and outputs from each facility After ordering facilities, the section turns to energy growth rate, and then the physics issues of which isotopes are tracked in VISION and how VISION uses reactor physics data

3.2.1 Facilities

The mathematical model for ordering facilities is based upon a demand-supply model, where facilities for one or more stages of the fuel cycle create demand, which is serviced by the supply produced by facilities for another stage The overall driver triggering the demand is electrical energy growth and nuclear power market share that is expected over the next 200 years

To further explain the ordering process by way of example, for a closed (recycle) fuel cycle, the future electrical energy demand will require increased supply of electrical energy If this supply is not adequate, new nuclear power plants will need to be built In turn, this will

Assessment of Deployment Scenarios of New Fuel Cycle Technologies 37

result in an increased demand for fuel fabrication services If supply and usable inventory is

not adequate, new fuel fabrication plants will be built; this will result in an increased

demand for separation services Again, if supply and usable inventory is not adequate, new

separation plants will be built, which will result in an increased demand for used fuel If

supply and usable inventory is not adequate for this, new nuclear power plants will be built,

bringing us back to the beginning of the cycle

Note that a circular logic has developed, where we started with building new nuclear power

plants due to electrical demand and return to this at the end due to used fuel demand This

implies that some decisions, e.g., mix of light water reactor multiple fuels (LWRmf)

(multiple fuels means uranium oxide (UOX), mixed oxide (MOX) or inert matrix fuel (IMF))

and fast consumer/breeder reactor (FBR) or conversion ratio of FBR, must be made such

that the starting and ending states are consistent In order to prevent a mismatch of fuel

available for advanced reactors which rely on used fuel from LWR and LWRmf reactors for

their fuel supply, a predicted used fuel calculation must be performed at the time of

ordering reactors that will inform the system how much used fuel is available for use in

advanced reactors

This demand function looks a certain number of years into the future (t + Δtx), where t is the

current time and Δtx is the time it takes to license and build a supply facility of type “x.” The

demand function also projects out to the year t’, where t’ is the year that demand facilities

utilize the services provided by supply facilities

The demand function (Eq 1) is as follows:

' ' '

D - Demand rate for time period “t” for service or product of facility of type “x” based on

the number of type “y” facilities that are operating at time period t’

'

y

t

N - Number of operating facilities of type “y” at time t’ that require the service from type

“x” facility This includes planned facilities and those now operating at “t” that will

 - Conversion factor that converts the demand rate for time period t’ for service or

product of facility “y” into a demand rate for time period “t  ” for service or product of t x

facility “x” that will service facility “y.” It is assumed that the product or service of facility

“x” can be produced over one time period, e.g., one year, which implies y x' x

t t t



 

 only takes

on a nonzero value for one value of t’ when t   (t t x) time to start offering/production

of service/product of facility “x” to have completed, i.e., manufactured + delivered + stored,

for facility “y.”

The supply function takes the number of operating facilities and their respective

availabilities and determines how much available supply of a certain service via production

there is in the system The supply function (Eq 2) is as follows:

N - Number of operating facilities of type “x,” including planned facilities and those

now operating who at “t  ” will continue to operate t x

∆- Capacity factor of facility type “x” that is in operation

x

 - Converts the number of facilities of type “x” into a supply rate of type “x.”

The capacity factor, ∆, is a user defined function which typically depends on maturity

level of the technology For instance, capacity factor for LWR’s is set at around 90%, for new

Fast Reactor’s it would probably be set closer to 80% Such choices are made by the user

In order to get the current demand, or the demand for services that the system is currently

requesting, simply take Equation 1 and set Δtx equal to zero This will make the demand

function equal to the current demand to produce a product or service This demand (Eq 3)

will be labeled ˆx

t

D for further use in the methodology

' ' ' ,

In order to get the current supply, simply set the Δtx in Equation 2 equal to zero This will

cause the equation to only use the facilities that are in operation at the current time “t.” The

current supply (Eq 4) will be labeled ˆS for further use in the methodology t x

ˆx x x x

The actual available output of facilities is based on the capacity factor of the facilities of type

“x.” The capacity factor (Eq 5) will change automatically for the system as new facilities

come online and start requesting services The capacity factor is a user defined value that is

typically adjusted upward as more facilities come on line from an initial low capacity factor

representing new types of facilities to a theoretical high value for facility with years of

operational experience

x t

C - Capacity factor for facilities of type “x” at time “t.”

In order to implement this methodology, a projected energy demand growth and used fuel

prediction is calculated in order to determine the number and type of reactors that can come

online The model looks ahead a prescribed number of years (the longest construction time

of all of the facilities plus time to manufacture and deliver the product) and calculate supply

and demand for reactors, fuel fabrication, and separations At the beginning of the

simulation, before the first time step, the model calculates the energy growth for every year

of the simulation plus the number of years the model is looking ahead The growth function

Assessment of Deployment Scenarios of New Fuel Cycle Technologies 39 where E t in (Eq 6) is the electric demand at year t and p t is the growth percentage at year t When the function reaches the last growth rate p100 provided by the input, it will hold that value in order to project out values beyond the 200-year time period

The next step is to calculate the number of reactors that need to be ordered based on the growth rate and energy gap during the initial look-ahead time During the initial look-ahead time, t look, the model will only build LWRmf reactors because it is assumed that there will not be any FBRs deployed before the initial look-ahead time The initial number of reactors for each of the look-ahead years is stored in an initialization vector so that at the beginning

of the simulation the model will know how many reactors need to come online and when

they need to come online These reactors are then sent to an order rate array ( RO ) where

they will be stored and called upon when it is time to order reactors As the model starts, the

simulation will progress forward with the t variable moving one year out for each year of

the simulation Reactors during the initial look-ahead time will be built based on the initial estimate of reactor ordering at the start of the simulation As the simulation moves forward, new reactors after the initial look ahead years are ordered based on the energy growth rate and energy gap that is predicted in those future years That is, if the initial look ahead is 20 years, in year 2001 and estimate will be made on energy growth and energy gap in 2021 and reactors will be ordered that will meet that demand

The model runs for a specified time period—typically, from year 2000 to year 2200 The user can define a growth rate that nuclear power will grow at and allow the model to determine the number of reactors that are ordered to meet the demand or the user can be more specific and specify the reactor numbers The model allows the user to define which reactor types to activate at specific times throughout the simulation period In addition, the user can define the specific fuel to use in each reactor type, as well as the separation technology available and the capacities for all facilities in the fuel cycle (i.e., fuel fabrication, separations, etc.) For each reactor type the user can set a variety of operational parameters, such as thermal efficiency, load factor, power level, and fuel residence time In addition, the user can also set time parameters, such as reactor construction time, licensing time, reactor lifetime, used fuel wet storage time, separations time, and fuel fabrication time Additional parameters can be set to adjust fuel fabrication rate, repository acceptance rate, and separations capacity and processing rate Overall, there are over 200 parameters that the user can set and adjust between simulations Because of the large number of parameters, there are a number of predefined scenarios that the user can select from a menu These predefined scenarios set all the parameters for the selected scenario so these cases can be run with minimal effort

3.2.2 Tracked isotopes

VISION tracks mass at an isotopic level, which is valuable from several aspects First, the model is able to calculate some important metrics, such as, decay heat, toxicity and proliferation resistance Second, it allows the model to use specific isotopes, such as Plutonium, for flow control in separations and fuel fabrication based on availability of Pu239, Pu240 and Pu241 from separated spent fuel Lastly, it allows the estimate of isotopic decay whenever the material is residing in storage of at least 1 year

Table I lists the 81 isotopes that VISION currently tracks the main fuel flow model For the four radionuclide actinide decay chains (4N, 4N+1, 4N+2, 4N+3), it will track all isotopes with half-life greater than 0.5 years, with the exception of 5 isotopes whose inventory

Actinides and Decay Chain Fission Products

Pb207 C-other

Pb210 Kr85

constrain glass waste forms U233 Pd107

U234 Mo-Ru-Rh-Pd-other

U236 Cd113m

Pu238 Plutonium Transition Metal-other (Co-Se, Nb,