History of reactor development
- Related Topics:
- fusion reactor
- breeder reactor
- shielding
- nuclear fuel
- critical core size
- On the Web:
- University of Chicago News - The first nuclear reactor, explained (Nov. 05, 2024)
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Since the inception of nuclear power on an industrial scale in the mid-20th century, fundamental reactor designs have progressed so as to maximize efficiency and safety on the basis of lessons learned from previous designs. In this historical progression, four distinct reactor generations can be discerned. Generation I reactors were the first to produce civilian nuclear power—for example, the reactors at Shippingport in the United States and Calder Hall in the United Kingdom. Generation I reactors have also been referred to as “early prototypic reactors.” The mid-1960s gave birth to Generation II designs, or “commercial power reactors.” Most nuclear power plants in operation today employ Generation II technology.
Generation II designs incorporated a number of elements to increase the safety of the reactor and decrease the risks associated with accidents. However, the Generation II elements are considered to be “active safety systems”; that is, they must be activated by human controllers and cannot operate if electric power systems are shut down. In an effort to advance safety even further, a new generation of “advanced light-water reactors” was designed beginning in the mid-1990s. These Generation III designs incorporate so-called passive safety systems into the reactor structure. Passive systems are intended to increase reactor safety by operating with no human intervention or electrical power. Two prominent Generation III designs are the European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) and the Westinghouse Advanced Plant 1000 (AP1000) pressurized water reactor. In the AP1000 design, in the event of a complete loss of electrical power (including emergency backup generators), control rods would drop into the reactor core, immediately stopping the nuclear chain reaction, and continuing decay heat would be transferred out of the reactor containment by a system of gravity-fed cooling tanks. One tank, located inside the sealed containment structure, would feed water to the core; this water would boil and rise as steam to the top of the containment structure, where it would condense and flow back to the internal cooling system. The heat of condensation in turn would be transferred to the containment structure, which would be cooled by water flowing by gravity from an external tank located atop the containment. Water evaporating on the exterior of the containment would complete the transfer of reactor heat to the atmosphere, where it would dissipate.
The nuclear industries of several countries are currently planning Generation IV nuclear power plants, or “next generation nuclear plants” (NGNPs), which are designed with the intent to be built starting in the second quarter of the 21st century. For a reactor to be categorized as an NGNP, it would have to satisfy several requirements, including (1) being highly economical, (2) incorporating enhanced safety, (3) producing minimal waste, and (4) being proliferation resistant. One NGNP concept is the very high temperature reactor (VHTR), a helium-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor using a variety of fuels that would create enough heat to generate electricity and also supply other industrial processes, such as the production of hydrogen from water.
The first atomic piles
Soon after the discovery of nuclear fission was announced in 1939, newspaper articles reporting the discovery mentioned the possibility that a fission chain reaction could be exploited as a source of power. World War II, however, began in Europe in September of that year, and physicists in fission research turned their thoughts to using the chain reaction in an atomic bomb. In the United States, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt was persuaded by a letter from Albert Einstein to initiate a secret project devoted to this purpose. The Manhattan Project included work on uranium enrichment to procure uranium-235 in high concentrations and also research on reactor development. The goal was twofold: to learn more about the chain reaction for bomb design and to develop a method of producing a new element, plutonium, which was expected to be fissile and could be isolated from uranium chemically.
Reactor development was placed under the supervision of the leading experimental nuclear physicist of the era, Enrico Fermi. Fermi’s project began at Columbia University and was first demonstrated at the University of Chicago, centred on the design of a graphite-moderated reactor. On December 2, 1942, Fermi reported having produced the first self-sustaining chain reaction. His reactor, later called Chicago Pile No. 1 (CP-1), was made of pure graphite in which uranium metal slugs were loaded toward the centre with uranium oxide lumps around the edges. This device had no cooling system, as it was expected to be operated for purely experimental purposes at very low power (roughly 10 kilowatts of thermal energy). CP-1 was subsequently dismantled and reconstructed at a new laboratory site in the suburbs of Chicago, the original headquarters of what is now Argonne National Laboratory. The device saw continued service as a research reactor until it was finally decommissioned in 1953. (See the table listing notable early nuclear reactors.)
| Notable early nuclear reactors | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| *Power output is thermal except where noted as megawatts (e), signifying electrical. | ||||
| name | location | power output* | distinction | start-up |
| CP-1 (Chicago Pile No. 1) | Chicago, Ill. | low | first reactor | 1942 |
| ORNL Graphite, or Oak Ridge Graphite Reactor (X = 10) | Oak Ridge, Tenn. | 3.8 megawatts | first megawatt-range reactor | 1943 |
| Y-Boiler (LOPO) | Los Alamos, N.M. | low | first enriched-fuel reactor | 1944 |
| CP-3 (Chicago Pile No. 3) | Chicago, Ill. | 300 kilowatts | first heavy-water reactor | 1944 |
| ZEEP (Zero-Energy Experimental Pile) | Chalk River, Ont. | low | first Canadian reactor | 1945 |
| Hanford | Richland, Wash. | >100 megawatts | first high-power reactor | 1945 |
| Clementine | Los Alamos, N.M. | 25 kilowatts | first fast-neutron spectrum reactor | 1946 |
| NRX | Chalk River, Ont. | 42 megawatts | first high-flux research reactor | 1947 |
| GLEEP | Harwell, Eng. | low | first British reactor | 1947 |
| ZOE (EL-1) | Châtillon, Fr. | 150 kilowatts | first French reactor | 1948 |
| LITR (Low-Intensity Test Reactor) | Oak Ridge, Tenn. | 3 megawatts | first plate-fuel reactor | 1950 |
| EBR-1 (Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1) | Idaho Falls, Idaho | 1.4 megawatts | first breeder and first reactor system to produce electricity | 1951 |
| JEEP-1 | Kjeller, Nor. | 350 kilowatts | first international reactor (Norway-Netherlands) | 1951 |
| STR (Submarine Thermal Reactor) | Idaho Falls, Idaho | submarine reactor prototype | 1953 | |
| BORAX-III | Idaho Falls, Idaho | 3.5 megawatts (e) | first U.S. reactor capable of significant electric power generation | 1955 |
| Calder Hall A | Calder Hall, Eng. | 20 megawatts (e) | world's first reactor for large-scale commercial power production | 1956 |
On the heels of the successful CP-1 experiment, plans were quickly drafted for the construction of the first production reactors (for producing the plutonium to be used in the atomic bomb). These were the early Hanford, Washington, reactors, which were graphite-moderated, natural uranium-fueled, water-cooled devices. As a backup project, a production reactor of air-cooled design was built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. When the Hanford facilities proved successful, this reactor was completed to serve as the X-10 reactor at what is now Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The first enriched-fuel research reactor was completed at Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1944 as enriched uranium-235 became available for research purposes. All of these efforts culminated in Trinity, the first test of an atomic explosive device, which took place on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Even before the war, it had been recognized that heavy water was an excellent neutron moderator and could be easily employed in a reactor design. During the Manhattan Project, this possible design feature was assigned to a Canadian research team, since heavy-water production facilities already existed in Canada. In late 1945, shortly after the end of the war, the Canadian project succeeded in building a heavy-water-moderated, natural uranium-fueled research reactor, the so-called ZEEP (Zero-Energy Experimental Pile), at Chalk River, Ontario.
Because of a lack of information on uranium-235 separation techniques, the first British efforts, which took place after the war, were centred on the use of natural uranium as a fuel. In 1947 GLEEP (Graphite Low Energy Experimental Pile), an air-cooled reactor with a graphite moderator and uranium metal fuel clad in aluminum, was constructed and went critical at Harwell, Berkshire, England, generating 100 kilowatts of thermal energy. The following year, a French reactor of similar power, known as EL-1 (for “heavy water 1”) or Zoé (for “zero power, uranium oxide, heavy water”), was built at Châtillon, near Paris. The French reactor too used nonenriched uranium in its fuel.
In 1943 the Soviet Union began a formal research program to create a controlled fission reaction, explore isotope separation, and investigate atomic bomb designs. After the war, the program began to make significant progress toward the design of a fission weapon; in tandem, reactors were designed for the purpose of producing weapons-grade plutonium. The first Soviet chain reaction took place in Moscow in late 1946, using an experimental graphite-moderated natural uranium pile known as F-1. The first plutonium production reactor became operational at the Chelyabinsk-40 complex in the Ural Mountains of Russia in 1948.