New world of atomic energy; Atomic energy and power

The following tape recorded program is a presentation of the National Association of educational broadcasters. You'll be interested to know that the Italian Navigator has just landed in the New World that with the voice of author Compton first reported the birth of atomic energy the birth of a new world. This series has been called the New World. Its aim is to outline some of the great benefits that atomic energy is bringing to mankind. The programs are produced by the University of Alabama. Program three atomic energy and power.

In this program we are going to look into the great possibilities of using atomic energy that is nuclear reactors as a source of electric power. We go back first to January 11th 1955 when the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Admiral Louis L. Straw's addressed the National Press Club. He then reviewed the balance sheet of the whole field of atomic energy and stated that the use of atomic energy for power was the second highest item on the credit side. It came next in importance only to the stockpiling of atomic weapons. On January 11th 1955 Admiral Strauss said electrical energy from the atom has been the dream of the engineer since the first chain reaction. Even back in 1946 we knew that as a stunt we could light a few lamps with the heat from the pile. But as recently as the spring of 1953 we thought it would be some years before

private industry would risk any amount of private dollars in this development. However already last September 6 President Eisenhower broke ground at shipping port for what we call the p w r the pressurized water reactor which by 1957 will be delivering 60000 kilowatts into the grid a Pittsburgh area and which represents a large investment of private capital. This is the first of what we hope will be at least one reactor a year for the next several years in the endeavor to get the cost of electricity so generated down to a competitive basis with power from the conventional fuels. Of course there are places on the world map where even today such power as we can now produce would compete with energy from the burning of coal and oil. All in all we are in the power development field with vigor that quotation came from the address by Admiral straws to the

National Press Club. To go into power development in more detail. Jack Westbrook of the University of Tennessee went over to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory this laboratory is run by the Union Carbide and carbon company for the ABC. There he met one of the most outstanding people in the whole field of nuclear reactor development Dr. Alvin M. Weinberg is now a research director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory during the war he worked on the design of the Hanford reactor. Dr. Weinberg the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Admiral straws has been quoted that we are in the power development field with them. I'd like to ask just how vigorous our efforts in this area is. I think that Admiral straws as comment shows admirable restraint because we are involved in is as near to a crash program and civilian power

development as it is feasible to launch in times of peace. Well now in this regard what do you personally foresee as a result of this big effort. The effort I should explain is divided into several different efforts. On the one hand there is a very sizeable military reactor effort which as all of us know has culminated in the successful operation of the submarine Nautilus. Then in addition to this military effort we have what is called the five year development program which is aimed at investigating on fairly large scale the various reactor types which seemed to hold most promise for ultimately giving us civilian. Economical nuclear power. The commission has recently announced the launching of still a third

effort called the power demonstration nuclear. Development Program the commission has invited industry at large to propose reactor projects which industry rather than the commission would be responsible for and to which industry would be expected to contribute very significant sums of money. Many of those. Who were. Connected with the origin of the so-called power demonstration reactor program were skeptical. We have all been very pleasantly surprised. There have been submitted to the commission no fewer than five separate proposals for the construction of large scale. Nuclear power plants. To be financed almost entirely by non-governmental. Funds.

Now you have suggested here two or three areas wherein nuclear power would be used. Would it be worthwhile to at least enumerate the methods whereby this energy would be transformed into a useful power. Is this all electric power. What we are primarily concerned with is to exploit the energy in the nuclear fuel in much the same way basically as the energy and coal is exploited in central steam power plants. That is all we have in mind is to devise. Economical and reliable and practical means for burning the nuclear fuel converting this energy into high pressure steam using the steam to drive a turban which in turn would generate electricity in the same way as it has done in ordinary coal plants. One must always remember that

in civilian nuclear energy one is essentially simply replacing the conventional coal burning boiler by a uranium burning viler not to Weinberg could we now look into some of the different types of reactors which you have mentioned. Look into these in more detail for instance one of the advantages First of all in trying to use these various types. In order to settle the question of which of the many many types of reactors will prove to be the most practical the most economical the best one has no choice then to pursue a variety of likely prospects and pursue them on fairly substantial scale. This is basically what underlies the commission's five year reactor development program namely to take a number of different possibilities happens that five have been chosen to explore these

on a fairly large scale not the largest scale but the next to the largest scale the five that are being proposed. Naturally divide themselves into two broad categories. Those which are based on the nuclear and unerring properties of water. And those which are based on the engineering properties of high temperature metals. The five reactor projects therefore include three reactors in which the. Reactor coolant. That is the material which transfers the heat from the burning uranium to the steam is water and two in which the heat transfer medium is sodium liquid metal which melts at temperatures around 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

When I Have there been any predictions or any speculation on the outcome of these comparisons the reactor business is rather odd sort of business and that's respect. Because for every idea there is in the reactor business there is just millions of dollars that has to be spent in order to determine whether the idea is practical or not. Now it so happens that you are speaking out to a so-called homely genius man but we might observe then that occasionally some explanations are broad ideas we see advanced times in some of the popular press may be based more on brawled theory than tested fact. I think it's fair to say that there has never been a technology in the history of mankind which has had as good a press as nuclear energy not to Weinberg you've mentioned a number of times you're a five year program a five year plan.

Could you tell us in more detail perhaps about the work being done here at Oak Ridge as a part of this program. As I mentioned three of the five year reactors will be based on the use of water as they coolant. Water of course also has an important property it is the material par excellence for slowing down the neutrons which are produced in the in the chain reaction and it is therefore natural that people would try to exploit all of the nuclear and engineering properties of water to the fullest. The three water reactors consist first of the so-called pressurized water reactor which is to be built and is now under construction at shipping Park Pennsylvania. And will be the first large scale nuclear power plant in this country in this reactor the main nuclear fuel is born in so-called fuel elements these are plates or rods of

your Ania coated with some material that is corrosion resistant. The Aegis produced in these rods is transferred from the rods into the water. The water heats up and is transferred to steam which stand. It turns a turban which in turn turns a generator and produces electricity. The disadvantage of subspace so-called heterogeneous reactor heterogeneous because the Iranian is born in discrete lumps which are separated from the water. The disadvantage of such a reactor is that after the reactor has run for a while the rods the fuel elements tend to deteriorate. They have to be taken out of the reactor dissolved up uranium recovered and they reactor reef fabricated as has sometimes been said.

It's as though one builds a Swiss watch a large scale and very expensive Swiss watch runs it for a while and then when it goes out of order and set of rewinding it one dissolves it up and has to rebuild it again. But clearly this is an expensive sort of business and so there has been for many years of the thought that it might be possible to run a nuclear chain reactor in which the uranium instead of being born in discreet fuel elements is dissolved and or otherwise intimately mixed with the water such a reactor would be called a homogeneous reactor as opposed to a heterogeneous reactor. And of course would have the obvious advantage that it would no longer require this tedious and troublesome and expensive step of dissolving up the fuel elements extracting uranium and Reese fabricating of course in exchange for this advantage one.

Encounters very severe and difficult engineering problems connected with the fact that the immense radioactivity of a homogeneous reactor is not nearly as well confined to the discrete fuel elements as is the equal of radioactivity in the heterogeneous reactors. All I can say then is that we had our bridge are partial to the homogeneous reactor idea but there are any number of people who feel that. We have allowed our and through Z as I'm outgrowing our judgement in the matter. Could you tell us something about the others. There is a third line of. Water reactor development which is being pursued by the Argonne National Laboratory. And is concerned with a more effective and ingenious way of transferring the heat from the few almonds into the water in the pressurized water reactor the heat is transferred to the water of the

reactor. This water itself. Gives its heat up to steam which is situated in on the other side of heat exchanger tubes in a large boiler and they so pour a boiling water reactor which as I say is being pursued by the Argonne National Laboratory. This intermediate heat transfer is eliminated and the rotor which is used to cool the fuel elements is itself used to run the turban. This means that steam is generated right in the reactor. That is a water in the reactor is allowed to boil and hence the name boiling reactor. Of course the great advantage of the boiling reactor is compared to the pressurized water reactor is that it is simpler since it is eliminates one complete heat transfer loop. Good you briefly sketch for us the two sodium reactors the two sodium reactors are quite similar from the engineering point of view since

the engineering aspects of a reactor are very much dominated by what the coolant is. On the other hand from the inside of the two liquid metal. Sodium cooled reactors are very different indeed. On the one hand there is the so-called sodium reactor experiment which is being built by the North American Aviation Company comic power division out in Downey California. This is a reactor. Which is again heterogeneous since the uranium is born in these metallic fuel elements the fuel elements are situated in a lattice of graphite. So the graphite is used to slow the neutrons down just as the water is used to slow the neutrons down in the p w r reactor. Sodium is allowed to pass over the fuel elements.

The sodium is heated by the heat which is generated in the fuel element. This heat is transferred by the sodium to a more or less conventional boiler in which steam is generated. The fifth reactor. Which is being designed and built by the Argonne National Laboratory for the sale of so-called experimental breeder reactor two is again a sodium cooled reactor but it differs from all of the other reactors that I have mentioned. In that the neutrons which cause the reaction. To proceed are not slow neutrons. That is they don't move at 2000 as per second which is the slow speed of neutrons in these other reactors but they move rather at a rate something like a thousand

times faster than this. Such a reactor is therefore called a fast reactor. And it differs from the others. In that there is no material in the reactor for slowing the neutrons down there is no water in it there is no graphite and the reactor consists simply of highly enriched uranium U-235. The chain reaction occurs in the reactor neutrons are produced. These neutrons are absorbed in the so-called blanket which surrounds the reactor. The blanket being made either of ordinary uranium or thorium. And the material of the blanket is converted into new fissionable material. Now the trick in the experimental breeder reactor is to try to arrange matters so that more fissionable material is produced in the blanket than is burned in the reactor car.

If this. So-called breeding process is successful then of course one has the very attractive possibility of using not only the one part 140 of U-235 that occurs in natural uranium but in increasing the. Ultimate energy or available energy content of uranium and thorium by a factor of at least 140 and perhaps by a factor of 500 if the thorium also can be used to see that this breeder reactor idea is an extremely important one. On the other hand it should be mentioned that as is usual in this technology the most attractive ideas turn out to be the most difficult. And I would say of the five reactor projects the experimental breeder reactor is probably the most difficult to pursue successfully now. Not to Weinberg would it be fair to say that there's an element of competition here.

At least you've indicated that there is an element of competition between the people working on these different types of reactors to see which can give the best results. I think there was a very real element of competition and I must say that I am tremendously pleased that this competition has developed for the following simple reason for the competition that stems from the fact that it's your own money that your spending has to some extent been lacking in the development of nuclear energy in its place has developed this so-called pride of idea ownership. The public in general probably will be the ultimate recipient of the good things to come from the spirit of competition. And I think the public certainly gets its money's worth from the nuclear energy development in this cunt. Dream must be remembered that in this country and in the world at large they electric power load increases at the rate of about 5 percent per year. Which means that the

generation load is doubling on the average of once every decade ourself. We seem to be faced with the ultimate shortage of energy. And nuclear energy will take its place as one of the important energy sources. You understand that I'm not doctrinaire on this matter. One perhaps would expect me to predict. That nuclear energy is going to put an end to coal. I just don't think it will. Dr. Weinberg I think this description of the five reactor projects. Who would be should be heartening to the lay person to see that such extensive effort and research is going on to make life more easy for us. But I think one of the real tests to that same person is costs the probable cost of electric power for instance from reactors and the cost of the conventional fuels. I wonder if there's any assessment we can make

of this at the present time. It's very difficult to. Predict what the cost of electricity from a reactor will be on a day in and day out basis when one considers that one is dealing here with devices which one hopes will last for 20 30 40 years. It wasn't much more than three years ago that most people were saying Well nuclear reactors might be that the fuel cost would be lower but the investment cost would be so high that they would never be very practical. That it would be hard to build a nuclear reactor which would cost less than a thousand dollars per kilowatt compared to the hundred fifty or 200 dollars to kill a watt that a conventional steam plant costs. But now especially in the US power demonstration program a Atomic Energy Commission has been presented with bona fide proposals in which.

Utilities and equipment manufacturers are essentially guaranteeing that they will build nuclear power plants which will cost not very much more than the $200 per kilowatt which is the upper limit for cost of conventional power plants. So I would say that as far as the capital cost of nuclear power plants is concerned it is going down. As far as the operating costs are concerned. If the fuel element problem can be licked that is if we can make this chemical turn around this does a dissolution of the Swiss watch. Really a cheap process. Or alternatively if we can. Succeed on these homogeneous reactor proposals then the likelihood of reducing the operating costs below conventional costs again is rather good Dr Weinberg. We've heard something about the term package reactors. I wonder where it might fit into this scheme of things.

We have been much interested for many years now throughout the atomic energy development. In trying to develop a small power plant. Fueled with nuclear fuel which would have the essential property of being portable so that the reactor it could be moved. Up to some remote location or perhaps even can be put on a floating barge and moved into a city which has been struck with some disaster and could be used to start up the electrical services again in the last year. The American locomotive company has actually undertaken to construct such a package reactor on the fixed price contract. For the US Army Corps of Engineers and I would have a

strong belief that such package reactors which exploit the fact that nuclear power plants are small and require no fueling and have the strong belief that such packaged reactors will turn out to be very useful as power plants for many room remote areas of the world. Dr. Weinberg How is the question of cost by the way affected by our. Are countered by the location. This of course is an extremely important consideration. For example in the United States where the going rate of central power electricity. Produced by conventional means is around six meals per kilowatt hour. The target which atomic power has to reach is very much more difficult target than is say the

target which atomic power must reach in a location like Alaska where some parts are simply has no power at any price or even in a country like France where I have been informed the average power cost is something of the order of 10 to 15 mil as per kilowatt hour. And so I think it should be always remembered that. A good part of the motivation. For our atomic power developments of int in this country is connected with the responsibility which this country feels for helping achieve and maintain the peace. Namely that what. We are doing in the development of civilian nuclear power we consider. Will have a bearing on the power picture in countries which are less well in dollar. With. Hydrocarbon fuel more

quickly than it will have bearing on our own country's power picture where we are fortunate in having tremendous reserves of coal and oil. And. I fear that to get back to this question you raised about what is the degree of responsibility what is the attitude of the people who are working on nuclear power development in this country. I think that this. Aspect of the possibility that what we are working on will have important bearing in vast parts of the world where energy is more expensive than it is here that this realisation is wrong which I think does more than any other single realisation to imbue in all of us a spirit of adventure a spirit of satisfaction a spirit of responsibility in the pursuit of nuclear power development.

Dr. Alvin M. Weinberg research director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was speaking in the laboratory to Jack Westbrook of the University of Tennessee about the prospects of using nuclear reactors to produce electric power. You have been listening to the third program in the series The New Work series is produced by station WUOM at the University of Alabama under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of education nobody can. Produce a right is more a yeah. Narrator Richard Hartsock announcer Greg Hyman. This is the end E.B. tape network.