Alternative Energy Sources: Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences

18972

PREFACE

This text has been assembled from the proceedings of the Alternative Energy Sources Symposium of the International Symposium Series of the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) that was held in Kuwait in February 1980.

The focus of this symposium was to review and assess those technologies that presently complement and will most likely substitute in the future for oil and gas extracted by conventional techniques. This text includes the state of the art of these technologies as seen by experts in their respective disciplines.

In the coverage of the technologies presented, an attempt has been made to include present developed technologies and those under development. As a consequence, the level of detail in each presentation is appropriate to the developmental stage of the technology under consideration, as assessed by the author. In general, the papers covering proven or nearly proven technologies mostly consist of detailed and or comparative assessments of the diverse engineering schemes without unduly dwelling on basics, while papers addressing technologies under development review the theoretical basis of these technologies in some details. In all instances where meaningful economics are available, numbers are included.

This text also includes review papers of electric storage technology and transportation and energy, topics that, along with conservation, affect most strategic energy planning for the foreseeable future. The text also includes economics methodology and economical development papers that will hopefully allow researchers in the energy field access to the more common tools and approaches of the economic and financial analysts and the international development economists.

During the symposium, participants were also invited to address the following questions in round-table discussions:

• the role to be played by the Arab countries in the development of alternative energy sources technologies.

• the prioritization to be accorded to each such technology, i.e., to develop a strategy for deciding which technologies should be transferred, adapted, or developed;

• the infrastructure required for the execution of this strategy; and

• the techniques and operational steps to be adopted for implementing this strategy.

The summary of these discussions comprises the subject of a separate publication (Alternate Energy Sources Symposium, Summary Report, Jamal T. Manassah, KFAS).

This text and the symposium would not have been possible without the generous support of KFAS Board of Directors and the personal encouragement of H. H. Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmed AL-SABAH, Chairman of the Board, Dr. Adnan Al-Aqeel the Director General, and KFAS member companies. To all these, I am grateful.

Special appreciation is also directed to the KFAS staff for helping me complete this task.

CONTENTS OF PART A

Enhanced Oil Recovery

Bryan T. Yocum

Tar Sands Technology

J. R. Thomas

Synthetic Fuels From Coal

J. R. Bowden and E. Gorin

The State Of The Art Of Producing Synthetic Fuels From Biomass

David C. Junge

Ethanol From Biomass

George F. Huff

Prospects For Photovoltaic Conversion Of Solar Energy

Samir A. Ahmed

The Wind Energy Program In The United States Of America Carl Aspliden, Terry Healy, Edward Johanson, Theodore Kornreich, Richard Kottler, William Robins, Ronald Thomas, Irwin Vas, Larry Wendell, and Richard Williams

NUCLEAR FISSION POWER PLANTS THE STATE OF THE ART

M.M. EL-WAKIL,     University of Wisconsin

ABSTRACT

Since the discovery of nuclear fission by Hahn and Strassman in 1938, great strides have led to its utilization in first, unfortunately, destructive uses, then in peaceful uses for meeting the increasing demand for abundant and reliable electric power. The time span between discovery and utilization has been dizzyingly short when compared with other technologies. As with all complex technologies, the first generation of power plants needs improvements in design, construction, and operation. Because of the pace of development and the still lingering destructive specter, public acceptance problems have arisen.During the recent past, nothing much that is really new has emerged in fission. Engineers have, rightly so, concentrated on improving the design, safety, and operation of proven systems, such as, the pressurized-water, boiling-water, and gas-cooled thermal reactors, and in building demonstration plants of the known but yet unproven fast breeder reactor.This, then, is the state of the art in nuclear fission. This paper begins with historical and introductory remarks. It then describes the above reactor types and existing examples. Other types that received some attention but are now largely ignored, such as, the fluid-fueled and organic-cooled reactors, are mentioned only in the introduction. Special reactors not part of the energy picture, such as, training and production reactors, are not covered. In my view, the fast breeder reactor, when fully developed, will be the primary, and probably inevitable, energy source during much of the next century. The paper terminates with a discussion of the vexing problem, in the public view, of the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

I INTRODUCTION

I.A A HISTORICAL NOTE

Nuclear fission was discovered by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman in Germany in December 1938. The experiment that led to that discovery came about almost by accident, as is the case with most great discoveries of scientific nature. It produced the opposite effect of what scientists had been predicting. It showed that uranium was split, or fissioned, into smaller elements. What was expected, however, was the formation of larger and heavier elements than uranium, the so-called transuranium elements.

Within only a few short weeks, worldwide interpretations of the results of that experiment were made, interpretations that resulted in significant and far-reaching effects on the scientific, technological, economic, and political future of our world.

Ten days after publication of the results of Hahn and Strassmann, on 16 January 1939, Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch published two notes in Nature, in which they supplied a theoretical interpretation of the Hahn and Strassman experiment. On 7 April 1939 the physicists Frédéric Joliot, Hans von Halban, and Lew Kowarski published their paper, Liberation of Neutrons in the Nuclear Explosion of Uranium, in Nature. This paper dealt with the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction.

On 2 August 1939, Albert Einstein, then living in the United States, wrote a historic letter to American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this letter, Einstein drew attention to the possibility of an atomic bomb and, considering the possible German lead in the nuclear field urgently advised the president to make preparations for the production of nuclear weapons in the United States. This dramatic event became possible because Hahn and Strassmann’s discovery was the one missing link in a chain of scientific discoveries that made the whole thing feasible.

In 1905, Einstein, then a young physicist and an assistant at the patent office in Bern, published in the German journal Annals of Physics -page supplement to his theory of relativity. In his short paper entitled Is the Inertia of a Body Dependent on Its Energy Content? Einstein arrived at his famous theory of the convertability of mass and energy, expressed as

(I-1)

where the energy content, E, of a body is equal to its mass, m, multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, c, (300,000 kilometers per second). Einstein himself calculated that if mass is reduced by one gram, an amount of energy equal to 9 × 10²⁰ ergs is produced. He wrote at the time:

The mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. If the energy is changed, then the mass will change in the same way.

At a later date, he wrote:

Is it not impossible that substances whose energy content can be varied to a high degree (for example, the radium slats) will make it possible to test the theory? If the theory is in accordance with the facts, then radiation transmits inertia between the emitting and the absorbing body.

Since it is now known that only a portion of a given mass can be transformed into energy, the above equation is better written in the form:

(I-2)

For example, in the nuclear fission of 1 gram of uranium −235, less than one one-thousandth of a gram is converted into energy. In nuclear technology, a rule of thumb states that the fission of 1 gram of uranium-235 produces approximately 1 megawatt-day of heat. In the largest nuclear reactors currently built with a heat production of some 4000 megawatts in the reactor and an electrical output of 1200 megawatts and operating some 7000 hours per year, about 1200 kilograms of uranium-235 are fissioned each day. Most of this mass is transformed into fission products, but 1 kilogram disappears and reappears in the form of 8.75 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. An oil-fired power plant of comparable output would use about 30,000 barrels of oil per day.

Submarines driven by nuclear energy can cruise underwater for many days covering thousands of miles without surfacing to refuel. In fact, some are now being designed to never need refueling during the useful life of the craft. Surface ships, like the German Otto Hahn, a 16,900 ton freighter, have comparable advantages. The Otto Hahn, in early 1975, completed its 100th voyage since being put into service in October 1968. During that time it had cruised 380,000 nautical miles and used up only 37 kilograms of uranium–235. If coal were the fuel, it would have needed 260,000 tons for the same service.

Unfortunately, the first use of fission was for destructive purposes, a birth that the nuclear industry continues to suffer from till today. However, for the sake of completeness, a word on weaponry may be appropriate. The first fission bomb exploded at Hiroshima, Japan, had a uranium content of approximately 50 kg, and had the equivalent destructive power of 20,000 tons of trinitrotoluene (TNT). Of the 50 kg content, only 1 kg actually fissioned. Of that kilogram only 1 gram of mass was converted to energy and disappeared. The second bomb exploded at Nagasaki, Japan, used plutonium as its fuel. The largest known nuclear explosion was detonated by the USSR in 1961. It was a hydrogen bomb (fission + fusion) and had the equivalent destructive power of 60 million tons of TNT. In all such explosions considerable amounts of fission products are formed, producing large amounts of lethal radioactive radiations as a by-product. While this may have been desirable from a military standpoint, it is definitely unacceptable for peaceful, commercial uses of nuclear energy. Such radiations must be minimized and contained.

The first known thoughts regarding harnessing the tremendous explosive powers of nuclear fission for the production of energy were voiced by a 38–year-old German nuclear physicist named Werner Heisenberg (who previously received a Nobel Prize at age 31). In the summer of 1939 he wrote a paper entitled The Possibility of Large-Scale Energy Production Using Uranium Fission. In it, he wrote:

The data available at present indicate that the uranium fission processes discovered by Hahn and Strassmann can also be used for large-scale energy production. The most reliable method for developing a suitable machine is the enrichment of the uranium-235 isotope. The greater the degree of enrichment, the smaller the size of the machine needed. The enrichment of uranium-235 is the only method that allows the volume of the machine to stay small, that is, about 1 cubic metre. Moreover, it is the only method of producing explosive substances that exceed by several decimal powers the explosive force of the strongest explosive known to date. It is, however, also possible to use normal uranium without uranium-235 enrichment, if the uranium is combined with another substance that slows down the neutrons of the uranium without absorbing them. Water is not suitable for this purpose, but present data indicate that heavy water and very pure carbon fulfill this purpose.

In February 1940, Heisenberg wrote a paper in which he described the construction and operation of a nuclear reactor. The theoretical concepts presented in that paper do not differ greatly from those currently used in present-day nuclear reactor design and operation.

Practical work on peaceful energy production required the use of enriched fuel [an increase in the uranium-235 isotope content in the naturally occurring uranium (0.7% uranium-235 + 0.93% uranium-238 + trace uranium–234)]. The enrichment process posed almost unsurmountable difficulties. Several methods were considered, including the ultracentrifuge, the diffusion process, and others.

In Germany the ultracentrifuge process was pursued but did not, then, meet with much success. The second method of using natural uranium and heavy water (used to moderate, or slow down, the neutrons past the energy absorbing range of the abundant uranium-238 isotope) was pursued. Only small amounts of heavy water were available. The large amounts needed were sought from Norsk Hydro, the Norwegian hydroelectric utility located in Vermork near Rjukan in southern Norway. This company was normally engaged in the production of ordinary hydrogen for ammonia synthesis, with heavy water as a waste product. The plant was later destroyed in a daring raid by allied forces.

In the United States, huge diffusion installations erected at considerable cost succeeded in separating the chemically identical, but nuclearly different uranium isotopes. Also, a team lead by Enrico Fermi worked with great intensity on a natural uranium reactor moderated by graphite, instead of heavy water, a process tried by the Germans but not pursued further by them because their graphite was not pure enough and absorbed too many neutrons. Their efforts slowed down in any case because of Third Reich indifference.

On the other hand the U.S.A. gave high priority to nuclear research. They were interested in both uranium-235 as fuel for both peaceful and military purposes; as well as plutonium, a transuranium element discovered in 1940 by Edwin McMillan and Glenn Seaborg (a discovery that earned them both a Nobel Prize in 1951).

On 2 December 1942, a coded message was sent to Washington. It read The Italian sailor has arrived in the new world. This signalled that the world’s first nuclear reactor went critical. It was situated under the stands of the University of Chicago football stadium. The Italian sailor referred to was, of course, Enrico Fermi who had come to the new world only on 2 January 1937. That reactor, called the Chicago Pile-1 (CP1), was 9 m wide, 9.5 m long, and 6 m high. It contained about 52 tons of natural uranium and about 1350 tons of graphite. Cadmium rods, which absorb neutrons, were used as control devices. The experiment produced an output of 0.5 watt and lasted only a few minutes. However, it was definite proof that a continuous chain reaction was possible, a feat that eluded scientists previously. The Fermi chain reaction was the event that signalled the dawn of the nuclear age.

In the U.S.A., parallel efforts of isotope separation at Oak Ridge, large plutonium production reactors at Hanford, research at Los Alamos (an atomic town constructed in 1943 with people like Niels Bohr, James Chadwick, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, with J. Robert Oppenheimer as the leader) paved the way to making the U.S.A. the leading atomic power at the time.

Many events took place after this, including the construction of hydrogen weapons, by both the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. But the event of most concern to us here is the effort by President Dwight Eisenhower to dispel the fears of the world about the two world giants facing each other and threatening a frightened world with destruction. In his famous address to the United Nations General Assembly on 8 December 1953, he implored the world to utilize atomic power for peaceful uses on a wide scale and not for destructive purposes. In that address he said:

The United States knows that peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream of the future. That capability, already proved, is here now—today. Who can doubt, if the entire body of the world’s scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material with which to test and develop their ideas, that this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal, efficient and economic usage?

To hasten the day when fear of the atom will begin to disappear from the minds of people and the governments of the East and West, there are certain steps that can be taken now.

Undoubtedly, initial and early contributions to this plan would be small in quantity. However, the proposal has the great virtue that it can be undertaken without irritations and mutual suspicions incident to any attempt to set up a completely acceptable system of a worldwide inspection and control.

The atomic energy agency could be made responsible for the impounding, storage and protection of the contribubuted fissionable and other materials. The ingenuity of our scientists will provide special, safe conditions under which such a bank of fissionable material can be made essentially immune to surprise seizure.

The more important responsibility of this atomic energy agency would be to devise methods whereby this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind. Experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world. Thus, the contributing powers would be dedicating some of their strength to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind.

The United States would be move than willing—it would be proud—to take up with others principally involved the development of plans whereby such peaceful use of atomic energy would be expedited. Of those principally involved, the Soviet Union must, of course, be one.

I would be prepared to submit to the Congress of the United States, and with every expectation of approval, any such plan that would:

First, encourage worldwide investigation into the most effective peacetime uses of fissionable material;

Second, begin to diminish the potential destructive power of the world’s atomic stockpiles;

Third, allow all peoples of all nations to see that, in this enlightened age, the great powers of the earth, both of the East and of the West, are interested in human aspirations first rather than in building up the armament of war;

Fourth, open up a new channel for peaceful discussion and initiate at least a new approach to the many difficult problems that must be solved in both private and public conversations if the world is to shake off the inertia imposed by fear and is to make positive progress toward peace.

Against the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States does not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and the hope for peace.

The coming months will be fraught with fateful decisions. In this Assembly, in the capitals and military headquarters of the world; in the hearts of men everywhere, be they governors or governed, may they be the decisions which will lead this world out of fear and into peace.

To the making of these fateful decisions, the United States of America pledges before you—and therefore before the world—its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma—to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.

I.B FISSION BASICS

I.B.1 Energy from Nuclear Reactions

The energy corresponding to the change in mass in a nuclear reaction can be calculated from Einstein’s law (Eq. I-1), here repeated in the form

(I-3)

where gc is a conversion factor that has the following values:

Thus, if Δm is in grams and c in centimeters per second, ΔE will be in ergs. Since c =3 × 10¹⁰ cm/sec, Eq. I-3 can be written in the form

(I-4)

But since it is convenient to express the masses of nuclei in atomic mass units, amu, and since 1 amu equals 1.66 × 10−24 gm, Eq. I-4 may be written as

(I-5)

In energy-mass relations, it is common to use the electron volt (ev), or the million electron volt (Mev) as units of energy. Using the Mev, Eq. I-5 becomes

(I-6)

There are many fission reactions which release slightly differing energy values. One, illustrated in Fig. I-1, is

FIG. I-1 A fission reaction.

(I-7)

Another is

(I-8)

It has the mass balance in amu’s, of:

Adding,

Thus

and

In a nuclear mass balance the result usually depends on a small difference between large numbers. It is thus necessary to carry the isotope-mass values to the fourth or fifth decimal places.

On the average, the fission energy of a U²³⁵ nucleus yields about 193 Mev. The same figure roughly applies to the fission of U²³⁵ and Pu²³⁹ nuclei. This amount of energy is prompt, meaning that it is released at the time of fission. More energy, however, is produced per fission reaction because of: (1) the slow decay of the fission fragments (such as Ba¹³⁷ and Kr⁹⁷ above) into fission products and (2) the nonfission capture of excess neutrons in reactions which also produce energy, although much lower than that produced in fission reactions. The total energy produced per fission reaction in a nuclear fuel element therefore is greater than the prompt energy produced in the fission reaction itself. The average total energy is about 200 Mev per fission.

The complete fission of 1 gm of U²³⁵ nuclei in a fuel element thus produces a quantity of energy equal to

A convenient figure to remember, therefore, is that a reactor burning 1 gm of fissionable material per day generates nearly 1 Mw of energy.

This relates to fuel burnup. Maximum theoretical burnup would therefore be about a million Mw-day/ton of fuel. This figure applies only if the fuel were entirely composed of fissionable nuclei (such as U²³⁵, Pu²³⁹, or U²³³) and if these nuclei were all fissioned. Reactor fuel, however, contains other nonfissionable isotopes of uranium, plutonium, or thorium.

The fissionable isotopes in the fuel cannot be all fissioned because of the accumulation of fission products that absorb neutrons and eventually stop the chain reaction. Because of this, and owing to metallurgical reasons, such as, the inability of the fuel material to operate at high temperatures or to retain gaseous fission products (such as Xe and Kr) in its structure except for limited periods of time, burnup values of reactor fuels are much lower than this figure. They are, however, increased somewhat by the fissioning of some of the new fissionable nuclei, such as Pu²³⁹, which are converted from fertile nuclei, such as U²³⁸, which were already in the fuel. Depending upon fuel type and enrichment (mass percent of fissionable fuel in all fuel), they may vary from about 1,000 to 10,000 Mw-day/ton and higher.

In addition to the above-mentioned fission by neutron bombardment, a uranium nucleus may fission by bombardment with other particles. It is also capable of dividing itself into two fragments without the aid of a bombarding particle. This process, called spontaneous fission, is quite slow, occurring at the rate of about 3 × 10−4 fission/sec gm in U²³⁵ and 10−2 fission/sec gm in U²³⁸

I.B.2 The Chain Reaction

An important parameter in fission is the number of newly born neutrons, also called fission neutrons, in a single fission reaction per neutron engaging and thus lost in such a reaction. For U²³⁵ this number is, on an average, 2.47. In a reactor where controlled and sustained energy production is desired, conserving neutrons is a vital matter.

There are mainly two reasons why not all the fission neutrons cause further fission. The first is the nonfission capture or absorption of some neutrons by the fission products; by nonfissionable nuclei in the fuel, structural material, coolant, and moderator; by the fissionable fuel itself; and, in the case of research and test reactors, by materials deliberately inserted in the reactor core (the volume within the reactor occupied by the active fuel) for test purposes.

The second reason is that a certain percentage of neutrons escape, or leak out, from the core. The smaller the surface-volume ratio of the core, i.e., the larger its size, the lower this percentage. Other things being equal, the core size must be increased to the point where a chain reaction is possible. This size is called the critical size, since a smaller core would be incapable of sustaining a chain reaction. The mass of the fuel in such a core is called the critical mass.

In a reactor using uranium, 100/2.47 or about 40.5 of each 100 fission neutrons must ultimately engage in fission to keep the reactor critical. However, only about 84 percent of the neutrons that get absorbed in U²³⁵ cause fission, the remainder reacting with it to produce U²³⁶, an isotope of no particular importance. Consequently, a total of about 40.5/0.84 or 48 neutrons must be absorbed in U²³⁵. This leaves a maximum of about 52 that may be allowed to leak out of the core and to become absorbed in other core materials.

I.B.3 Neutron Energies and Moderation

Fission neutrons possess a wide range of speeds, averaging about one-tenth the speed of light, and correspondingly high kinetic energies. They collide with various core-material nuclei and slow down. Thus, all neutrons flying about in a core possess kinetic energies that vary between several Mev down to minute fractions of an electron volt. They are classified as fast, intermediate, and slow. The lowest kinetic energies that the neutrons may reach are equivalent to those of the adjoining molecules and atoms. Since these energies are a function of the temperature of the medium, neutrons in this state are called thermal, a special category of slow neutrons.

The fertile nuclei U²³⁸ and Th²³² can be fissioned but only with fast neutrons. The fissionable nuclei U²³³, U²³⁵, and Pu²³⁹ fission with neutrons of all energies. In the thermal range, however, the probability of fission is higher, the slower the neutrons (the 1/V law). A physical explanation of this is that a neutron has a better chance of reacting with the nucleus if it is slow and consequently spends more time in the vicinity of the nucleus.

If a mass of natural uranium (0.7 percent U²³⁵, 99.3 percent U²³⁸) is used in a reactor core, the probability of fissioning the abundant U²³⁸ nuclei diminishes rapidly as the newly born neutrons slow down. Many of these neutrons are then captured by the same U²³⁸ nuclei in nonfission reactions, the probability of which increases sharply as the neutrons reach intermediate energies. This is called resonance absorption. The few neutrons that escape this capture and slow down further acquire a high probability of fission with U²³⁵. Some fission, but the number of the new neutrons plus those produced by the fast fission of U²³⁸ is much less than those starting the cycle. Thus, a critical mass cannot be made from natural (or low-enriched) uranium alone.

In order to overcome the above difficulty, the neutrons must be slowed down past the intermediate or resonance energy range in a material that does not excessively absorb them and that has good slowing-down properties. To do this, the fuel is divided into small elements, such as plates, rods, hollow cylinders, pins, etc. The space between the elements is filled with a material with the required properties. Such a material is called a moderator. Thus, a large proportion of the fission neutrons escape from the fuel and into the moderator before resonance energies are attained. In the moderator they are slowed down past these energies, and upon reentry into the fuel they have largely been thermalized (slowed down to thermal energies) and are ready to fission U²³⁵. This is the process of moderation. It is obvious that the moderator-fuel ratio in a core is an important design parameter.

A typical fuel subassembly may contain an 8 × 8 or 14 × 14 array of rod-type fuel elements. The interspace is filled with a moderator such as water. The elements are covered by a material such as zirconium which protects the fuel against chemical reaction with the water and prevents gaseous fission products from escaping. Such a cover is called cladding, jacket, or can. For some fuels it also acts as a structural support.

A good moderator slows down a neutron after a small number of collisions with its nuclei. The size of these nuclei should therefore be about the same as that of the neutron. As with billiard balls, one is slowed down more effectively if it hits another billiard ball than if it hits a much heavier object, such as a bowling ball, or a much lighter one, such as a marble.

Hydrogen is an excellent moderator because its nucleus is a proton, approximately the same size as a neutron. Deuterium, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, and carbon are all light materials suitable from this standpoint. Of these, however, lithium and boron are strong neutron absorbers and unsuitable as moderators.

It is necessary to have a large number of moderator nuclei in a given volume (large density) so that a neutron does not have to travel long distances before encountering a moderator nucleus. Gases are therefore ineffective as moderators. Hydrogen and deuterium are effective as part of a heavier molecule in liquid or solid form, such as, light and heavy water, hydrocarbons, zirconium hydride, polyethylene, and others.

Water, heavy water, graphite, and beryllium are the most practical moderators. Water is the most effective in terms of the path length necessary. It is plentiful and cheap, but absorbs neutrons slightly. Heavy water absorbs no neutrons but is costly. Graphite is good but weak structurally. Beryllium is costly and is used only where cost is not of prime importance.

Reactors dependent primarily on thermal neutrons for fission are called thermal reactors. Reactors using highly enriched fuels and containing little or no moderator are called fast reactors.

I.C SURVEY OF FISSION POWERPLANTS

The energy produced in fission shows up mainly in the form of kinetic energy of fission fragments and, to a lesser extent, of emitted neutrons and other particles and radiations such as gamma rays. As these different particles slow down or are absorbed, their energies are converted into heat. This heat is removed by a coolant and then usually utilized in a thermodynamic cycle to produce power.

The process of heat removal is a very important one. The amount of heat produced in a reactor is not a sole function of its size but rather of its size and type. Heat removal is more difficult, the smaller the reactor, because of the difficulty of providing an ample heat-transfer surface. Thus, the maximum power that can be obtained from a reactor depends upon heat transfer rather than nuclear considerations. This is the reason for the development of superior heat-transfer systems using coolant fluids and flow rates that are capable of high heat-transfer coefficients.

There are many reactor types. Reactors may be classified according to: (1) general purpose or function, (2) type of moderator, (3) type of coolant, (4) neutron-energy classification, (5) type of fuel, (6) core internal design (homogeneous or heterogeneous), and others.

By general purpose it is meant that a reactor is used for generating power, for research, training, breeding, or a combination of these. In all cases, of course, the heat generated must be removed. Only in power reactors, however, do core temperatures become high. Such reactors may be further classified as to type of power plant associated with them.

Some of the above classifications determine others. For example, a water-cooled (and -moderated) reactor is necessarily a thermal one. While many combinations of design variables, and consequently numerous reactors and reactor concepts, are technically feasible, a few reactor power plants stand out. Some of these are now described, although more detail on each will be given later in this