Atoms for power; Argonne National Laboratory

The fun in the book. The. The file transcribed program produced by Purdue University under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. On today's program written and produced by Bob McMahon will pay a visit to the Argonne National Laboratory in Lamont Illinois. It were a on. With ya. With ya. Perhaps no other discovery in history has captured the imagination and interest of people throughout the world as the discovery of nuclear fission. Of the various important results this discovery has brought about the generation of electric power has become of interest to both scientists and laymen alike. As the world stands

today there are many areas that are lacking in almost any kind of fuel or any sources of power in all other areas. Fuel reserves are dwindling and the cost of recovery of these fuels is on the rise. At the same time a rising tide of industrialization and increasingly high standards of living are making demands for ever greater quantities of fuel for electric power and fuel for other purposes. Because of this growing need for power the United States Atomic Energy Commission and its laboratories such as the Argonne National Laboratory which we're going to visit today added increasing number of industrial groups are engaged in an immense research project in order to find out more about the practical and economic implications of nuclear fission for the generation of electric power. On today's program we're going to follow the history and growth of two particular types of reactors that were developed by the Argonne National Laboratory at Mount annoy. While we're doing this we want to keep in mind one of the basic problems of reactor design.

We must remember that one pound of uranium has about the same energy equivalent as thirteen hundred tons of coal. This is one of the facts that makes reactor design so complex there are such a tremendously concentrated source of heat in a reactor that it is difficult to get that heat out in a controlled manner from such a relatively small piece of equipment. Often elaborate cooling systems are required in this respect. It is interesting to note that the design of almost all power reactors is not controlled by the nuclear physicist but by the mechanical engineer who must solve the heat transfer problem. A reactor can generate any amount of power desired the power at which it operates as determined largely by the limitations of corrosion and heat transfer and all of us follow the evolution of one type of reactor in the atomic energy Commission's five year reactor development program. It's named the experimental boiling water reactor abbreviated

b w r. This then is its story and here is our scientific advisor from Purdue University Donald J tandem to begin it. The first reactors that were built in this country were constructed for research or to produce small amounts of plutonium for experimental work on bombs. They were not meant to be power reactors and they did not produce heat in large quantities. Some did not require a cooling system at all. One needed only circulating air and another used only a very small water circulating system. It was not until 1944 when the Hanford production reactors went into operation that a more elaborate cooling system was needed. These Hanford reactors which are still in operation today are enormous structures. They stand as high as a five story building. They contain thousands of blocks of graphite and

thousands of cylinders of uranium and something else which is important to our story. These were the first reactors that required large volumes of water. In this instance water from the Columbia River. These reactors generate a great deal of heat and great quantities of the Columbia River have to be pumped through them. As a matter of fact the temperature of the Columbia River below Hanford Washington where the reactors are located has been artificially raised as a result of this water going through the reactors to cool them. At the time they hinted reactors were constructed it labrat measures were taken to prevent this cooling water from coming to a boil. Their designers thought that if this happened the reactors would get too hot in their few elements would melt. A reactor is kept going by neutrons just as an ordinary fire is kept going by oxygen and the basic idea of a nuclear chain reaction is that when

a neutron is captured by a uranium nucleus causing the latter to split and release its energy several more neutrons are produced. Is this multiplication of neutrons which makes the Chain Reaction possible in constructing a nuclear reactor it is necessary to use materials which do not remove these neutrons from the system. Also substances absorb neutrons. Some materials more than others. When water is used as a coolant the water does remove some of the neutrons from the system and the reactor must be built so that there are some extra neutrons available. Otherwise there will not be enough neutrons to maintain the chain reaction. Since this is the case any decrease in the amount of water present would result in a surplus of neutrons in the reactor. This would cause the power level to rise possibly to the point where the fuel elements would melt.

If the surplus neutrons in a reactor are not controlled they can make the reactor power level rise very high. The power level increases by a compound interest law. A certain percentage each generation since in most reactors it takes less than one thousandth of a second to bring about a generation of neutrons. A 1 percent surplus of neutrons would increase the power level 1 percent each one thousandth of a second. And so the rise is very rapid indeed because of these factors everyone was very careful about not having a space within the reactor whether it was steam instead of water after the end of the war or the investigation of reactor coolants took two directions one was to investigate the properties of gold and other than water like the use of metals such as sodium and potassium in a liquid state and much later in the 1950s. There was a study inaugurated on the possibilities of using a boiling reactor where steam instead of something to be avoided actually was produced intentionally in the boiling

water reactor. Water is employed to perform two tasks instead of one. It is used not only as a coolant but also as a moderator. The fresh neutrons produced in fission travel too fast to cause many new faces. Their high speed must be reduced before they can cause uranium 235 atoms to fission easily and to release their facing product energy in the form of heat. A moderator is a material that is used to slow neutrons down. Water is one of the best moderators we know. After the neutrons collide with the water molecules a number of times they are slowed down until it can be captured by a fissionable atom of uranium 235. Now if the water moderator is permitted to boil and form steam there's less of it left around the reactor core. Less of it the slow down or moderate the speeding neutrons and the neutrons are no longer a subject to

capture by the fissionable atoms. The chain reaction slows the reactor automatically prevents any damage to a structure through this simple but extremely useful principle for the experimental reactor known as borax one was constructed in 1953 by argon scientists and engineers at the National reactor testing station and Idaho. Work was carried out under the direction of Dr. Walter H is in then director of argon laboratory. The tests conducted during a two year period definitely proved that a properly designed water cooled and moderated nuclear reactor if allowed to get out of control will automatically shut itself down the for excessively high temperatures could cause destruction of the reactor. Over 200 experiments the borax excursions pointed the way toward safer and more economical power reactors. The experiments were made by imposing conditions normally expected to cause a runaway and some experiments. The power was made to rise

to several thousand kilowatts in the fraction of a second. And each case the reactor produced sufficient steam to check the rise of power. Based on the encouraging results of the initial borax one experiments Dr Zen recommended to the Atomic Energy Commission in the latter part of 1953 that a boiling water reactor we had built as a part of the commission's five year reactor development program. The recommendation was accepted and argon laboratory was given the task of building the first integrated boiling water reactor power plant in history. Didn't Bob McMahon speaking. I'm now standing before the building in which the experimental boiling water reactor Heartland will be housed watching all the activity that's taking place around it as it nears its road to directly in front of me and a group of men with the federally charges cutting a large doorway in it by the door there which

means that then there will be brought here. The structure looks like part of an enormous dun colored standing on end with the bottom part of a shell buried in the earth. The building itself is a hundred nineteen feet high of more than half of it below the ground. It's diameter of eight feet. One of the interesting things about the way that this reactor Parkland being built is that the building which houses it is made up of a five inch thick. Faintly radioactive steam and gas in case of an explosion inside a front door I'm watching men cut into what is being made out of the reactor and the electric generating equipment can be brought in from outside and one in its proper place. We think that there will be the first to go in and all the various other parts of the reactor plant will follow. It might be someone in Europe that it nor should be made up of the houses built to make much of an engineering point of view. Then what's

the point in Saipan for white chalk on the problem but to find out more about what the reactor is really going to be like. We're going to talk to the man who knows most about it. His name is John M. West and he's project manager of the experimental boiling water reactor. To begin with the experimental boiling water reactor has a planned power output of 20000 kilowatts of heat its actual electric power output will amount to about five can go on. What do you plan to do with the electric power it produces. Well we plan to make use of the power right here at the gun site. The primary purpose for this reactor being built is not to produce power at a constant rate but to find out how to produce it in the most economical and safe this fashion. We plan to use different kinds of cords containing various combinations a few moderator and coolant. To find out what each of them can do it will at some future date introduce heavy water into the core as a cooling moderator. Heavy water as you know differs

from ordinary or light water and that there is a neutron and each of the hydrogen atoms in this molecule. About 1 5 of all water is of this type. It has its own peculiar properties and uses an atomic reactor. One outstanding advantage is affected it absorbs very few neutrons compared with light water. Well though suppose you describe the reactor plant to us so that we can get a picture of what it's going to look like. Let's begin then at the core center and work our way out through. The core where all the nuclear fission takes place and where the heat is generated is only 4 feet in diameter and four feet high. In line with the experimental nature of the BW provision is made to vary the diameter up to five feet although the four foot core diameter is expected to be ample for 20000 kilowatt heat output. In that rather small and compact volume will be five tons of natural uranium for enrichment. Forty two pounds of uranium 235. Which is the particular atom of uranium

that fission. The core is centered in a pressure vessel of seven feet inside diameter it holds the water which serves as moderator and is circulated through the court to provide cooling steam at 600 pounds per square inch pressure separate from the circulating water above the core and rises to a steam collection pipe from which it goes to the turbo generator. The outer shield for the reactor consists of three inches of water cool lead and seven and a half feet of concrete. This prevents radiation from getting through to the people in the reactor building. The reactor and its Shield along with the turban generator steam condenser. Option and piping are all inside the gas tight 5 8 inch thick steel building that you described. The control room for this power plant will be located in a separate building outside the steel building. What are some of the safety features of this particular reactor design. For one thing there's the boiling water itself. We know from the borax experiments

described earlier in the program that it can limit a rise in power automatically and without any mechanical assistance. But we have also provided for protection of the core against any accidental loss of water. If it were not kept immersed it would melt due to the residual heat in the fuel. If water is lost accidentally arraying above the core provides a spray of water to cool the elements. This water contains a small amount of boric acid to absorb neutrons and prevent a resumption of the chain reaction. Thus even if the control rods are not inserted the nuclear reaction will not start as the water enters the core. As we said the radioactive part of the plant is contained entirely in the gas tight building. The building is designed for an internal pressure of two atmospheres so that if all the hot water in the reactor flares to steam the resulting pressure would be only one point six atmospheres and the outer building would not be blown open. Do you feel it would be safe to build such a reactor as this one in a heavily populated area.

Yes as a matter of fact the Commonwealth Edison Company and associates have proposed to build a boiling water reactor plant of one hundred eighty thousand kilowatt electrical capacity near the Chicago area to be completed in 1960. One final question. Are you willing to predict for us the place that such reactors as the experimental boiling water reactor will occupy in the power field in the future. First of all I would like to summarize and mention a few of the specific advantages and some of the problems concerned with boiling water. In addition to the safety features inherent in the design if water is boiled in reactor core the resulting steam can be utilized directly in a turban to produce electric power without the addition of any kind of an external heat exchanger. This scheme also has the advantage that the turban steam pressure need not be reduced below the pressure in the reactor itself. The overall thermal efficiency of the plant is thereby improved. As far the future is concerned I

predict that the experimental boiling water reactor and other important experiments with boiling reactors planned at Argonne National Laboratory and elsewhere will provide data establishing optimum conditions for such reactors. When these facts are known it is very likely that the basic simplicity and inherent safety of boiling water reactors will assure them a prominent place in the growth of electric power so necessary to a continued rapid improvement in our standard of living. Thank you Mr. West. Next we'd like to talk about another reactor experiment with argon. A liquid metal cooled reactor operating on fast instead of thermal neutrons designed for purely experimental purposes. Historically after World War Two the Argonne National Laboratory decided that this was an opportune time to begin experimentation on the breeding of new atomic fuel to replace that which is consumed at the same time they began to give some attention to the development of liquid metal coolants.

Here is Dr. tandem to understand what this is about. We must first understand that just as there are two kinds of water heavy and light which are distinguished by the atomic weight of their hydrogen atoms there are also two kinds of uranium atoms one of which is slightly heavier than the other. Just as we pointed out earlier in the program a heavy water is contained in all natural waters in the ratio of one park in 5000. The heavy uranium isotope or atom called Uranium 238 is present in natural uranium in a ratio of one hundred forty to one. Your any and 235 is fission of 0 by thermal neutrons and the heavier isotope here and in your rain into thirty eight is not. But it can be turned into a fissionable atom by artificial means. Dr Walter HS in the former director of the Argonne National Laboratory explained this process in the following words.

Let us assume that the reactor is loaded with both U-235 and you 238 and you drown causes the fission of the huge 2:38 nucleus which separates into fragments that carry the energy would you Piers in the reactor as heat. On the average two and a half new drives are also emitted in this fission profit. One of the neutrons goes to maintain the chain reaction. But what happens to the other one and a half. In the non regenerative reactor they're lost either by leakage from the reactor or by absorption in the structure or coolant material in the regenerated reactor also called converter they're not all lost neutrons may be captured by 238 nuclei which then undergo two successive transmutations and become plutonium thus the original U-235 atoms are replaced by fissionable plutonium 239 atoms. A reactor which produces as much or more efficient movement Tiriel and is consumed is called a

breeder. This type of reactor does not consume any fissionable material although it would be generating heat. It is the non fissionable you 238 which is consumed. Well how difficult is it to make a reactor that what operate in this fashion. Well it's relatively easy to approximate this performance. The first heavy water reactor ever built a research machine here at Argonne. Consumed about one third gram of U-235 a day. But the important point is in this reactor for each atom of U-235 destroyed eight tenths of a plutonium atom was formed. Potentially this increases by a considerable amount the fraction of the total initial uranium which can be fission and made to generate power by the time all of the original U-235 has been consumed. Eighty percent is much plutonium will have been formed and then again by the time all of this has been consumed an

additional amount of plutonium is created and so on a regenerated reactor with a conversion ratio of eight tenths increases by a factor of 5. The supply of energy available and can therefore reduce the cost charged a few of the reactor with a 100 percent conversion ratio permits complete utilization of the energy available. Such a reactor a breeder presents some interesting possibilities but also some considerable difficulties. You know to find out more about the construction and operation of breeder reactors we next visited Mr. Leonard Jay Koch project manager for the experimental breeder reactor number two at Argon. He told us. It was mentioned that a reactor operating with fast neutrons rather than thermal neutrons has a potential for breeding. This is due to the more efficient utilization of the one and a half extra neutrons available profession fast neutrons neutrons moving at high velocity. Every smaller

probability of being captured parasitically in the structure and coolant in the reactor. A large percentage therefore are available to be captured in the uranium 238 deformed Tonia. Unfortunately there are engineering problems associated with the fast reactor. Because of the nuclear characteristics of these reactors. It is necessary to generate a large amount of power in a small volume. Very severe heat transfer problems are encountered in removing the heat at these high power densities. The first machine designed to give information on the breeding process was completed in December 1951 out at the National reactor testing station in Idaho. This it demonstrated successfully. I should mention that this experimental breeder reactor was the first to actually produce electrical power. Reactors small experimental power plant heat exchanger steam turban and Lector generator was operated in trial runs in late December of one thousand nine hundred one. Electrical power was generated at the rate of more than 100

kilowatts and used to operate the pumps and other reactor equipment and to provide light and electrical facilities for the building that houses the reactor. Since that time this has become routine and the generation of power to supply the building is a part of the normal reactor operation. But power generation is incidental to the main experimental purpose of this reactor experiments are being carried out to secure information on the handling of Liquid metals at high temperatures under radioactive conditions and on the extraction of heat from the reactor in a useful matter. The experience gained in this experimental breeder reactor has led to a number of technological developments and has suggested a number of new ideas for improvement. Now argon is engaged in designing a second breeder reactor. This reactor will be cooled by liquid sodium metal as was the first breeder reactor sodium is used because it does not slow down neutrons appreciably and it has exceptional characteristics as a heat transfer medium. For instance it is

liquid at approximately 200 degrees Fahrenheit but its boiling point is approximately fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The new reactor will generate 60000 kilowatts of heat and 20000 kilowatts of electric power. You said this reactor was in the process of design. Could you tell us how far along it is and when the completion date will be. Reactor design takes time but the experimental work is proceeding on schedule. Last year we build a 1 1/2 scale non nuclear mechanical model of the AB are two here at Argon. With this we just demonstrated that various control and operating mechanisms can be run under sodium at temperatures of 700 degrees Fahrenheit. The characteristics of this liquid metal coolant system and the performance of the pumping system are being studied. About six months ago a zero power critical assembly was completed at the National reactor testing station. Several hundred sets of measurements of neutron distributions in small fuel assemblies of various

compositions have been made. These data are being used to provide nuclear data necessary for the detailed design of the reactor core. Complex physics problems have also been solved with the aid of electronic computers. These and other studies all go into the design of the reactor. The schedule on our two calls for construction to start in one thousand fifty seven. And to be completed in one thousand fifty eight. I might also point out that the new building going up here as a laboratory and plant to be used for the development of manufacturing and reprocessing of fuel elements containing plutonium. This is a very necessary part of the breeder reactor program. Why is that. Since the fissionable atoms consumed in a breeder reactor are replaced by more fissionable atoms. It would appear at first sight that the reactor would continue to operate without refueling until all of the fuel was completely used up.

Unfortunately this is not the case. The effects of the products of fission the ashes of the nuclear furnace cannot be overlooked as a reactor operates the fission products consisting of a considerable number of different atoms accumulate. All of these atoms are able to capture neutrons and so they compete with the fission process in due time. The proportion of neutrons lost in this way becomes so large that the chain reaction cannot be maintained efficiently. Also the physical properties of the fuel alloy deteriorate as efficient products accumulate. Consequently from time to time the reactor fuel must be removed and processed to separate the accumulated fission products just as it is necessary to remove the ashes from a coal furnace from time to time. Have any commercial firms that you know of decided to build such a reactor as this one. The power reactor development company which consists of the Detroit Edison Company and associates have proposed to build a fast breeder plant of a hundred thousand kilowatts electrical capability

to be completed in late 1059. What is your own opinion of the future of this particular type of reactor a breeder reactor that makes its own fuel as it produces power. What place do you think it will occupy and the power plant of the future. There is no doubt that breeder reactors will play a very important role in the nuclear power industry. As Dr Zen pointed out a power only reactor using highly enriched fuel would be wasteful in neutrons which escape or are lost in useless nuclear reactions. The operation of such a reactor would be accompanied by a decrease in the stockpile of fissionable material. When power reactors become an important part of our power industry we will need the new stocks of fissionable fuel that breeder reactors can provide for us. Well thank you very much Mr. Coke. Ladies and gentlemen we have had time to tell you today about only one small part of the work that's being done here at the Argonne laboratory. In addition to reactor development important work is being done here in cancer research radiation

studies the chemistry of fission products experimental reactor physics meteorology remote control engineering and then the training of technical personnel in the various fields of atomic operation. These are only a few of the research areas in which argon is playing an important role today. Our Special thanks go to Mr. Lester C for any staff assistant project managers Leonard Koch and John West and Dr. Walter ate sand former director of Argonne National Laboratory for making this program possible. This week's program of atoms for power was transcribed at the Argonne National Laboratory at Lamont Illinois where work is going forward at the present time and the construction of two of the nuclear reactors which are a part of the Atomic Energy Commission's five year reactor development program. Next week atoms for power will take you to Oak Ridge Tennessee. For more information on atomic power for our nation. Adam's more power was written and produced by Bob McMahon for radio station WBA at Purdue University under a grant from the Educational

Television and Radio Center scientific advisor to the program was Professor Donald J tandem of the Purdue Department of Physics. Your narrator's werewell director and James Alston. This is Dick Florian speaking. This program is distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the Radio Network.