Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project

The Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project (CRBRP) was a joint effort of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (and a successor agency, the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), and subsequently the U.S. Department of Energy) and the U.S. electric power industry to design and construct a sodium-cooled fast-neutron nuclear reactor. The project was opposed by President Carter. The Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project (CRBRP) was a joint effort of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (and a successor agency, the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), and subsequently the U.S. Department of Energy) and the U.S. electric power industry to design and construct a sodium-cooled fast-neutron nuclear reactor. The project was opposed by President Carter. The project was intended as a prototype and demonstration for building a class of such reactors, called Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactors (LMFBR), in the United States. The project was first authorized in 1970. After initial appropriations were provided in 1972, work continued until the U.S. Congress terminated funding on October 26, 1983. The project was seen to be 'unnecessary and wasteful'. The site for the Clinch River Breeder Reactor was a 1,364-acre (6 km2) land parcel owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) adjacent to the Clinch River in Roane County, Tennessee, inside the city limits of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, but remote from the city's residential population.Coordinates: 35°53′24″N 84°22′57″W / 35.89000°N 84.38250°W / 35.89000; -84.38250 The reactor would have been rated at 1000 megawatts (MW) of thermal output, with a net plant output of 350 MW (electrical) and a gross output of 380 MW. The reactor core was designed to contain 198 hexagonal fuel assemblies, arranged to form a cylindrical geometry with two enrichment zones. The inner core would have contained 18% plutonium and would have consisted of 108 assemblies. It would have been surrounded by the outer zone, which would have consisted of 90 assemblies of 24% plutonium to promote more uniform heat generation. The active fuel would have been surrounded by a radial blanket consisting of 150 assemblies of similar, but not identical, design containing depleted uranium oxide; outside of the blanket would have been 324 radial shield assemblies of the same overall hexagonal geometry. The primary (green) and secondary (gold) control rod systems would have provided overall plant shutdown reliability. Each system would have contained boron carbide. The secondary rods were to be used only for SCRAM, and would have been required to be fully withdrawn before startup could be initiated. The Clinch River Breeder Reactor was initially conceived as a major step toward developing liquid-metal fast breeder reactor technology as a commercially viable electric power generation system in the United States. In 1971 U.S. President Richard Nixon established this technology as the nation’s highest priority research and development effort. However, the Clinch River project was controversial from the start, and economic and political considerations eventually led to its demise. One issue was continuing escalation in the cost of the project. In 1971 the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that the Clinch River project would cost about $400 million. Private industry promised to contribute the majority of the project cost ($257 million). By the following year, however, projected costs had jumped to nearly $700 million. By 1981 $1 billion of public money had been spent on the project, and the estimated cost to completion had grown to $3.0-$3.2 billion, with another billion dollars needed for an associated spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility. A Congressional committee investigation released in 1981 found evidence of contracting abuse, including bribery and fraud, that added to project costs. Before it was finally canceled in 1983, the General Accounting Office of the Congress estimated the total project cost at $8 billion.