How Nuclear Power Works by Dr. Bob Masterson MIT ScD. (Nuclear Engineering) Harvard MBA (emeritus)...

How Nuclear Power Works

by

Dr. Bob MastersonMIT ScD. (Nuclear Engineering)

Harvard MBA (emeritus)Affiliate Professor, Virginia Tech

President, Cornerstone Technology Partners


• Reactors produce energy by “burning” several different types of Uranium, which is a common “nuclear fuel” used in nuclear power plants today

• The uranium we find in nature consists of three different varieties– U-234– U-235– U-238

but only one of these varieties can be used to produce electric power directly


• The others just absorb nuclear particles and do not produce energy directly

• Does anyone have any idea what variety of Uranium this is ?


• The Answer is U-235

• The most common variety of the element Uranium – U-238 can absorb a neutron and produce Plutonium-239, which is another important nuclear fuel, but it does not produce nuclear power directly


• U-235 produces energy by absorbing neutrons (common nuclear particles) and splitting apart or “fissioning”

• In fact, for you “Dark Matter” enthusiasts, about 40% of the visible matter in the universe today consists of these ordinary neutrons.

• (Most of the rest of it is protons)


• When a U-235 nucleus absorbs a free neutron with just the right energy, it splits apart and releases some additional energy in the process

• This process is called nuclear fission, and the reactors which use this process to produce nuclear power are called fission reactors.

• This is because the mass of the particles coming out of the reaction is less than the mass of the particles going into the reaction


• From Einstein’s equation

E = mc2

the total energy released is

E = mc2

where m is the difference between the mass of the particles going into the reaction and the mass of the particles coming out of the reaction


• The process of nuclear fission is illustrated in the figure below


U-235

U-236

FP 1

FP 2

n

U-236 U-236* U-236

17 %Chance

83 %Chance

Standard Fission

Radiative Capture

Stable

Path 1

Path 2

• Fission involves splitting apart very heavy elements and only uranium and plutonium can be split apart in this way

• Energy can also be produced by “fusing” together very light elements. This process is known as nuclear fusion.

• An example of the fusion process is shown on the next page

• The process of nuclear fusion is used by our sun and other stars to generate heat, light, and power

• However, for a variety of reasons, a practical fusion reactor is probably 100 years away


• The nuclear fusion and the nuclear fission process compared together


U-235

Neutron

U-236

Ba-144 Kr-89

Fission Process Fusion Process

Deuterium Tritium

Neutron Helium

Comparing fission and fusion

• Does anybody have any idea how many nuclear fissions it takes per second to produce 1 Watt of electric power ?


• The answer is that it takes about 100 billion fissions per second to generate one Watt of useful power.

• Hence, trillions of U-235 atoms have to be split apart every second to produce the huge amounts of electric power that a typical nuclear power plant produces today


• Unfortunately there is not a lot of U-235 in the Uranium ore we mine today to produce all of this power

• As a matter of fact, there is about 150 times less U-235 than there is U-238 in natural uranium ore

• So why is there so little U-235?• Did we get unlucky when the universe was

made ?


• No

• It turns out that we have more than our fair share of uranium compared to other planets on a cosmic scale


• The amount of uranium compared to other elements in the universe is shown in the slide on the next page

• On average, we got about 10,000 times more than the average planet gets


• Here is the natural abundance of the elements in the universe as a whole:


Atomic number, Z

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Nat

ural

Ab

un

danc

e (L

og10

)

The abundance of Siis normalized to 106

H

He

Li

Be

B

C

N

O

F

Ne

Na

Si

P

SAr Ca

Sc

Ti

V

Fe

Co

Ni

Cu

Zn

Ga

As

Zr

Nb

Mo SnTe Xe

Ba

Pr

W

Re

Pt

Au

Hg

Pb

BiTh U

Nuclear Fuels like Uraniumand Thorium

Relative Abundance of the Elements in the Universe

• In the Earth’s crust, the uranium is not located in the just one place


USA

Canada

Brazil

Russia

South Africa

Namibia

Kazakhstan

Uzbekistan

Australia

Hard oresSoft ores Each globe represents 0.1 Tg uranium

• The universe was created in a colossal explosion of space and time that occurred about 15 Billion years ago

• In the world we live in to day, this explosion has become known as the Big Bang

• Most of the elements in the universe were created in the Big Bang, but the uranium we mine on the Earth today was not !

• Does anybody have any idea where the uranium on the Earth today came from ?


• The history of the universe from the beginning of time until today


14

Beginning

of TimeThe

Universe Today

• All of the hydrogen and the helium in the universe were created in the Big Bang but most of the heavier elements such Iron, Carbon, Aluminum, Nickel, and Chromium that our industrial society is based upon were not

• Does anybody have any idea where these heavy elements came from ?


• These heavy elements were produced after the universe was born by “cooking” them in the cores of stars such as our sun

• In other words, they were produced by Nuclear fusion when lighter elements such as Hydrogen and Helium were fused together

• However, this process stops with the element Iron and heavy elements such as Uranium CANNOT be produced in this way

• So where did the Uranium that we find on the Earth come from ?


• The Uranium on the Earth today was produced by the gravitational collapse of massive stars called Super Novas

• When these stars died, they exploded and spewed their “guts” back into empty space

• Eventually this material condensed into planets and other stars

• The Earth and the Sun are examples of the remains of these Super Novas today

• In other words, the gravity during the gravitational collapse “squeezed” the energy into the Uranium ore that we are trying to extract from it today


• An example of the remnants of one of these supernova explosions is shown in the figure on the next slide

• This is a picture of the Crab Nebula that Chinese astronomers saw explode about 1000 years ago

• (They didn’t understand what exploded at the time)• This picture was taken by the Hubble Space telescope• The different colors in the image represent the different

elements that were produced by the explosion of this Super Nova


• A picture of the Crab Nebula as seen by the Hubble Space telescope


• When the Earth was first formed about 5 billion years ago (the universe is much older than this), there was almost as much U-235 as U-238

• However, the U-235 got cut in half every 700 million years (because that was it’s radioactive half life), while the U-238 got cut in half every 2.8 billion years


• So if you play this scenario out over the life of the planet (which is about 5 billion years), it turns out that there was about 64 times more U-235 (relative to U-238) when the Earth was first formed than there is today


• This means that the Earth was a once a very hot and radioactive place (about 5 billion years ago) !

• In fact, it was so hot that most scientists believe that the radiation (from the decay of the U-235) kept the Earth’s crust molten for about a Billion years


• In fact, this excess uranium even created its own natural nuclear reactors that burned on their own for millions of years.

• The best known example of these reactors are the great natural nuclear reactors of Oklo, which are located in the West African country of Gabon today


• These reactors burned for millions of years and released more energy than most atomic bombs !

• The remains of one of these great natural nuclear reactors is shown in the figure on the next page


• A picture of the remains of one of the great natural nuclear reactors of Oklo


• In fact, these reactors burned hundreds of times longer than the age of the great pyramids of Egypt such as the great pyramid of Kufu shown below


• They burned up a lot of the Earth’s Uranium-235 in the process

• These nuclear reactors operated peacefully (and not so peacefully) for millions of years

• Hence, the first nuclear reactors on Earth were of natural origin and were not made by man (Some conspiracy theorists believe they were built by aliens)


• As a point of comparison, the average lifetime of a nuclear power plant today is about 50 years

• (Some people are trying to extend the lifetime of these plants to about 100 years)


• Over time, the Earth cooled, and most of the remaining uranium sunk to the planet’s core

• Why ?


• Because it is so heavy !

• However, some of it still remains in the Earth’s crust and in the oceans of the world today

• The concentration over time is shown in the graph on the next page


• The U-235 and U-238 concentrations in the Earth’s crust over time


0.00

10.00

20.00

30.00

40.00

50.00

60.00

70.00

80.00

90.00

100.00

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Increments of 704 Million Years

Present

Relative Abundance in Percent

U-235 in the Earth's Crust as a Function of Time

His

tori

cal a

bu

nd

ance

(P

erce

nt)

• Today, the average concentration of Uranium in the Earth’s crust is about 3 parts per million (3 PPM)

• Moreover, the average concentration of Uranium in the Earth’s oceans, which is dissolved in ordinary seawater, is about 3 parts per billion(3 PPB)


• The most common uranium ore deposits in the world today are shown in the picture on the next page.

• Notice that the majority of the world’s uranium ore can be found in just a dozen countries

• Very little (if any) uranium can be found in the Oil-rich Mid East

• When the oil runs out, the Sheiks will be in trouble !



USA

Canada

Brazil

Russia

South Africa

Namibia

Kazakhstan

Uzbekistan

Australia

Hard oresSoft ores Each globe represents 0.1 Tg uranium

• Notice that the United States currently has the world’s 6th largest supply of natural uranium ore (the original Soviet Union plus Kazakhstan had the largest)

• So what are Putin and Hillary Clinton up to ?


• In total there are at least 6 million tons of uranium available to be mined, and that only 1 million tons, or 15 % of it has been extracted to date.

• A large percentage of this amount found its way into nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and it is currently being recycled for peaceful purposes.


• In fact, uranium is more common in the Earth’s crust than either gold or silver !

• It is about 450 times more common than gold and about 25 times more common than silver, so on a planetary scale, we are fortunate to have as much uranium as we do


• In an average year, all of the nuclear reactors on the Earth only burn 70,000 metric tons of this Uranium

• And these 70,000 metric tons produce about 20 % of the world’s electric power !

• In some countries such as France, the percentage of electricity produced by nuclear power plants is even higher


• As a matter of fact, France is about 80 % nuclear today

• Does anyone have any idea how “nuclear” the United States is ?


• Answer:

• Today about 20% of the electric power in the United States is produced by nuclear power plants

• However, this percentage could be considerably larger if the politicians were not so scared of it


• Most of this fear is irrational and in an average year, about 100 times more people die from flumes and pollutants from coal and gas fired power plants in the United States than they do from all of the nuclear power plants in the world combined !


• The number of nuclear power plants and the amount of their electricity produced by nuclear power is compared on the next few slides

• Notice that China and India are building large numbers of new nuclear power plants over the next couple of years

• They are certainly not afraid of it !



Active Reactors

Additional R

eactors

Under Constructio

n

Insta

lled C

apacity

Realized Capacity

Three Mile Island

Chernobyl

History of the Global Nuclear Power Industry

Nu

mb

er o

fP

ower

Rea

ctor

sP

ower

(G

iga-

wat

ts)

400

300

200

100

400

300

200

100

500

0

0

1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

Fukushima


Number of Reactors

ChinaRussiaIndia

United StatesSouth Korea

JapanTaiwan

PakistanSloveniaUkraine

ArgentinaGermany

BrazilFinlandFrance

UAE

0 5 10 15 20 25

Number of Reactors under Construction

30

• There are currently about 500 nuclear power plants in the world today (not including research reactors and test reactors)

• This number is expected to double to about 1000 reactors over the next 50 years


• Moreover, the cost of generating electricity from nuclear power plants is about half of the cost of electricity from other energy sources

• In fact, it is two to three times less expensive than the cost of electricity produced by most alternative energy sources


• Why ?

• Because after a nuclear power plant is built and put in operation, the annual fuel cycle costs are about 3 times lower than they are for a coal-fired power plant and even some natural gas powered plants


• The costs of generating electric power from a nuclear power plant are compared to the costs of generating electric power from other power plants in the slide on the next page



31%

Coal Natural Gas Nuclear The Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Fuel as a Percentage of Electric Power Generation Costs since Y2K

Fuel 78 %

O&M22%

Fuel 86%

O&M 14%

O&M69%

Fuel31%

42%

15%

8%4%

Uranium ore

Enrichment

Waste Fund

Fabrication

Conversion

• So unless you want your electric bill to be two or three times higher than it is today, nuclear power is by far the most cost effective large scale alternative to produce electric power

• The average nuclear power plant produces electricity and delivers it to a retail consumer in the United States for a price of between 9 and 10 cents per kilowatt hour


• Some commercial companies can get this electric power for between 6 and 7 cents per kilowatt hour

• Consequently, as long as there is enough investment capital to build nuclear power plants, and the cost of this capital is low, nuclear power is “dirt cheap” compared to other large-scale power sources (except hydro) because the cost of the fuel is so low (the water is free)


• So what happens if the cost of the nuclear fuel (i.e., the Uranium) gets really high – like oil did during the oil crisis in the 1980’s ?


• It turns out that it doesn’t matter much because even if the cost of Uranium triples, the cost of your electric bill will only go up by 50% !


• Let’s finish our presentation by examining why this is true.


• Over the years, the price of the natural Uranium used to make nuclear fuel has averaged about $100 per kilogram (or about $50 per pound).

• If you are a commodity or hedge fund guy, it’s historical price performance is shown on the next slide


• So here is the spot price of uranium since 1972


• This is the spot price for a refined version of uranium ore called uranium yellowcake that is used to make nuclear fuel rods

• Uranium yellowcake has about the same consistency as a sack of premixed concrete (but it is somewhat heavier)

• From the slide on the next page, you can see that it has a bright yellow color


• A picture of Uranium Yellowcake (right) which is used to make nuclear fuel rods and the uranium ore called Pitchblende from which it is made (left)


• Pure uranium that is extracted from this yellowcake is a silvery metal that has a dull grey surface similar to that of a silver coin

• When it is put in nuclear fuel rods, it is combined with two oxygen atoms to form a ceramic compound called Uranium dioxide or UO2

• Uranium dioxide has about the same melting point as the heat tiles on the US space shuttle so it is very hard to melt – even in a nuclear power plant


• Whatever you do, don’t lick it or put it near water !

• Why ?


• Pictures of metallic uranium and the uranium dioxide used to make nuclear fuel rods are shown on the next slide.

• Normally the fabrication and the enrichment costs for natural uranium are less than the costs of the raw uranium ore !


• Pure uranium metal (left) and uranium dioxide fuel pellets which are made from it (right)


• The uranium dioxide that is used in nuclear fuel rods has about the same melting point as the heat tiles that are used on the US Space Shuttle. They look a lot alike – don’t they ?


• It turns out that even if all the uranium in the Earth’s crust runs out, and there is no more uranium left to be mined, we can still extract it from seawater.

• As a matter of fact, the Japanese are doing this today !

• An example of this process is shown on the next slide


• A jar of uranium extracted from ordinary sea water


A jar of uranium yellowcake (U3O8)

extracted from ordinary sea water

• In other words, this process just requires a lot of membranes with a large surface area located on the sea floor !

• Now let us examine how much this process costs


• The current cost of extracting natural uranium from seawater turns out to be about $300 per kilogram (according to the World Nuclear Association).

• So if it ever comes to the point where all of the uranium in the Earth’s crust runs out and we have to get it from seawater, there is enough uranium dissolved in the oceans of the world to last millions of years, and the price of it will never get higher than about $300 per kilogram !


• Someday most of the world’s uranium may be extracted from sea water !


10¢

11¢

12¢

13¢

14¢

15¢

8¢

9¢

16¢

100 200 300 4000

Cost of natural uranium (USD per kilogram)

Cos

t of

ele

ctri

c p

ower

(ce

nts

per

kw

H)

Seawaterextractionbecomes

economicallyviable

• This means that if the capital costs of building nuclear power plants remain about the same, the cost of generating nuclear power from these plants will never be more than 50% higher per kilowatt hour than it is today – even a million years from now (if we happen to last that long)


• So based on the charts we have just presented, it did not make economic sense for Vladimir Putin (with Hillary Clinton’s help) to buy 20 % of the domestic uranium production in the United States

• The Japanese will put them out of business if it ever gets down to getting uranium out of seawater !


• If fact, we can ask them to build a uranium production plant for us in the Gulf of Mexico using unemployed Mexican and American workers to construct it

• We hope they didn’t pay a lot of money for their high-powered investment advice

• We could have certainly told them what to do for a lot less, and they probably would have been a lot better off as the result of it !


• This concludes our presentation for today

• Thank you for listening to our presentation

• Questions ?


• Note: Our book that describes everything we have presented in the talk is coming out later this year.

• The name of the book name is “Nuclear Engineering Fundamentals” by Dr. Robert Masterson

• It’s retail price is projected to be about $150• You can probably get a copy of it from

Amazon for about $100


• The ISBN number is # 97814822214970

• We also do some energy consulting and high level energy strategy for hedge funds and people like the alternative energy group at Goldman Sachs.

• If you think we can help you out, please let us know


• There are lots of different reactors in the world today and a lot of people don’t know what the best ones are to buy

• The nuclear utilities in the United States are going to have to make a lot of tough decisions in this area over the next couple of years


• Our email address is• [email protected]

• Office and cell phones are• (917)-965-5768 (Office)• (917)-841-9799 (Cell)

• We hope you enjoyed the talk !


mailto:[email protected]

• A copy of the talk is posted on the DMA website

• Bob Smith can also get you in touch with me directly if you want (we go back to the Stone Age together)


How Nuclear Power Works by Dr. Bob Masterson MIT ScD. (Nuclear Engineering) Harvard MBA (emeritus)...

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Transcript of How Nuclear Power Works by Dr. Bob Masterson MIT ScD. (Nuclear Engineering) Harvard MBA (emeritus)...