Talk:Experimental Breeder Reactor II

[Untitled]

Merging EBR-I and EBR-II articles would not make a lot of sense. The reactors were radically different in technology, scale and duration of operation. EBR-I was a pure science experiment while EBR-II was a technology demonstrator for the IFR concept.

Second the Motion. Jrincayc 13:39, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

S-PRISM

Article currently reads in part The Nuclear Energy division of General Electric, which was involved in the development of the IFR, has presented a design for a commercial version of the IFR: the S-PRISM reactor.

S-PRISM does build on some of the work of EBR-2, but not on the IFR work. The I stands for Integral, and essential to this concept is the onsite electrorefining and pyroprocessing. The other unique thing about EBR-2, its unique metallic fuel that provided a third stage of sodium coolant, isn't mentioned in our article on S-PRISM. Metallic fuel is also essential to the IFR concept. The three-stage coolant perhaps less so.

So to call this a commercial version of the IFR needs a source at least, and is probably promotional rubbish. Andrewa (talk) 16:32, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

The quoted section of the article is essentially correct, however lazy use of the name PRISM often refers to either the reactor portion or the entire plant, even by GEH let alone others.

Andrew's use of "third stage of sodium coolant" is not technically correct as coolant generally circulates and what he is really referring to is "sodium bonding" of the cast metallic fuel slug to the inside of the sealed cladding resulting in what is referred to as a fuel pin. PRISM uses this fuel pin fabrication technique including an expansion plenum portion at the top of the pin, exactly as developed in EBR-II.

Every proposal that has been submitted for a PRISM reactor plant except the VTR proposal as INL still have the original fuel conditioning facility from EBR-II is really for what GEH, when they are being less lazy with terminology, calls an Advanced Recycling Centre (ARC). This includes several reactors as well as a Nuclear Fuel Recycling Center (NFRC) to perform electrometallurgical processing (pyroprocessing). In these designs GEH optionally adds an additional front end module to the IFR pyroprocessing system to reduce oxide fuels from other reactor designs to metal form allowing for use of existing oxide used fuel as feedstock for PRISM fuel pins in addition to recycle of the PRISM pins after their residency in the local PRISM reactor.

The following two published papers, one from 1989 while the IFR program was running and the other from 2010, describe the fuel pin sodium bonding and both include an electrometallurgical recycling facility onsite although the '89 reference optionally allows for the recycle facility to be offsite/shared with other plants.

PRISM* DESIGN CONCEPT ENHANCES WASTE MANAGEMENT - https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6161920

PRISM: A COMPETITIVE SMALL MODULAR SODIUM-COOLED REACTOR - https://nuclear.gepower.com/content/dam/gepower-nuclear/global/en_US/documents/PRISM%20Technical%20Paper.pdf 67.71.11.237 (talk) 11:39, 27 August 2022 (UTC)