Talk:Lead-cooled fast reactor

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Too press-releasey

I've added a bit on the SVBR-100, but couldn't face fixing the rest of it. In general this article sounds like it's been cobbled together from press releases about future/vapourware reactors, when a more encyclopaedic tone would be struck by concentrating on the parameters of the historical reactors and then separating out where things might go in the future.82.31.21.203 (talk) 13:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Disadvantages

"A lead-bismuth reactor will require hundreds to thousands of tonnes of bismuth depending on reactor size." -This figure seems awfully high.

It would seem appropriate to include the challenges of manufacturing a fuel that does not degrade in the proposed molten lead coolant.
quote: "No metallic or ceramic material has currently proven corrosion and radiation resistance under LFR relevant conditions."
from "4. Conclusion" of "Lead-Cooled Fast Reactor Systems and the Fuels and Materials Challenges". ResearchGate. Retrieved 2018-03-20.

No this figure is right. Indeed, the mass inventory of the lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) for the proposed pool-type design of Myrrha considered in the preliminary FEED analyses of 2013-2015 represents 4500 tons metallic Pb-Bi.^[1] Meanwhile, you are right to also mention that the corrosion and radiation resistance of metallic or ceramic materials under LFR relevant conditions also constitute an important and unresolved issue. Shinkolobwe (talk) 16:40, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Plant contamination by ²¹⁰
Po

Polonium decays to lead and bismuth and emits an alpha particle. Those will contaminate the liquid lead coolant only. Is that a real disadvantage? ––Nikolas Ojala (talk) 15:32, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is a real radiologic hasard and operational safety problem that will be very difficult to tackle. Attention to not underestimate the radiological hasards related to ²¹⁰
Po which is a nasty alpha-emitter even if its radioactive half-life is of 138 days. ²¹⁰
Po radiotoxicity is higher than that of ²³⁹
Pu, it is volatile, certainly at elevated temperature, and because of the absence of emission of gamma or X-rays, contaminations with ²¹⁰
Po are particularly difficult and tedious to detect. All of this contributes to making polonium-210 the most radiotoxic radionuclide of all. The mass inventory of the lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) for the proposed pool-type design of Myrrha considered in the preliminary FEED analyses of 2013-2015 represents 4500 tons metallic Pb-Bi.^[1] This would lead to the production of more than 4 kg of ²¹⁰
Po during the reactor operations. The presence of such a large ponderable quantity of highly radiotoxic ²¹⁰
Po represents a considerable radiological safety challenge for the maintenance operations and the storage of the Myrrha nuclear fuel. Because of the high volatility of ²¹⁰
Po, the plenum space above the reactor could also become alpha-contaminated. All operations in ²¹⁰
Po contaminated areas will require appropriate radiological protection measures more severe than for the ²³⁹
Pu handling, or to be completely performed by remotely-operated robots. Shinkolobwe (talk) 17:04, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Lead 208

Pb-208, also known as separated lead, has significantly better nuclear properties as a fast reactor coolant than natural lead. If we could source this (my source is informal conversations with nuclear engineers - I'm not one but worked with several) then it's an interesting fact to include in this article. It's already stated at Isotopes of lead#Lead-204, -207, and -208: its neutron capture cross section is very low (even lower than that of deuterium in the thermal spectrum), making it of interest for lead-cooled fast reactors... but no source is given.

Separated lead is a bad term for it... it's quite difficult to separate Pb-208 from Pb-207 and only a little easier to separate it from Pb-206, but pure Pb-208 is found in some Thorium ores so that's the normal source. Andrewa (talk) 00:21, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am no nuclear physicist, but this seems a little strange to me. The major nuclear alteration in a reactor will happen by neutron capture. Natural lead consists mostly of Pb-206, Pb-207, and Pb-208 which are all stable isotopes. If Pb-206 captures a neutron, it becomes Pb-207. If Pb-207 captures a neutron, it becomes Pb-208. If the n-capture cross sections of the higher isotopes are much less than of Pb-206, I would estimate that during the initial operation, most of the other isotopes will be converted to Pb-208 anyway until an equilibrium is reached.

Also, if Pb-208 captures another neutron, it converts to Pb-209, which decays to Bi-209 (essentially stable, extremely high half-life). And the next step would be Bi-210, decaying within days (HL 5 d) to Po-210, which in turn decays to Pb-206 (HL 138 d). Hence we are at the start of the neutron capture cycle again.

Would be really interesting to see a source and explanation for the advantage of Pb-208! --Rower2000 (talk) 07:17, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ ^a ^b De Bruyn, Didier; Abderrahim, Hamid Aït; Baeten, Peter; Leysen, Paul (2015). "The MYRRHA ADS project in Belgium enters the Front End Engineering phase". Physics Procedia. 66: 75–84. doi:10.1016/j.phpro.2015.05.012.

Shinkolobwe (talk) 16:44, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[DeBruyn2015-1] De Bruyn, Didier; Abderrahim, Hamid Aït; Baeten, Peter; Leysen, Paul (2015). "The MYRRHA ADS project in Belgium enters the Front End Engineering phase". Physics Procedia. 66: 75–84. doi:10.1016/j.phpro.2015.05.012.

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