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Nuclear Power (Second Edition)
Past, present and future
David Elliott
Open University, UK
IOP Publishing, Bristol, UK

ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
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accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, the Copyright
Clearance Centre and other reproduction rights organizations.
Permission to make use of IOP Publishing content other than as set out above may be sought
at permissions@ioppublishing.org.
David Elliott has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 978-0-7503-5152-2 (ebook)

ISBN 978-0-7503-5150-8 (print)
ISBN 978-0-7503-5153-9 (myPrint)
ISBN 978-0-7503-5151-5 (mobi)
DOI 10.1088/978-0-7503-5152-2
Version: 20220501
IOP ebooks
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Published by IOP Publishing, wholly owned by The Institute of Physics, London
IOP Publishing, Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol, BS1 6HG, UK
US Office: IOP Publishing, Inc., 190 North Independence Mall West, Suite 601, Philadelphia,
PA 19106, USA
Cover image: Courtesy of EDF (UK)

Contents
Author biography vii

Bias viii
Figure Acknowledgements ix
Personal Acknowledgements x
1 Introduction: the nuclear vision 1-1

1.1 Nuclear energy: uranium in a bucket 1-1
1.2 Atoms for peace 1-3
1.3 The rise and fall of nuclear power 1-7
1.4 On to generation IV? 1-10
References 1-12
2 Nuclear innovation: the early days 2-1

2.1 Early US experiments 2-1
2.2 Thorium reactors and fast breeders 2-3
2.3 What next? 2-7
2.4 Design parameters, choices, and constraints 2-9
References 2-13
3 New brooms–in the 2000s 3-1

3.1 Back to breeders—and thorium 3-2
3.2 Small is beautiful—SMRs 3-8
3.3 Reactor choices and prospects 3-14
References 3-18
4 Progress in the 2020s 4-1

4.1 SMRs move ahead tentatively 4-2
4.2 ANT—a wider range 4-7
4.3 Fusion expectations 4-10
4.4 The prospects for advanced nuclear power 4-14
References 4-15
v
5 Nuclear power revisited 5-1

5.1 A review of the prospects for new nuclear technologies 5-2
5.2 Carbon intensity, materials, and land use 5-6
5.3 Nuclear and renewables 5-10
5.4 What long-term future for nuclear power? 5-13
References 5-20
6 Conclusions: the way ahead 6-1

6.1 The issues ahead 6-1
6.2 Choices ahead 6-5
6.3 An end to nuclear? 6-8
6.3.1 Afterword: insider views 6-11
References 6-13
Appendix 1: Public opposition to nuclear power 7-1
Appendix 2: Nuclear and renewables—the basics compared 8-1
Further reading, contacts, and videos 9-1
vi
Author biography
David Elliott
David Elliott worked initially with the UK Atomic Energy
Authority at Harwell and the Central Electricity Generating
Board before moving to The Open University, where he is now
an Emeritus Professor. During his time at The Open University
he created several courses in design and innovation, with special
emphasis on how the innovation development process can be
directed towards sustainable technologies. He has published
numerous books, reports, and papers, especially in the area of
developing sustainable and renewable energy technologies and
systems.
vii
Bias
The nuclear power field is contentious, with strong pro- and anti-nuclear views often
being expressed. This study strives to avoid polarised extremes, but perhaps
inevitably, since it adopts a critical approach, it may be seen as biased by nuclear
enthusiasts. However, it may also be seen as not critical enough by those strongly
opposed to nuclear power.
Guide to technical terms and units

Some major reactor types
ANT Advanced nuclear technology
BWR Boiling water reactor
EPR European pressurised-water reactor
Heavy water has a different isotope of hydrogen
HTGR High-temperature gas-cooled reactor
IFR Integral fast reactor
LFTR Liquid fluoride thorium reactor
Light Water is the normal stuff!
LWR Light water reactor
MSR Molten salt reactor
PWR Pressurised water reactor
SMR Small modular reactor
A quick guide to key atoms…

Some can be made to fission (split) and so are said to be ‘fissile’.
U235 A rare fissile isotope of uranium.
U238 What most uranium consists of: it is ‘fertile’, i.e. it can be converted to:
Pu 239 Plutonium, a fissile material, made from U238 by absorbing a neutron
Th232 Thorium is not fissile, but is fertile, i.e. it can be converted to:
U233 A fissile product of thorium, made from Th232 by absorbing a neutron
Neutrons are electrically neutral particles that exist (along with protons) in the
nucleus of most atoms and which can be emitted when the atoms disintegrate, e.g. as
a result of fission.
Energy units Reactor power generation capacities are cited in Megawatts (MW)
or Gigawatts (GW)—1 GW is 1000 MW. 1 MW is 1000 kilowatts (kW). A typical
one-bar electric fire power rating is 1 kW. Running it for an hour would use 1
kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy. A 1 MW-rated wind turbine, if it could be run flat
out, would generate 1000 kWh, or 1 MWh; a 1 GW nuclear plant would generate
1000 MWh, or 1 GWh, but energy outputs are usually quoted in annual terms. In
what follows, to make this book accessible to the non-specialist reader, and for
brevity, the physics has been kept to a minimum and much simplified (some might
say too much).
viii
Figure Acknowledgements
1.1 A 1950’s UK miss: Harwell researchers and the ZETA fusion reactor.
Credit: United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.
2.1 The four Generations of nuclear plant types.
Credit: From the GIF 2014 report published by the OECD, available free from the
GIF portal http://www..gen-4.org/.
2.2 Energy R&D funding in the IEA countries.
Credit: IEA, 2007 https://www.iea.org/reports/reviewing-rd-policies. All rights reserved.
2.3 Renewables accelerate ahead of all else, including nuclear.
Credit: From the World Nuclear Industry Status Review, 2021, reproduced with
permission, data from the BP Statistical Review, 2012.
5.1 Levelized cost of electricity based on Lazard data.
Credit: Reproduced from Our World in Data - Max Roser, from https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3-Learning-curves-for-electricity-prices.png. CC-BY 4.0.
5.2 UK Nuclear Industry Association expansion plan 2020.
Credit: Courtesy of the Nuclear Industry Association—www.niauk.org.
5.3 UK National Nuclear Labs expansion plan.
Credit: NNL 2021.
6.1 Completion delays for various energy investment project options.
Credit: National Infrastructure Commission (2021), letter to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer: advice on nuclear power plant deployment, based on data from
Sovacool B, Gilbert A, and Nugent D (2014) ‘An international comparative
assessment of construction cost overruns for electricity infrastructure’, Energy
Research & Social Science 3 152–60.
ix
Personal Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ian Fairlie, Peter Roche, Jim Green, Tam Dougan, and Oliver Elliott
for critical comments/suggestions on drafts.
x
IOP Publishing

David Elliott
Chapter 1
Introduction: the nuclear vision
Nuclear power was once touted as the ultimate energy source, freeing mankind from
reliance on dirty and expensive fossil energy. In the early 1950s there were Utopian
visions of energy plenty and unbounded prosperity fuelled by cheap nuclear
electricity and ever more rapid technological advance around the world. Contact
with reality has reduced some of this enthusiasm. Seventy years on, nuclear power
only supplies around 10% of global electricity (WNA 2021). There are still optimistic
projections about the prospects for new nuclear power, but, in the main, it has been
the new entrant, renewable energy, that has seen the most promise and growth, in
particular, wind and solar energy. These sources, along with hydro, now supply
around 27% of global electricity (REN21 2021). There are projections that they
could continue to expand to supply 50% by 2030, and perhaps almost all electricity
needs globally by around 2050. Some countries have actually already reached 50%
or more, but the very high global projections may be overblown, much as the early
projections for nuclear power were. However, since, once again, we are being offered
some impressive visions of what technology can do, it may perhaps be helpful to
look at what went wrong (and right) last time, with nuclear power. This may help us
to put renewables in perspective and also to make a better, more robust assessment
of the role that nuclear power might play in the future.
1.1 Nuclear energy: uranium in a bucket

Nuclear energy developed out of the Manhattan nuclear bomb programme in the
USA in the 1940s. The fission, or splitting, of uranium 235 atoms produces heat and
radiation, including neutrons. Some of the neutrons collide with other ‘fissile’ U235
atoms and, under the right conditions, this can lead to a runaway chain reaction,
much more fission, and an explosion. If some of the neutrons are slowed by a
doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-5152-2ch1 1-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

so-called moderator (water is one option, graphite another), the reaction can be
controlled, so that the reaction provides continuous heat, which can raise steam to
drive a turbine to generate electricity. The reaction also produces other things. U235
is a rare isotope of uranium—most uranium consists of non-fissile U238. Depending
on the level of U235 enrichment (i.e. its concentration), reactor fuel is mostly U238,
some of which is unavoidably converted, by absorbing neutrons, into a new type of
atom, plutonium, Pu239. This is fissile, like U235, and can be used as a reactor fuel.
It is also often used in atomic bombs (though highly enriched U235 can also be
used), the Pu239 being extracted from used reactor fuel via so-called reprocessing
operations. Reprocessing leaves a residue of highly radioactive waste, along with
any unconverted U238/235.
Civil nuclear reactors thus inevitably produce plutonium and other wastes, but
they are designed mainly for heat production. Heat is extracted by pumping gas, or
more usually water, through the reactor core, although in plutonium-fuelled ‘fast
neutron’ reactors, liquid metals such as sodium or molten lead are used as the
coolant in a smaller, more compact core. In this configuration, the neutrons are not
slowed by moderator materials, as in conventional, so-called ‘thermal’, slow-neutron
reactors, i.e. they are ‘fast’, higher-energy neutrons. They can, however, cause fission
in plutonium, which releases more neutrons than uranium fission, which can then go
on to be absorbed by U238, as well as causing more Pu fission. So ‘fast reactors’,
running mostly on plutonium, are good at converting U238 into more Pu239, which
also then undergoes fission, sustaining a plutonium ‘breeding’ process. Hence the
term ‘fast breeder’, although the breeding rate is not actually fast. It can take time to
produce a replacement amount of plutonium, and the initial Pu239 charge still has to
be produced in a thermal uranium reactor.
Most of the reactors in use at present are simple ‘thermal neutron’ uranium-
fuelled reactors, although some use a mix of uranium and plutonium oxide (MOX).
The use of other types of fuel is possible, including thorium 232, reserves of which
are around three times more abundant than uranium. However, thorium 232 is not
fissile and has to be converted into a fissile form (U233) using a source of neutrons,
obtained either via the fission of uranium or plutonium or by using a particle
accelerator to create a neutron beam.
At very high temperatures (millions of degrees), isotopes of hydrogen atoms can
be fused, and this fusion reaction releases heat and radiation. This is what happens in
the Sun. So far, although we have managed to exploit fusion in thermonuclear
hydrogen bombs, we have been unable to sustain and control artificial fusion
reactions for more than a few seconds; however, in theory it should be possible to
build fusion reactors with sustained energy output and use it to generate power.
However, that is some way off. As the overhyped Zero Energy Thermonuclear
Assembly (ZETA) prototype fusion project in the UK demonstrated in the 1950s, it
is sometimes best not to be too optimistic. Success with fusion, via the UK Atomic
Energy research lab’s ZETA (see figure 1.1), was announced in 1958, to much media
acclaim, but then, embarrassingly, this claim proved to be wrong, and it had to be
withdrawn (Pease 2008).
1-2
Figure 1.1. A 1950s UK miss: Harwell researchers and the ZETA fusion reactor (UKAEA).
Fusion work continues, as we shall see later, but, so far, most of the emphasis at
nuclear plants around the world has been on fission, and on what, to put it very
simply, is steam production from hot uranium in a bucket of water. Portrayed that
way, it sounds straightforward, but clearly it has taxed some of the best scientists
and engineers. As will be seen from the accounts below, it has not always been easy
or without drama, but, for the protagonists, belief has remained strong that nuclear
technology, despite being developed initially for war, could become a major boon
for humanity.
1.2 Atoms for peace

In a December 1953 speech to the United Nations, President Dwight D. Eisenhower
launched what was soon to labelled the ‘Atoms for Peace’ programme. Its
motivations were varied. It was ostensibly an attempt to show that, as he put it,
‘the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death but consecrated
to his life’. The horrors of the atom bomb, as visited by the USA on Japan in 1945 in
wartime, were now to be balanced by the wonders of civil nuclear power, with
nuclear technology being turned to peaceful ends around the world, with US help.
Moreover, Eisenhower claimed that ‘peaceful power from atomic energy is not a
dream of the future. That capability, already proved, is here—now—today’
(Eisenhower 1953).
However, in his haste to redeem the US and perhaps also ensure that it retained
commercial and political control over how this technology was used and sold, he
arguably overstated its readiness. No US nuclear power plant had been built at that
1-3
point, and internal U.S. government reports soon pointed out that nuclear power
was neither economic nor ready for export.
The Atoms for Peace propaganda offensive mounted by the US Information
Agency (USIA) and others was certainly effective in selling the positive vision, but,
with progress on the ground being very limited, those responsible for delivering it
began to be concerned that the rhetoric being used was all too ‘pie in the sky’ in
terms of what was available technologically and also what might be realistic in terms
of applications. For example, as Mara Drogan notes in a wide-ranging review of the
programme, ‘an Atoms for Peace exhibit being prepared for India by the USIA
highlighted nuclear power plants, but all studies indicated that India would not have the
need or ability to install such plants for some time to come’, while Gerard Smith, John
Foster Dulles’s Special Assistant for Atomic Energy, was worried about ‘the
impression created by these exhibits as to the imminence and benefits of nuclear
power’. He warned that ‘we may lose good will rather than gain it if through these
exhibits we arouse expectations which cannot be fulfilled in the reasonably near future’
(Drogan 2016).
Drogan quotes from a classified State Department Intelligence Report, circulated
in January 1954, ‘Economic Implications of Nuclear Power in Foreign Countries’,
which noted that it was likely to be more expensive than conventional electricity
generation: ‘nuclear power plants may cost twice as much to operate and as much as 50
percent more to build and equip than conventional thermal plants’. So it warned that
the introduction of nuclear power would ‘not usher in a new era of plenty and rapid
economic development as is commonly believed’.
The report suggested that, other than the USA, the only likely candidates for
potentially economical nuclear power were countries such as Great Britain and
Japan, which were already highly industrialized and had diminishing reserves of
fossil fuels and limited options for expanding hydroelectricity. However, it added,
although it would be too costly for the foreseeable future for developing countries,
some might seek to develop it anyway, ‘for reasons of national prestige or in the
hope that technological developments and engineering experience will promote lower
costs’.
Looking back with hindsight, that was a fairly good set of predictions. The reality
has been that nuclear power only developed slowly and initially just in the West, but
also in Russia, followed later by Japan, and then China, South Korea, India, and
Pakistan. Moreover, in at least some of these cases, and others that came after, the
impetus has arguably been as much military as civil, with the distinction between
them often being blurred. India evidently used a Canadian-supplied CANDU plant
(which runs on non-enriched uranium) to get material for its bomb. Certainly not
Atoms for Peace! The potential for ‘dual use’ of nuclear technology has proved to be
a major issue for the expansion of nuclear power, as witness the long battles with
Iran over its nuclear plans and continuing worries about the potential proliferation
of weapons-making capacity.
Even within those countries who were to become signatories to the UN Non-
Proliferation Treaty, the distinction was not always clear. For example, the early
plants built in the UK were dual-purpose, able to produce power and/or materials
1-4
for weapons if needed. The haste with which nuclear programmes were carried out
also led to problems. The UK built two air-cooled uranium piles at Windscale in
Cumbria, designed to produce plutonium for its bomb, but, given the perceived need
to demonstrate that the UK was nuclear-weapons capable, there was strong political
pressure to speed up production, with short-cuts to safe operational procedures
allegedly being adopted. This seems to have been one of the reasons why there was a
major disaster in 1957 at Windscale, in which the fuel caught fire, leading to the
emission of radioactive material into the environment. Measures were taken to put
the fire out and limit exposure (see box 1.1), but it is now thought that about 240
people downwind may have developed cancers (Morelle 2007). Regardless, the
nuclear bomb programme went on.
The Calder Hall plant built alongside the Windscale piles was also available for
plutonium production, and its design, with carbon dioxide gas cooling, was the basis
for a series of civil plants, with uranium in Magnox alloy tubes. The UK continued
with gas cooling in the follow up ‘Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors’ (AGRs), in
contrast to the USA, which adopted water cooling for its civil nuclear plants. They
too had military roots. The US had initially focused on developing small reactors for
submarines, the first being in the Nautilus in 1954. The reactor had to be compact, so
water cooling was used and that was to be the basis of subsequent scaled-up US civil
reactor designs. The most successful were the Pressurised Water-cooled Reactor
(PWR) and the Boiling Water Reactor (BWR), which used enriched uranium.
PWRs and some BWRs were then adopted around the world, most notably in
France, which pushed ahead with a major civil programme, in parallel with its
weapons programme.
The French PWR programme in the 1970s was technically very successful,
eventually supplying around 75% of the country’s electricity, with the mass rollout
of a more or less identical standard design leading to economies of scale. Even so,
the rapid expansion was economically challenging. In the USA, expansion (which, at
its peak reached 2000 MW p.a.) was driven by private investment, along with some
central state support for ancillary facilities, with the cost in the main being passed on
to consumers. However, in France, in what was an almost entirely public-sector
programme, the high capital cost was met by government borrowing on the global
finance markets. That allowed for electricity prices to be set low but meant that the
government faced punishing repayment costs.
Water-cooled and moderated PWR and BWR designs, so-called Generation II
reactors, have remained the mainstay around the world, being used not only in the
USA and France, but also Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. The
UK finally abandoned its gas-cooled reactor designs in the 1980s and adopted
PWRs. A publicly funded programme of ten new plants was proposed, but in the
end only one was built, at Sizewell on the East coast. Russia selected a slightly
different approach (graphite-moderated, water-cooled reactors) as did Canada (the
CANDU heavy water moderated reactor), and some efforts were also made, for
example in the US, UK, France, Japan, and Russia, to develop fast neutron breeder
reactors, with mixed results. Most of these fast reactor programmes have been
abandoned, although Russia is still developing breeders and more may yet emerge.
1-5
Box 1.1. Nuclear accidents Key ones reviewed: there have been other smaller ones.
All technologies can go wrong, but if and when nuclear plants fail, the impacts can be
very severe and long-lived. Small leaks and mishaps happen regularly, but although
they may add cumulatively to the amount of radioactive material in the environment,
they inevitably get less publicity than the big, very visible disasters. Sometimes
accidents are put down to human error. This can be a matter of interpretation.
The Windscale fire in Cumbria, in 1957, was mentioned earlier. The design of the
plant combined with the haste to produce material for a bomb seem to have been the
cause (Dwyer 2007), and the result was the venting of radioactive material, though
its release into the air was fortunately reduced by a filter that had been put into the
up-venting chimney as a precaution. Even so, with the fire burning for three days
before heroic efforts by the plant staff to extinguish it succeeded, some still escaped,
and, as an after-the-event precaution, milk from cows grazing in the area was poured
away.
The accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania was, it seems, due a combination
of mechanical faults and human error. Two automatic pump valves failed, and another
had been left open after a test by mistake. A hydrogen explosion was narrowly averted
by releasing some pressure, but that led to the release of radioactive gas. Many
thousands of local people self-evacuated, but exposure levels were said to have been
low, with few, if any, health impacts being reported, although that is disputed.
The Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine was the result of an ill-conceived safety test
(see box 2.3). The plant suddenly overheated in an uncontrolled way, in part due to its
basic design, resulting in an explosion and a radioactive cloud moving across Europe,
as shown in a map-based animation (IRSN 2011).
Forty or so people died soon after, but over 4000 subsequent thyroid cancers
(mostly treatable) were reported amongst children who were in the area. A similar
number of early deaths has been claimed for the people who, heroically, carried out
the post-explosion cleanup, as well as more deaths and illness amongst residents in
the region (IAEA 2006). Independent estimates for the total likely deaths range up to
60 000 (Fairlie and Sumners 2006). The area is still unsafe, with an exclusion zone in
force.
By contrast, the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011 was due to what might be
called an act of God; a major tsunami overwhelmed the nuclear complex, which was
ill-designed to cope. Heroic efforts by staff avoided a much worse disaster, but waste
tanks were disrupted, three of the plants were demolished by hydrogen explosions, and
the reactor cores melted down (Elliott 2013). Some staff were killed in the explosions
and some workers have received compensation for cancers they developed, but no
public radiation-linked deaths have been reported so far: fortunately, most of the
radiation cloud initially went out to sea. However, there were contamination hot spots
and 160 000 or so residents were evacuated. Many have yet to return. The long-term
cleanup operation will take decades, with the cost, including compensation payments,
initially put at around £140 billion. Given the subsequently emerging problems,
including the handing of large volumes of temporarily-stored radioactive waste water,
that figure may prove optimistic. Some estimates put possible long-term radiation-
related deaths in the thousands (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012, Fairlie 2014), although
the official view is that the impact of radiation exposure will be much lower, or even
undetectable (UNSCEAR 2021).
1-6
The ability of fast neutron reactors to breed plutonium in bulk naturally opens up
major weapons proliferation issues, although, as noted earlier, plutonium is
produced in all uranium-based reactors.
1.3 The rise and fall of nuclear power

The expansion of nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s meant that, in those
countries that participated, it typically supplied 20%–25% of their power, although
some, like France, aimed for more. However, although Generation II designs were
reasonably successful, problems began to emerge. With cheaper energy sources
becoming available, notably natural gas, their economics started to look poor. The
near meltdown of a PWR at Three Mile Island in the USA in 1979 and
the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986, with subsequent death estimates across
the region due to the latter ranging up to tens of thousands, led to an increased focus
on safety, which added to the cost (see box 1.1). New plant orders halted in the USA
after Three Mile Island and, after Chernobyl, few new projects were started
anywhere. The boom was over, with these two accidents then being followed by
Fukushima, further boosting public opposition to nuclear power across most of the
world: see appendix 1. With the cost of rival energy sources also falling, the
prospects for nuclear power looked poor.
Even ignoring the accidents, the economic problems had become significant. For
example, the 1.2 GW PWR at Sizewell in the UK, which started up in 1995, was one
of the last Gen. II projects to be built. It had cost around £2.7 billion, provided by
the government as a public-sector project. The Conservative government was,
however, keen to privatise the electricity sector, and sold the Sizewell plant, along
with all the old AGR plants, to a newly privatised company, British Energy, for
about £1.5 billion, in a heavily discounted bargain package. Unfortunately, despite
this deal, British Energy ran into financial problems and had to be bailed out by the
government. Eventually, in 2009, most of its assets were bought up by the French
company EDF. By this time, with the construction costs paid off, the plants were
more economic to run, but this episode does indicate the economic problems faced
by the nuclear industry, which were worsened by the so-called ‘dash for gas’. The
future for new nuclear plants looked very uncertain.
An attempt at a global revival was made in the mid-2000s, partly on the basis that
nuclear was low carbon (Nuttall 2005). However, it was somewhat undermined by
the Fukushima disaster in 2011 (see box 1.1). Although the worst was avoided, it still
had major social and economic consequences in Japan, some of which have yet to be
resolved. It also led some countries to abandon their nuclear programmes, notably
Germany (which set a full phaseout in motion), but also Italy and Switzerland. Even
France decided to cut back on its nuclear reliance. As Austria, Denmark, Greece,
Ireland, Norway, and Portugal were already anti-nuclear, within the EU, that left
just the UK (but not Scotland), and to lesser extent Finland and some Eastern
European countries, with nuclear expansion programmes.
After Fukushima, Japan closed all its nuclear plants, although a handful have
since been restarted, despite often massive local opposition. However, there are no
1-7
longer plans for expansion. Taiwan decided to phase its plants out. China initially
halted nuclear expansion, but has since restarted it, although it is expanding
renewables on a much larger scale. The output from its rapidly expanding wind
power programme overtook its nuclear output in 2012, and overall, renewables,
including large-scale hydropower, supply around six times the output of its nuclear
plants. The situation is similar in India, where wind power output overtook that of
nuclear power in 2012, while, in the USA, the renewables output overtook that from
nuclear power in 2010. Russia is the main anomaly. In terms of new projects, rather
than exploiting its huge renewable resources, it has focused on nuclear, using its own
technology, seeking to expand its use at home and aggressively pursuing technology
export orders.
For the moment, while Russia continues along its own path, until recently, the
main global focus has been on so-called Generation III designs, which are essentially
upgraded and allegedly more ‘failsafe’ versions of the Generation II PWRs and
BWRs with ‘passive’ safety features. They include the European Pressurised-water
Reactor (EPR), which is being promoted by the French state-owned utility EDF, the
Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) developed by Hitachi, and the
Westinghouse AP1000 developed by Toshiba.
However, the economics of these designs are far from clear, given the advent of
cheaper gas and renewable generation. There have also been very long delays and
large cost overruns with the EPRs being built at the Olkiluoto site in Finland in 2005
and Flamanville in France, with work starting there in 2007. Barring further delays,
they both look likely to be around 12 years late, with almost factor-of-four cost
overruns.
The EPR planned for construction in the UK at Hinkley, at a cost of £24 billion,
was offered at a strike price under the UK’s Contract for Difference (CfD) subsidy
system, of £92.5 per MWh, (inflation index linked) which is likely to be much more
than renewable projects will require by the time the EPR is running, possibly in
2026, assuming construction continues as planned. Wind and solar projects are
already going ahead in the UK with CfD strike prices of around £40 per MWh. This
figure does not include grid balancing/system backup costs, which might initially add
an extra 10%–15%, but the cost of balancing systems is falling, and some balancing
systems actually reduce the overall system running cost (Elliott 2020).
Meanwhile, the cost of wind and solar technology continues to fall, making the
current range of nuclear projects, whose project costs continually rise, look
increasingly uncompetitive. Funding issues were one reason why Hitachi’s proposals
for an ABWR at Wylfa in Wales and the Westinghouse AP1000 proposed by
Toshiba for Moorside, next door to Sellafield/Windscale, in Cumbria, did not go
ahead.
This is not just a UK or EU phenomenon. Nuclear projects around the world are
being abandoned as uneconomic, particularly in the USA (see box 1.2). At one
point, several new projects were proposed, including seven EPRs, but now only one
major new power project is under way in the USA, while renewables continue to
boom there, as elsewhere (WNISR 2021).
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Box 1.2. Nuclear closures in the USA.
Many of the USA’s 93 nuclear plants have been closing due to their poor economics. In
2013, the Kewaunee plant was shut down, despite the fact that the operator,
Dominion, upgraded it and, in 2011, obtained an operating license renewal valid until
2033. Two reactors at San Onofre then followed, when replacement steam generators
turned out to be faulty. Vermont Yankee shut down at the end of 2014 and early
shutdown plans also hit Pilgrim and Fitzpatrick. Exelon, the largest US nuclear
operator, announced that it was retiring its Clinton (1065 MW) and Quad Cities
(2 ×940 MW) plants, as they had been losing money for some years. Crystal River 3 in
Florida, Vermont Yankee in Vermont, and Kewaunee in Wisconsin have also closed
because of high maintenance and repair costs at a time when natural gas prices have
fallen. In June 2016, Omaha Public Power District Board voted unanimously to shut
the Fort Calhoun reactor, saying it was ‘simply an economic decision’.
A UCS report in 2018 found that ‘more than one-third of US nuclear plants are
unprofitable or scheduled to close’ (Clemmer et al 2018). And, although there have been
government efforts to slow the decline, it has continued. In April 2021, New York State
closed Indian Point in Buchanan, 30 miles from New York City and PG&E in
California is to close its two Diablo Canyon units by 2025.
In 2021, the US Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy noted that ‘12
reactors have retired since 2013 due to challenging market conditions, and an additional
seven units are slated to shut down by 2025’ (Huff 2021).
Economics are not the only problem. Nuclear power is also unpopular with most
of the public in most countries. From the 1970s onwards, as reviewed in appendix 1,
nuclear projects met with increasing opposition around the world, this being
strengthened by the various major accidents. After the Fukushima disaster in
2011, a global Ipsos survey put public opposition at 62%, and it was much higher
in some countries, e.g. 79% in Germany (IPSOS 2011). In a referendum in Italy, 94%
voted against it in the wake of Fukushima.
With increasing concerns about climate change, there have been some shifts in
view since then, but even in countries that are relatively pro-nuclear, public support
for it is not that strong. For example, it was reportedly at 38% in 2021 in the UK,
compared to 79% who were in favour of renewables and only 2% who were opposed
to them (BEIS 2021).
Public opinion polls can, of course, be wrong. There can be conflicting results,
depending on what question is asked (Bisconti 2016). However, it seems very clear
from all the opinion surveys that have been done that, in most places, renewables are
very much more popular than nuclear power, scoring in the 70%–80% range
globally, and in some cases even higher (EC 2019), increasingly driven by concerns
about climate change and air pollution.
Given the social and also economic trends, critics have suggested that nuclear
power has little future as a response to climate change. The 2016 edition of the
World Nuclear Industry Stratus Review commented: ‘While no energy source is
without its economic costs and environmental impacts, what has been seen clearly over
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the past decade, and particularly in the past few years, is that choosing to decarbonize
with nuclear turns out [to be] an expensive, slow, risky and potentially hazardous
pathway, and one which few countries are pursuing’ (WNISR 2016).
That may have been a premature obituary, given that China is still pressing ahead
with nuclear plants, as are India and Russia, but despite talk of a nuclear
renaissance, as noted above, the recent story in relation to Generation III projects
(EPRs, ABWRs, AP1000s) has not been very promising in the USA or the UK. In
the USA, with the collapse of the market for EPRs, there is just one AP1000 project
(Vogtle, in Georgia), which is well behind schedule and over budget. In the UK, in
addition to projects using AP1000 and ABWR technology, there was a (contro-
versial) proposal to build a Chinese-designed reactor at Bradwell in Essex and also
possibly a second EPR at Sizewell. However, all but the last now seem unlikely to go
ahead. This may be just as well, since, as a contributor to a House of Lords review of
nuclear economics put it, otherwise the UK be would ‘building four different reactor
types, with at least five different manufacturers, simultaneously. That is industrial
insanity.’ While it might also be seen as a brave attempt to test the waters with a
range of designs, that could prove very expensive. That does seem to be one lesson
from the UK’s previous nuclear programme, which, at various stages, involved
multiple UK-designed reactor types. In the event, it ended up with a bought-in US
PWR and, more recently, a French EPR.
1.4 On to generation IV?

It remains to be seen what will become of these and other Generation III projects.
However, given their limitations and problems, there have been calls for a more
radical approach, and the development of new, hopefully more cost-effective,
nuclear technology. A range of so-called Generation IV options was proposed to
underpin the hoped-for Nuclear Renaissance. Some of these are, in fact, old ideas,
now being re-explored. Indeed, it could be argued that, as the industry is apparently
at something of a dead end with the current types of reactor, it has had to go back to
see if anything can be rescued from the past.
Put more positively, it might be seen as taking a fresh look at what might be
possible, though it does seem to be drawing heavily on what went before, as, for
example, with the so-called ‘pebble-bed’ helium gas-cooled high-temperature
reactor. In this design, the fuel is encapsulated in graphite balls, which sit in a
hopper, rather than in rods in channels. This feature allows spent fuel to be removed
more easily—old pebbles are simply extracted.
High-temperature helium-cooled reactors were tested in the 1960s/1970s in the
UK (the 20 MW Dragon), Germany (the 15 MW AVR), and the USA (Peach
Bottom, Fort St. Vrain), but were not followed up, in part due to operational/safety
issues, which some said would also apply to the pebble-bed design proposed in the
late 2000s for South Africa (Thomas 2008). In the event, after £800m in expenditure,
the project was abandoned in 2010 due to funding problems. China then took the
concept over and planned a 210 MW prototype. It took a while to develop, but the
first test unit started up in 2021 (WNN 2021, Xin 2021). As we shall see later, others
may follow, although it has to be said that high-temperature reactors have had a
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checkered history; none of their historical projects were commercially viable and all
were shut down before the end of their planned life (Ramana 2016).
As we shall also see later, many other early ideas are now back on the agenda.
Certainly, the initial burst of innovation in the 1950s and 1960s threw up many
different options, which some say might prove to be worth re-exploring, rather than
simply trying to soldier on with upgraded Generation III versions of Generation II
designs. The earlier phase had been typified by optimism and experiment, in contrast
to more recent times in the nuclear field, but belief in the transformative power of
technology is generally still strong, having been enhanced by the contemporary
success of information, communications, and computer-based technologies.
Nevertheless, while it is perhaps natural to have positive expectations of new
technology, in the nuclear field, this has not always proven to be justified, even with
the Generation II reactors. In 1965, Fred Lee, the then UK Minister of Power
famously told the House of Commons that ‘we have hit the jackpot this time’ with the
AGR. Unfortunately, deployment went very wrong as the AGR programme
unfolded. The first station, on the south Kent coast, was Dungeness B. It was
ordered in 1965, but did not start up until 1982, over 17 years late, by which time its
cost had reached more than five times the 1965 estimate, and its intended output had
been scaled down by more than 20%. In 1985, two decades after the original order,
the second reactor at the station had only just started up. Atomic Power
Constructions, the company that won the Dungeness B contract in 1965, had, by
1970, collapsed in disarray: technical, managerial, and financial (Patterson 1985).
Project disasters like this might be seen as part of the learning process, and, as we
shall see, there certainly have been many problems in the past, some of them quite
dramatic. However, technical problems, and even major setbacks, are not uncom-
mon in the innovation field, and reactor development programmes have continued
around the world with problems and setbacks, as with the more recent disasters
mentioned above, which offer warnings and insights, for example, on safety issues.
The next chapter looks back at the early days, from the 1950s onwards, to see
how things were done then and what emerged. The institutional context for
innovation is different now, as ‘high technology’ projects often require major
finance and large, centrally directed teams. Certainly, some still hanker back to the
time when allegedly it was all much less bureaucratic. But actually, that process
was already under way by the 1960s, when President Eisenhower, in a famed 1961
speech, warned about the rise of the ‘military–industrial complex’, and bewailed
the fact that ‘today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over-
shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields’. That may be
overly romantic, but he may have been right to note that ‘partly because of the huge
costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual
curiosity’ (Eisenhower 1961).
Whether that situation can be changed remains to be seen. The nature of
nuclear technology seems to make it hard, much harder than for the relatively less
complex renewables. For example, modern wind turbines initially evolved very
successfully in Denmark in the 1970s from simple designs developed on a local
agricultural engineering craft basis (Karnoe 2006). It was a similar story for solar
heat collectors and biogas digesters.
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Although novel wave and tidal stream projects still seem to be the province of
small startup companies in the UK and elsewhere, the DIY, back-yard, small-team
approach may now be over for most renewables, and it certainly seems to be over for
nuclear. However, some nuclear enthusiasts evidently think that it might be possible,
and indeed necessary, to recapture the more open-ended creative ethos that it seems
once existed. Some see it as a Golden Era. Certainly the incentive was there to be
inventive and come up with radically new technology. As we shall see, there were
many possible lines of development, each attracting their own proponents. In 1945
Enrico Fermi said ‘the country which first develops a breeder reactor will have a great
competitive advantage in atomic energy,’ in which plutonium production was a key
option, but initially there was still all to play for, with many other ideas also
emerging, and, apparently, few limits on imagination.
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IOP Publishing

David Elliott
Chapter 2
Nuclear innovation: the early days
Nuclear power has had quite a long post-second world war history, with some quite
radical ideas initially being explored. This chapter takes a look at the early days,
when costs and risks were apparently of less concern and innovation was given its
head. That led to some novel ideas, but also to some grim accidents. The emphasis in
the early part of the story is on the USA, but as we shall see, subsequently, many
other countries got involved.
The initial mid-1940s war-time focus had of course been on developing atomic
bombs, with a series of plutonium producing reactors being built at Hanford on the
Columbia River, Washington state. So, for a while, in the post war period, it was the
US which made most the running, followed later on by Canada and the UK and
then France, along of course with Russia.
2.1 Early US experiments

In the summer of 1956, a handful of men gathered in a former little red schoolhouse in
San Diego. They were some of the most imaginative scientists and engineers of their
generation. They included ex-Manhattan Project physicists such as Edward Teller,
and Freeman Dyson, from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
According to a retrospective account in Scientific American in 2013, the team
‘benefited from a maximum of free inquiry and individual creativity and a minimum of
bureaucratic interference. There was no overarching managerial body dictating the
thoughts of the designers. Everyone was free to come up with any idea they thought of,
and the job of the rest of the group was to either refine the idea and make it more
rigorous and practical or discard it and move on to the next idea’ (Jogalekar 2013).
And they came up with a viable small reactor design—TRIGA, which stood for
‘Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomics’.
Seventy of them were, it seems, built for use, primarily to produce isotopes for
scientific and engineering experiments. It was a successful and evidently lucrative
niche application, but the Scientific American article lamented the fact that this

creative process seemed to be less apparent in 2013, just when radical innovation was
needed to get out of the impasses nuclear energy development had met.
It quoted Dyson, who in his memoir ‘Disturbing the Universe’ says: ‘the
fundamental problem of the nuclear industry is not reactor safety, not waste disposal,
not the dangers of nuclear proliferation, real though all these problems are. The
fundamental problem of the industry is that nobody any longer has any fun building
reactors… Sometime between 1960 and 1970 the fun went out of the business. The
adventurers, the experimenters, the inventors, were driven out, and the accountants and
managers took control. The accountants and managers decided that it was not cost
effective to let bright people play with weird reactors. So the weird reactors
disappeared and with them the chance of any radical improvement beyond our existing
systems. We are left with a very small number of reactor types, each of them frozen
into a huge bureaucratic organization, each of them in various ways technically
unsatisfactory, each of them less safe than many possible alternative designs which
have been discarded. Nobody builds reactors for fun anymore. The spirit of the little
red schoolhouse is dead’ (Dyson 1981).
The Scientific American article did, however, go on to point to a few new projects
which it saw as similarly creative, including the ‘travelling wave reactor’ design, at
that time being developed by private company Terra Power. Certainly there are now
several new US start-up companies exploring ideas for small modular reactors,
molten salt reactors, and the use of thorium fuel and fast neutron systems.
Many of these ideas involve going back over old ground. For example, in the
early years, the US did try to develop small reactors, initially for the military and
also for civilian power use, with mixed success. From 1946 to 1961, the US Air
Force spent over $1 billion trying to build small compact reactors, including a novel
uranium-based 2.5 MW molten salt reactor, to power long-range bombers, before
abandoning the idea. It had proved impossible to overcome the problems of
shielding and weight.
The Navy was more successful, producing power plants for aircraft carriers and
submarines. At one point, it was looking to a compact liquid-sodium-cooled reactor,
but a version installed in the Seawolf submarine had problems. While Seawolf was still
at the dock, the reactor sprung a leak. ‘It took us three months, working 24 h a day, to
locate and correct the leak’, legendary naval nuclear proponent Admiral Rickover told a
congressional committee in 1957 (Rickover 1957). He abandoned the use of this type of
reactor in submarines, saying it was ‘expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible
to prolonged shut down as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-
consuming to repair’. Instead, the US went with water-cooled reactors, as used in the
Nautilus and subsequent nuclear-powered submarines, of which it has built many. So
there has been some follow-through, but only, in effect, with small PWR units.
However, in a seminal review of the early US programme, including the small
submarine reactors, Professor Ramana from the University of British Columbia said
that they had ‘quite different requirements from today’s SMR [small modular reactor]
proposals. A submarine reactor is designed to operate under stressful conditions—to
provide a burst of power when the vessel is accelerating, for example. And unlike civilian
power plants, naval nuclear reactors don’t have to compete economically with other
2-2
sources of power production. Their overwhelming advantage is that they enable a

submarine to remain at sea for long periods of time without refueling’ (Ramana 2015).
The US Army programme was more relevant. As Ramana describes, it led to the
construction of eight small reactors, some of them tested in remote sites, although
there were problems. For example, the PM-3A at McMurdo Station in Antarctica
developed cracks and leaks, leading to significant local contamination. In 1976, the
Army cancelled the programme. It was not seen to be worth the expense of pursuing
it, since diesel power packs were available and cheap.
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was, however, keener to persevere
with small test plants, and 17 reactors with power outputs of under 300 MW were
commissioned. There were many test runs, with mixed results, but the main aim of
the initial AEC programme was to develop prototypes for subsequent expansion to
larger projects for civil power use. The AEC supported such three projects in its 1955
programme. Of these, the 69 MW Fermi 1 prototype fast neutron reactor, which was
near Detroit, is the best known, since it suffered a partial core meltdown in 1966.
That lead to a book famously (and possibly incorrectly) entitled ‘We almost lost
Detroit’ (Fuller 1975, Reindl 2016). Ramana says that the other two AEC reactors
were relatively successful in meeting their goals. The 185 MW Yankee operated for
31 years, but its decommissioning took 16 years and cost $608 million.
As a follow-up to this work, the AEC announced a second round of funding, but
this time with small reactors as the goal, not an initial step. The programme included
the La Crosse boiling water reactor in Genoa, Wisconsin, and a 22 MW reactor in Elk
River, near Minneapolis. The second was also a variant of the boiling water reactor,
but used a mixture of highly enriched uranium and thorium. Construction began in
1959, but it was not declared as being in commercial operation until 1964, due to
various engineering problems, including cracks in some components. They evidently
contributed to its remarkably short operating life: just three-and-a-half years. The
decommissioning process took three years and cost $6.15 million, which was almost
the same figure as the initial estimate for construction. The 50 MW La Crosse boiling
water reactor was more successful, operating for 18 years, but evidently at high cost.
After that, Ramana reports, no more small reactors were commissioned in the United
States, with the exception of the 330 MW Fort St. Vrain Nuclear Generating Station in
Platteville, Colorado. It was an experimental high-temperature gas-cooled reactor design
deemed to be ‘ultrasafe’. It started up in 1976, but rarely operated at full capacity, only
delivering around 15% of its theoretical output, and it was shut down in 1989.
Today, on the other hand, as we shall see, small modular reactors of various kinds
are back on the agenda. In part, this is due to the belief that they may be better suited
to the more flexible power system that is emerging as a result of the advent of
decentralised energy generation using renewables and local energy sources. There is
also interest in thorium and fast neutron reactors, possibly as small modular units.
2.2 Thorium reactors and fast breeders

Although most of the projects mentioned above used uranium, as noted, there were
also some that used thorium as a fuel, sometimes mixed with uranium, as in the Elk
2-3
River BWR plant. The USA’s first commercial reactor at Shippingport, which
started up in 1957, also later used some thorium.
In addition to the 1950s Air Force molten salt reactor project mentioned above,
the US also did some work on the use of molten salt fuel in the 1960s and 1970s;
some of this work later explored the use of thorium. This was at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory (ONL), where the experimental 7.4 MW Molten Salt Reactor, which
used uranium, was designed to pave the way for a system using thorium. It ran for
four years until 1969, but, as noted in box 2.1, this line of work was discontinued in
Box 2.1. Early US molten fluoride salt reactor work.
The Energy from Thorium website reports as follows: ‘A small, proof-of-principle liquid-
fluoride reactor was built and operated in 1954 at Oak Ridge, and two years later under
the encouragement of laboratory director Alvin Weinberg, a more significant examina-
tion began of liquid-fluoride reactors for electrical generation at terrestrial power
stations. Weinberg also encouraged the examination of the thorium fuel cycle imple-
mented in liquid fluoride reactors, and this work led to the construction and operation of
the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at Oak Ridge. The MSRE operated from
1965 to 1969, when it was shut down under the orders of Milton Shaw of the Atomic
Energy Commission so as to free up additional funding for the liquid-metal fast breeder
reactor (LMFBR) program. The molten-salt program continued for another three years
at Oak Ridge until it was cancelled in 1972 under Shaw’s orders’ (Energy from Thorium
2016).
According to another report, in 1972, Oak Ridge had, in fact, proposed a major new
development programme, the Molten Salt Breeder Experiment, including the use of
thorium, with a total programme cost estimated at $350 million over 11 years. That
was turned down, as was a follow-up bid in 1974, and in 1976, ORNL was ordered to
finally shut down the molten salt breeder reactor (MSBR) programme (Cochran et al
2010). A 1969 Oak Ridge National Lab film looks at the earlier project work (Thorium
Energy World 2016).
In a report to a UK Parliamentary Committee in 2013, the Weinberg Foundation
(now sadly defunct) provided an account of some of the problems that faced the
proposed use of thorium in molten salt reactors. ‘As thorium is chemically similar to
rare-earth fission products, it is hard to process out those fission products from the fuel
salt without also removing the thorium. The early 1960s saw the development at ORNL
of two-fluid designs which sought to overcome this problem by keeping the thorium
separate from the fuel salt. To achieve this, the two-fluid designs employed a graphite
barrier between the core and blanket salts. The separation of fluids necessitated complex
plumbing design involving multiple graphite tubes. During the life of the ORNL molten
salt reactor programme the plumbing design problem was never resolved’ (Weinberg
2013).
Of course, it did not have to be resolved, as no thorium was used at this stage, just
uranium and (the resultant) plutonium. However, later on, for the proposed (but in the
event not followed up) Molten Salt Breeder programme, the idea was to go for a ‘single
fluid’ approach, since new extraction techniques had evidently emerged. But as we shall
see later (box 3.2), a ‘two-fluid’ fissile core and fertile thorium blanket approach has
been proposed for some subsequent molten fluoride thorium reactor designs.
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favour of work on fast breeders—some say this was because it did not lead to the
production of plutonium for weapons. Others, in contradiction, say it was because
the use of thorium did involve a potential (if tricky to handle) weapons material—
uranium 233. Whatever the actual reason, molten salt and thorium work, as
promoted by ONL and nuclear pioneer Alvin Weinberg, gave way to breeders,
which, for a while, were heavily promoted in the USA, with nuclear pioneer Enrico
Fermi very much in favour (Cochran et al 2010).
Part of the rationale for breeders was that they could be a hedge against shortages
of uranium, but even without the plutonium breeding element, fast reactors had
attractions, since they could run partly on uranium 238, of which there was plenty.
The idea was developed in the USA via a series of experimental projects. The first,
Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, was small proof-of-concept device, which started
up in 1951 and famously ran a series of lights before suffering a partial core
meltdown in 1955. It was followed up by a 20 MW sodium-cooled EBR-II reactor,
which started operating (also at Idaho National Laboratory) in 1964, roughly in
parallel with the larger, abovementioned 69 MW Fermi 1 commercial-scale device,
built between 1956 and 1963 near Detroit. The Fermi 1 device was repaired after the
1966 partial meltdown, but was closed in 1972. EBR-II, however, carried on
working and, in the 1980s, it was used to test the Advanced Liquid Metal
Reactor/Integral Fast Reactor concept (with integral fuel reprocessing), but that
work was discontinued in 1994, three years before completion.
The whole breeder programme was wound up in 1997 by President Clinton, with
uranium scarcity being seen as less of an issue (nuclear expansion had slowed
globally after Chernobyl), while proliferation issues had become more of a concern.
The closure of the programme left behind an unedifying history, including the
12-year Clinch River Breeder Reactor planning/construction saga: once touted as
the way ahead, after costs escalated (to $8 billion), work on the 380 MW plant had
finally been halted in 1983.
It was a similar story around the world (see box 2.2). Although Russia, India, and
Japan soldiered on, other fast breeder work ground to a halt in the 1990s, given
technical and economic problems and concerns about weapons proliferation. There
was strong public opposition, for example, in Germany: the idea of producing more
plutonium was not welcomed. The engineering, with small cores cooled by molten
sodium, was also difficult. Looking back over the experience, Ramana says ‘The
lesson from the many decades of such pursuit has been that these reactors are
expensive, are prone to operational problems and sodium leaks, and are susceptible
to severe accidents under some circumstances’ (Ramana 2013).
The early days of reactor development in the USA certainly had dramas, such as
fast reactor problems, as well as problems with other projects. In addition to the
abovementioned partial fuel meltdown at the Fermi fast neutron plant, and the core
meltdown at EBR-1 in 1955, there were major problems with some other projects,
for example at the Simi Valley Sodium Reactor near Los Angeles, which suffered a
partial meltdown in 1959 and site contamination.
Even more dramatically, the 3 MW experimental SL-1 reactor at the US National
Reactor Testing Site in Idaho exploded in January 1961; the fuel melted down,
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Box 2.2. Sodium-cooled fast reactors: early days and costing estimates.
Sodium-cooled fast reactors have had a mixed history. Some have operated well, while
others have done poorly; the abovementioned partial meltdown of the Fermi 1 plant
near Detroit in 1966 is, perhaps, the most dramatic example. In addition to the directly
nuclear-related aspects of fast neutron reactors (one problem being that fission is
harder to control in an unmoderated system), working with liquid sodium can be risky.
Sodium catches fire in air and reacts strongly with water, generating hydrogen gas
which can explode. Sodium leaks and fires have bedevilled most fast reactor projects.
Japan’s Monju reactor, commissioned in 1994, and connected to the grid in 1995, had a
sodium leak and a fire in 1995. It was closed until May 2010, when it was restarted for
testing, but suffered another accident in August 2010. It has not been restarted since,
and in 2016 it was decided that it will be decommissioned.
The UK started work on fast breeders at Dounreay in Scotland in 1955, but
abandoned the programme in 1994, in part since, as nuclear power was generally in
decline at that point, a shortage of uranium (one of the main justifications for breeders)
was no longer an urgent issue. There had also been many delays and reliability
problems with its second 240 MW plant, and post-closure site cleanup has proved hard.
In the USA, as noted in the text, Experimental Breeder Reactor I started up in 1951
and, also in Idaho, the larger EBR-II started up in 1964, the latter being used to test the
Integral Fast Reactor concept. However, amidst some dissention, the US abandoned
fast breeder work in 1997, citing concerns about plutonium proliferation. France had a
major fast breeder programme up until 1998. Its Phenix plant had allegedly been used
to make material for its atomic bomb. The follow-up Superphenix plant had many
operational problems, and reportedly only operated at an average capacity of less than
7% over the 11 years before it was shut. Russia started work on fast breeders in 1955,
and despite some sodium fires and long delays, has continued its work on them. It is
currently developing models using molten lead as coolant. India was a somewhat later
entrant into the field, but despite large ambitions, its programme has had many
problems, including sodium fires and long delays (Ramana 2016).
The economics of fast reactors continues to be an issue. So far, up to $100 billion
has been spent on them around the world, and although most have been prototypes,
and, as yet, none have proved commercially viable, we do have some idea of their costs
per installed kilowatt. They seem to have increased over time, ranging from around
$4000/kW for the US Fermi plant up to £20,000/kW for Superphenix (in 1996 $), and
their capital costs/kW are typically seen to be more than twice those of water-cooled
reactors of similar capacity. Though mass production could reduce that figure, it has
been suggested that breeders were still likely to cost 25% more than water-cooled
thermal neutron plants (Cochran et al 2010).
killing three operators. One was impaled by a rapidly ejected fuel rod (YouTube
2018). In addition to this tragic episode, there were also other problems elsewhere in
the world, e.g. at Chalk River in Canada, where there was a partial fuel meltdown, a
hydrogen explosion, and site contamination in 1952, and then a fuel fire and site
contamination in 1958.
Nevertheless, although, as noted above, fast breeders were mostly sidelined in
most places, a wide range of other projects still emerged over the years, including
high-temperature reactors and the use of thorium as a fuel. For example, starting in
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1967, Germany ran the 15 MW Atom Versuchs Reaktor (AVR) using a thorium-
based fuel for 95% of the time, and Canada ran tests in three research reactors and
one pre-commercial reactor using fuels combining uranium and thorium. In India,
the Kamini 30 kW experimental neutron-source research reactor, which uses U233
as fuel, was started in 1996. It was built next to a 40 MW fast breeder test reactor, in
which thorium was irradiated to make U233 (Global Data 2011).
As we shall see later, there have been more recent efforts to push thorium-based
systems up the agenda again, and it certainly has its attractions (Nathan 2013).
However, the fast reactor concept, including the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) which
has integral fuel reprocessing, has also become popular again in some circles,
especially if it can run on its own bred fuel and be used to burn up fission
byproducts, in effect running on what are now considered to be wastes (Till and
Chang 2011). Notable IFR proponents include Australian academic Professor Barry
Brook (Brook 2016). A similar line has been forcefully taken over the years by
nuclear advocate Kirk Sorensen: he says that such waste is actually not waste but
very valuable. See his 2010 Google Tech Talk presentation (Sorensen 2010). He is
also a strong advocate of thorium molten salt reactors, which he sees as also being
able to burn waste (Sorensen 2009).
Adopting a similarly bullish approach, the Weinberg Foundation said the Molten
Salt Reactor (MSR) was a ‘revolutionary’ advance for fission: it is ‘extremely fuel
efficient, generates very little waste, and offers unique passive safety features.
Crucially, the MSR has outstanding load-following capability and will provide a
low-carbon alternative to gas as a flexible source of electricity to support renewables’
(Weinberg 2014).
The ability of MSRs to run without pressurization would certainly give them a
major operational advantage over the standard PWR, and MSRs, including
thorium-based variants, have attained something of a cult status in some circles,
as solutions that had been wrongly passed over. Reflecting on what is seen as the
heroic past, pioneering US start-up company Transatomic, which focussed on MSR,
put it like this: ‘The nuclear industry of the 1950s was defined by an inexhaustible
optimism and rigorous scientific thinking. Anything was possible, and nuclear energy
promised to power the world. Revolutionary designs were prolific. Today, however, this
technological diversity has been narrowed, and the industry has become locked into one
design: the light water reactor. We’re challenging this strategy and have returned to
the beginning to explore another path, and another design—the molten salt reactor.
This simple reactor design, updated with modern technology and materials, has the
potential to revolutionize the nuclear industry’ (Transatomic 2017).
2.3 What next?

As had become clear by the end of the last century, the nuclear industry certainly
needed a shot in the arm if it were to survive, much less expand. Not everyone agreed
that it should be revived, or that the new technology ideas discussed above would be
enough. However, efforts were made to develop new technologies. In the next
chapter and subsequently, I will be looking at what was actually tried or looked at in
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the 2000s, in terms of developing new technology options. But with so many choices
on offer, to help set the scene, this and the next section briefly review the issues,
choices, and constraints facing the existing and new options for Generation IV
reactors, looking at some of their pros and cons.
The economic problems facing Generation III were an obvious driver for change,
but there were and are other drivers, most notably safety and also fuel efficiency.
Uranium reserves are finite. There is likely to be sufficient uranium available to run
conventional thermal reactors for several decades, but if the use of nuclear energy is
to expand using conventional reactors, the high-grade resource will dwindle, some
say dramatically (Energy Watch 2006). While others say that potential shortfalls are
a long way off (OECD-NEA 2016), they are nevertheless one reason why there has
been an interest in thorium and also in fast breeders, given that the latter can convert
the otherwise wasted U238 into a new fuel and thus extend the lifetime of the
resource significantly. If they can also burn up other wastes, that would be another
key attraction, waste management being a key issue.
Not all nuclear enthusiasts thought that radical new technology was the answer to
the problems facing nuclear power, at least not in the short-to-medium term. For
example, in the short term, some nuclear operators look to extending the life of their
existing Generation II plants, since, having paid off their construction debts, some,
possibly with upgrades, might be able run competitively, at least for a while.
However, it is clear that not all could, as witness the many recent closures and the
call for government or consumer subsidies to keep some running, at least in the short
term. In the medium term, some felt that the fate of nuclear power could well be
decided by the success or otherwise of new, but only evolutionary, Generation III
ideas, not involving radically new technology. It was hoped that, once the initial
‘first of a kind’ Generation III problems were overcome, the operational economics
would prove to be good, in which case, some said, diverting resources to new,
expensive, and possibly unproductive research and Gen IV programmes might be
unwise. A similar view sometimes shaped reactions from fission enthusiasts faced
with what they saw as overly extravagant funding for fusion. It seems that the old
resists the new.
Of course, as we have seen, this has not always been the case; changes do happen,
and the negative formulation of the reactions to change also assumes that there is a
fixed direction of travel—progress along coherent predictable lines, which is not,
however, obvious. There can be new paths and new options. Change is certainly
unavoidable in the longer term, as old plants are retired. Old Generation II and III
plants will have to be replaced by something at some point, and for many nuclear
enthusiasts it has to be with a new generation of nuclear technology, Generation IV
or, at the very least, upgrades of Generation III.
How soon that might happen was, and is, unclear. Most Generation IV projects
are still at the R&D stage, with commercial-scale systems mostly a decade or more
away. Technological breakthroughs are always possible, and some enthusiasts look
to rapid development and wide deployment as being urgent. However, although
small modular reactors of various types are being heavily promoted, it is far from
clear at this stage which of the options (if any) should be promoted.
2-8
Figure 2.1. The four generations of nuclear plant types. Reproduced from GIF (2014) with permission from
Gen IV International Forum.
Being positive, perhaps the ethos apparent in the early days of nuclear (and
renewable energy) development, of ‘letting a thousand flowers bloom’, has merit,
particularly in the early stages of innovation, when development costs are relatively
low. Later on though, choices will have to be made. Figure 2.1 provides a graphical
summary framework of the historical path and envisaged next stages for nuclear
power. Box 2.3 summarises the basic options at each stage, as discussed above, and
their pros and cons.
2.4 Design parameters, choices, and constraints

The discussion above will have hopefully set the scene for subsequent chapters,
which look at the reactor choices that have been made and how they progressed. It
should be clear that there were some key constraints, as well as many choices. To
summarise, in terms of constraints, as box 2.3 illustrates, there are clearly some basic
issues related to the underlying physics that may shape the choice and design of the
Generation IV options. It is also clear that they will have to face up to the problems
that confronted earlier designs, such as their relatively poor economics and high
waste production.
There can be interactions between these factors, and, of course, others, such as
safety and security, which may limit what can be done. For example, some
Generation III plants sought to improve their overall economic performance by
adopting a high fuel burnup approach. The use of more highly enriched fuel allows
for the fuel rods to be left in the core longer, with more energy being obtained per
fuel cycle. That improves the plants’ operational economics. However, it also means
that what is left over at the end is much more radioactive, since more fission has
occurred. As a result, the spent fuel/waste management problems are much harder to
deal with, requiring thicker shielding and longer-term storage periods before activity
levels fall. This can undermine the overall operational/lifetime economics of the
nuclear system (Edwards 2008).
Some Generation II and III designs essentially adopted the opposite approach,
i.e. the use of non-enriched fuel, as in the Canadian CANDU reactor, which has the
advantage of avoiding the need for expensive and difficult uranium enrichment. It
uses heavy water, an isotropic variant of ordinary ‘light’ water, as used in conven-
tional PWRs and BWRs—these being known collectively as ‘light-water reactors’
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Box 2.3. Reactor types—a simple summary of pros and cons.
Generation I The early days of full-scale plant operation

Some early plants were graphite moderated, and the Windscale plutonium pro-
duction piles were air cooled. Blowing air over a stack of hot metal resting in what are,
in effect, charcoal blocks was perhaps not a good idea, as proved to be the case when
one pile overheated, and, barbecue-like, caught fire. Switching to the use of inert
carbon dioxide gas for cooling, as in the UK’s subsequent Magnox and AGR reactors,
was more sensible. In the Russian RBMK design, as used at Chernobyl and elsewhere,
each fuel rod was separately contained in its own tubular pipe—an amazing feat of
plumbing. In theory, that made it less prone to catastrophic loss of coolant and
containment accidents. But not, it seems, to deliberate disconnection (in a test at
Chernobyl plant 4) of all the safety interlocks, to see what would happen if there were
an external power cut. It was expected that the plant, run at low power, could produce
enough electricity to keep running safely. Instead, it ran out of control and exploded.
Generation II The commercial expansion period
Water-cooled reactors, such as the PWR and the BWR, have a big advantage over
gas-cooled systems in that water is denser and has much higher heat retention capacity.
If pressurized, as in PWRs, the boiling point is raised, so that higher temperatures can
be reached, increasing the heat transfer capacity further. To do this, a cooling loop is
used, transferring heat from the pressurised reactor core to a heat exchanger in a low-
pressure boiler outside, with water then being boiled for power production. However, if
pressurisation is suddenly lost, e.g. through a rupture of containment, the coolant
flashes off into steam, cooling is lost, and the reactor overheats and can melt down. In
boiling water reactors, the water boils at more normal temperatures, actually in the
reactor core. That is a little worrying, since it may be activated. But since there is no
secondary cooling loop or heat exchanger, it is cheaper. However, since BWRs run at
lower coolant temperatures, they need a higher cooling water throughput. When the
power that ran the cooling pumps for the BWRs at Fukushima was lost, vast amounts
of sea water had to be pumped through, using fire tenders and the like, to stop further
meltdowns. Not a brilliant idea—it is corrosive and became radioactive. Some was
dumped in the sea, some has been kept in a large number of tanks on site, and some of
the stored runoff water may now also have to be dumped in the sea after treatment.
Lesson: do not put the backup diesel power units below flood level. Better still: do not
build nuclear plants in earthquake zones.
Generation III The current revisions
The safety problems revealed by earlier models led to the addition of ever more
complex and costly interlocks and controls, plus more backup emergency cooling
systems. In Generation III reactors, an attempt is made to reduce some the costs and
unreliability of the earlier approach by redesigning operations so that they are ‘fail
safe’ with passive safety features: e.g. instead of extra cooling pumps, large tanks of
water are placed above the reactor to flood it by gravity should the power for pumps
fail. As a ‘last ditch’ measure (almost literally) some have ‘core catchers’ built into the
basement—reinforced traps designed to stop a melted core from burning through the
concrete floor into the topsoil underneath. Few Generation III plants are running as
yet, so it is not clear whether the new features will work well.
Generation IV Candidate new reactors
Apart from the experiences with various early prototypes discussed in the main text
above, we have even less knowledge about how these might fare, but there are some
basic nuclear physics issues which may help in assessing the viability of the various
2-10
approaches that may be taken. A key point concerns the relative effectiveness of fast
and slow neutrons in causing fission in U235/U233/Pu239, as against being absorbed by
U238 and other atoms. If we want the maximum amount of fission, we select slow
moderated neutrons, as in the so-called thermal reactors, including those using thorium
(or rather U233) as a fuel. If we want to breed more plutonium, we choose fast
neutrons, as in IFRs, with Pu239 fission also yielding more neutrons than U235 fission.
However, while fast or slow neutrons can also convert thorium to U233, in the process,
an interim isotope, U234, is produced by neutron absorption. It is called protactinium.
Ideally, we want to avoid that, to maximise U233 production, and experts are
apparently divided on whether that can be done effectively. The use of molten salts
may help with some of these problems, perhaps making it easier to play with the
nuclear chemistry and tap off unwanted byproducts, but it is far from proven.
Generation V? The far future—fusion
Apart from an indirect understanding of what happens in the Sun and other stars
(and H bombs), we have no experience of fusion, but we do know that, depending on
how it is done on earth (or in space), it will generate neutrons and gamma radiation, as
well as some radioactive tritium. There may also be operational issues. In some
variants, fusion can only be achieved in pulses, not continually.
(LWRs). Heavy water has heavier deuterium atoms, rather than standard hydrogen
atoms, and it is better at moderating neutron speeds. Therefore, a reasonable
amount of fission can occur, even in lower grade U235 fuel, and in theory, there is
also a lower-activity spent fuel output that can be relatively easily processed for
reuse as a new fuel. The UK tested a somewhat similar idea in the 1970s, the
so-called Steam Generating Heavy Water Reactor, but it was abandoned as
uneconomic compared with conventional PWRs, and also given the problem,
shared with CANDU, that radioactive tritium can be produced from neutron
interactions with the deuterium moderator.
A revised version of the CANDU design, but using enriched fuel, has been put
forward as a Generation IV option, along with variants of the various high-
temperature reactor designs that have been proposed or tested over the years,
including the pebble-bed helium gas-cooled reactor mentioned earlier, which China
has taking a lead on (MacDonald 2016). However, as we shall see, in the main,
variants of fast neutron reactors and reactors using molten salts and thorium have
gained the most attention, in part since they allegedly offer ways to reduce or recycle
wastes. Whether they can also be economic remains to be seen.
The constraints on the process of developing new nuclear technologies are
certainly much tighter now than they were in the early days, when nuclear R&D
was well funded. It continued to receive the lion’s share of R&D funding into the
1980s, as figure 2.2 shows.
Support then tailed off, but as Nuttall has put it, in the early days ‘the engineers
were free to design and build technologies at the limits of the possible, without regard
to cost, real utility, external impacts or the merits of alternative opportunities’ (Nuttall
2005). They now have to be more pragmatic. Public energy R&D budgets have been
cut worldwide, including those for nuclear power, and markets for these
2-11
Figure 2.2. Energy R&D funding in the IEA countries (IEA 2007, all rights reserved).
Figure 2.3. Renewables accelerate ahead of all else, including nuclear power (WNISR 2021, all rights
reserved).
technologies have toughened; the Reagan/Thatcher era saw the emphasis shift to
market competition and away from state support and intervention. Private-sector
energy R&D did not expand to compensate, and the new climate was one of short-
termism and tight economic constraints.
As a result of the various accidents and the rise of environmental sensitivity,
environmental constraints are also now major factors, as are safety, and to an
increasing extent, security. Nuclear plants of whatever sort are obvious targets for
terrorist attack, either direct, or potentially cybernetic. In addition, nuclear plants
will have to integrate into the emerging energy system, in which renewables will be
increasingly dominant (see figure 2.3). Certainly, renewable expansion has dramat-
ically outpaced nuclear power, and that seems set to continue, changing the nature
of the energy system. The new nuclear technologies will therefore have to overcome
some major challenges, and adapt to the changed situation.
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This may require a radical rethink of the overall assessment framework used, for
example, concerning the risk analysis approach that has been adopted in the past,
which has shaped reactor system design and the associated regulatory frameworks.
One study suggested that ‘with its failure to plan for the cascade of unexpected beyond
design-base accidents, the regulatory emphasis on risk-based probabilistic assessment
has proven very limited’ (Dorfman et al 2016). With new technologies and plant
designs being promoted, improved risk assessment frameworks will become more
urgent (Downer and Raman 2020). In the new energy situation, as variable
renewables are increasingly being widely used, there will also be a premium on
operational flexibility, not something that nuclear plants can deliver easily.
Although the constraints may look formidable, as we have seen, there are a wide
range of technical options, and a degree of enthusiasm for developing them. The
next chapter looks at what happened next and at the issues that emerged in the early
2000s.
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IOP Publishing

David Elliott
Chapter 3
New brooms–in the 2000s
As the last chapter illustrated, many of the ideas being considered as possible
Generation IV options first emerged in the early years of the nuclear era. Although
most were not followed up, many of them are now being looked at again, with, for
example, molten salt thorium reactors and fast neutron breeders being seen as key
options, possibly including small modular variants.
This chapter follows the story through into the 2000s and 2010s, when there was a
flurry of activity in this field, including the involvement of small companies. Some
enthusiasts saw the world as being on the brink of a new nuclear era, led, as in some
aspects of space exploration, not so much by unwieldy big corporate projects and
government labs, as by small risk-taking startups.
Although some of the projects involved large companies, there certainly were many
new startups and new initiatives in the US, which were often the results of spinoffs from
academic research, attracting around $1.3 billion in private capital by 2016 (Eaves
2016). For example, NuScale was spun out from Oregon State University in 2007, and is
working on small modular PWR-type reactors. I have already mentioned Transatomic,
which was set up by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
which aims to develop a uranium-based molten salt reactor concept (Transatomic
2017).
In addition, X-energy, a new startup company in Maryland, is developing a small
(80MW) high-temperature pebble-bed reactor (X-energy 2021), while Seattle-based
Terra Power has been developing the traveling wave reactor idea, backed by Bill
Gates, and proposed a 600 MW prototype at one stage. More on that, and Terra
Power’s Natrium reactor, below. Both are fast neutron reactors, an idea that, like
molten salt reactors, is also now back in the race.
With new starting points like this (re)emerging, some practical progress was made
in the first decades of the 2000s, but much of the emphasis was still on concepts: there
was still a lot of uncertainty about which way to go, and, as this chapter explores,
much debate about the choices and the constraints on them.

3.1 Back to breeders—and thorium

In addition to the travelling wave reactor, an early sign of the renewed interest in fast
neutron reactors/breeders in the 2000s was GE Hitachi’s proposed Prism reactor
(GEH 2016). At one time the UK was considering this as an option for dealing with
its fissile stockpile/waste management problems. Reactors like this can burn up the
plutonium that is stored in the UK and elsewhere, separated out by the reprocessing
of spent fuel from old uranium reactors, with perhaps more to come from the new
uranium reactors. Or, in breeder mode, fast reactors can be used to convert the large
existing stockpile of U238/depleted uranium that some countries have into pluto-
nium, which can be used in other reactors, including breeders and thorium plants. In
addition, fast neutron plants may also be able to burn up some wastes.
These options all come together in the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) concept
mentioned earlier, which has integral reprocessing (Till and Chang 2011). Its aim
was to move beyond the present situation in which, in some countries, plutonium is
extracted from spent reactor fuel via a complex chemical process which has to be
carried out elsewhere, in a separate operation, i.e. in a large reprocessing plant. It is a
messy process that gives rise to low- and medium-activity wastes. To run a
significant ‘closed cycle’ plutonium operation would require many such plants in
addition to the breeder plants, with spent and new fuel being transported between
them. That opens up many safety and security issues.
However, in theory, there are ways to do some of this via so called high-
temperature pyro-processing, which can, again in theory, perhaps be done near or
even within the reactor, in parallel with plutonium production. That is the IFR idea.
Fully-closed fuel-cycle systems certainly have their attractions. In theory, once the
first wave of plutonium has been bred, a breeder reactor can be run as a self-
sustaining system, without the need for further fuel input apart from U238, i.e. it can
then self-generate its own fuel internally.
A variant of this idea is the travelling wave reactor, mentioned above, first
conceived of in 1958. In one concept, depleted uranium 238 in a long solid tube is
converted to plutonium by neutrons from the fission of a U235 charge started at one
end, plutonium fission then being self-sustaining and running through the cylinder
from one end to the other, in high fuel burnup mode, a little like a burning candle.
However, this might cause stability, cooling, and control issues and, after a rethink,
in Terra Power’s revised version, the design was changed significantly. The fission
and fast neutron breeding reaction remains at the centre of a core, but it is fed by
fresh fuel moved from its outer edge, with used fuel then being moved out to the
periphery, and liquid sodium being used as a coolant. The breed-burn wave thus
does not actually ‘travel’; instead, it is an actively managed ‘standing wave’, and the
fuel is continually moved to achieve optimal exposure (Terra Power 2022).
Terra Power seems to be continuing work on this idea in the longer term, and is
also developing a molten salt reactor, but their main recent focus has been on a new
345 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor design, which they call Natrium, this being the
Latin for sodium (‘Na’ being its chemical shorthand). Its heat stored in molten salt,
which also allows for variable power output (Natrium 2021).
3-2
As we have seen, experience over the years with fast reactors has been mixed, and
it is not clear whether the new versions will do much better (Makhijani 2013a,
Cochran et al 2015). The USA has been trying, most recently with Prism, and
Natrium may break the mould, but global progress with fast reactors has been slow.
As noted in box 2.2, although Russia, India, and China still have ongoing projects,
Japan’s Monju plant is now to be abandoned. In a critical review of the state of play,
Green ended by quoting Allison MacFarlane, former chair of the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, as saying: ‘These turn out to be very expensive technologies
to build. Many countries have tried over and over. What is truly impressive is that […]
many governments continue to fund a demonstrably failed technology’ (Green 2016).
There is, however, the thorium option, which, as we shall see, still has some strong
backers. It avoids plutonium production, although it needs some fissile U235 (or
another neutron source) to initiate thorium/U233 fission. Nevertheless, once started,
it can, in theory, subsequently be sustained using just thorium as its fuel. It is also
claimed that, with the thorium cycle, there would be less new waste to deal with.
Thorium-based reactors certainly do have their attractions, although it has been
argued that some of them have been oversold. For example, a 2010 report by the
UK National Nuclear Laboratory was fairly dismissive of the potential for thorium-
fuelled reactors: see box 3.1
However, this study did not look at the thorium used in molten salt reactors, and
enthusiasts argued that MSRs have some added advantages over reactors using solid
fuel. The Weinberg Foundation’s website said they ‘have lower fissile inventories, no
radiation damage constraint on fuel burnup, no spent nuclear fuel, no requirement to
fabricate and handle solid fuel, and a homogeneous isotopic composition of fuel in the
reactor’ (Weinberg 2016).
Clearly, MSRs have some attractive features and including thorium in the mix
may add to them. That is the rationale behind the liquid fluoride thorium reactor
(LFTR) variant of the MSR that has been promoted in recent years. As noted
earlier, an MSR system was tested in the USA in the 1960s as the precursor to a
thorium version, but no large-scale LFTRs have been run as yet. However, as we
shall see, some projects are on the way, and it is worth looking at LFTRs some
detail, since they, along with MSRs in general, are sometimes seen as one of the
more promising ideas to have emerged from the past.
The proposed LFTR system would be a ‘two-fluid’ design, attempting to go
beyond what had been achieved or at least planned earlier—see box 2.1. In the new
design, fertile thorium in an outer ‘blanket’ is separated from fissile U235/Pu239
(and U233) in an inner core by a container made of graphite, which acts as a
moderator. Neutrons from fission in the core create U233 in the blanket which is
then fed to the core to undergo fission. All these materials are in molten salt form,
with fission in the molten salts in the core being the heat source. These hot salts are
then cycled through a heat exchanger to extract the heat—there is, it is claimed, no
need for other cooling systems.
The Energy from Thorium website says that fluoride salt mixtures are chemically
stable and impervious to radiation damage and have good heat retention capacity.
They can dissolve useful quantities of actinide fluorides such as uranium
3-3
Box 3.1. NNL thorium fuel review.
In 2010, the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) offered a perhaps surprisingly
conservative view of the thorium fuel option. It would take years to develop and there
were not many benefits, as long as uranium was plentiful. Here is a summary.
Timescale ‘It is estimated that it is likely to take 10 to 15 years of concerted R&D effort
and investment before the Thorium fuel cycle could be established in current reactors and
much longer for any future reactor systems’. It suggested that ‘In the foreseeable future (up
to the next 20 years), the only realistic prospect for deploying thorium fuels on a
commercial basis would be in existing and new build LWRs (e.g., AP1000 and EPR) or
PHWRs (e.g., Candu reactors). Thorium fuel concepts which require first the construction
of new reactor types (such as High Temperature Reactor (HTR), fast reactors and
Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) are regarded as viable only in the much longer term (of
the order of 40+ years minimum) as this is the length of time before these reactors are
expected to be designed, built and reach commercial maturity.’
Recycling ‘While the thorium fuel cycle is theoretically capable of being self-
sustainable, this is only achievable with full recycle. This would involve the implementa-
tion of THOREX reprocessing and a remote fabrication plant for the U-233 fuel due to
the high gamma dose from the feed material, both of which present very large
technological, commercial and risk barriers, each with a significant cost component.
The use of thorium in place of U-238 as a fertile material in a once-through fuel cycle is
much less difficult technically, but only yields a very small benefit over the conventional
U-Pu fuel cycle. For example, it is estimated that the approach of using seed-blanket
assemblies (the blanket being the surrounding fertile thorium material) in a once-through
thorium cycle in PWRs, will only reduce uranium ore demand by 10%. This is considered
too marginal to justify investment in the thorium cycle on its own.’
Proliferation ‘Contrary to that which many proponents of thorium claim, U-233
should be regarded as posing a definite proliferation risk. For a thorium fuel cycle which
falls short of a breeding cycle, uranium fuel would always be needed to supplement the
fissile material and there will always be significant (though reduced) plutonium
production.’
Economics ‘NNL believes that while economic benefits are theoretically achievable by
using thorium fuels, in current market conditions the position is marginal and insufficient
to justify major investment. There is only a very weak technical basis for claims that
thorium concepts using seed-blanket PWR cores will be economically advantageous. The
only exception is in a postulated market environment of restricted uranium ore
availability and thus very high uranium prices. This is not considered very likely for
the foreseeable future, given that economically recoverable uranium reserves are thought
to be very price dependent and therefore if uranium prices were to increase, then more
uranium would be available to the market.’
Radiotoxicity ‘Claims that thorium fuels give a reduction in radiotoxicity are justified.
However, caution is required because many such claims cite studies based on a self-
sustaining thorium cycle in equilibrium. More realistic studies which take account of the
effect of U-235 or Pu-239 seed fuels required to breed the U-233 suggest the benefits are
more modest. NNL’s view is therefore that thorium fuel cycles are likely to offer modest
reductions in radiotoxicity. It is considered that the realistic benefits are likely to be too
marginal to justify investment in the thorium fuel cycle. However, the substantial
reduction in radiotoxicity promised by a full thorium recycle does provide a significant
incentive in the long term’ (NNL 2010).
3-4
Box 3.2. LFTR fuel cycle.
In liquid fluoride thorium reactors, U233 produced in the outer blanket has to be
moved to the core and more thorium added to the blanket. Fresh uranium (or Pu239)
also has to be added to the core and wastes removed. The Energy from Thorium website
describes these processing/transfer stages as follows: ‘Fission of U-233 in the reactor
generates thermal power as well as excess neutrons that would be captured in a blanket
fluid containing thorium tetrafluoride in solution. Thorium, having absorbed a neutron,
first decays to protactinium and ultimately to uranium-233. New fuel would be chemically
removed from the blanket fluid either at the uranium stage or the protactinium stage,
which has additional complexity and advantages. The new uranium fuel would be
introduced into the fuel salt of the LFTR at the same rate at which it is consumed.
Uranium-233 is consumed at high efficiency (91%) in a thermal spectrum reactor and
that which is not consumed goes on to form uranium-235, which is also consumed at high
efficiency (85%) in a thermal spectrum reactor. This limits considerably the amount of
material that can reach the stage of the first transuranic, in this case, neptunium-237, and
thus the issue of long-lived actinide waste production. The fuel salt used in the LFTR is
chemically processed as the reactor operates, removing fission products while retaining
actinide fuels. This allows the creation of an actinide-free waste stream which decays to
acceptable radioactivity levels in approximately 300 years’ (Energy from Thorium
2016).
In terms of safety, the Weinberg Foundation said that, unlike with reactors with
solid fuel, ‘as fuel in a LFTR is already in liquid form, it cannot melt down […] The
LFTR can only overheat if the circulation of the molten salt is disrupted as a result of a
loss of power, thereby preventing heat removal from the core. If that should happen, the
build-up of excess heat melts a freeze plug of solidified salt at the bottom of the reactor,
allowing the molten salt to drain into a separate tank. Once in the tank, the fission
reaction stops and the liquid fuel cools down and becomes an inert solid mass. This is an
entirely passive process requiring no external power source’ (Weinberg 2012).
tetrafluoride, thorium tetrafluoride, and plutonium trifluoride, and, in a reactor

context, they can chemically capture fission products such as caesium and strontium
in fluoride form and prevent their release. This behaviour and the basic nature of
thorium/U233 fission mean that they would produce fewer wastes than conventional
uranium-based systems. Moreover, key operational advantages are claimed:
although LFTRs, like MSRs generally, would run at high temperatures, they would
not need high pressures, so avoiding decompression risks (Energy from Thorium
2016).
However, although this is all done in a fluid matrix, and so avoids some of the
problems associated with solid fuel rods and cooling systems, it is quite a complex
system in terms of internal plumbing and materials handling, as all this has to be
done at high temperatures; see box 3.2.
While it is claimed that LFTRs have better inherent safety features and fewer
technical obstacles and waste production problems than uranium reactors, there are
some uncertainties. When non-fissile thorium is converted into fissile U233, there are
decay products (starting with U232) that are very radioactive (much more so than
3-5
U235 or plutonium) and emit hard gamma radiationa. That makes the fuel difficult
to work with, whether in solid or liquid form, and means much more shielding as
well as even tighter protection against leaks.
It is claimed that, given the high U233 burnup and the reduced byproducts from
its fission, thorium reactors produce less waste. However, in order to get U233, U235
and/or Pu239 must initially be used, either in a separate operation or (as in the
LFTR described above) in molten salt.
As a result, there will still be some waste to be dealt with. The Weinberg
Foundation has said that ‘17% of fission products from a LFTR have long half-lives
and these will require safe storage for up to 300 years’. If actually achieved, this would
be an improvement on conventional uranium fission plants, but it is still an issue.
Some key design and technology issues also arose from the early 1970s Oak Ridge
MSR R&D programme. As the World Nuclear Association noted, ‘it highlighted
some unique corrosion and safety issues that would need to be addressed if constructing
a larger pilot MSR with fuel salt. With a radioactive primary coolant loop, challenges
would include processing facilities to remove the main fission products, though gaseous
fission products come off readily in the gas purge system.’ It added that tritium
production was also a problem, this being a byproduct of irradiating lithium salts.
The use of lithium might therefore have to be avoided (WNA 2021).
Nevertheless, despite these problems, as their supporters have argued, molten salt
reactors generally (whether using thorium or not) do have some clear advantages
over conventional solid fuel-type reactors. For example, given atoms circulating
freely in a solution, every nucleus is, in theory, equally available to absorb a neutron
and 100 percent of the fuel present can be burned. This means that for a given energy
output, a liquid-fuelled reactor should be smaller than the corresponding solid-
fuelled type (Nathan 2013).
It has been suggested that, as a consequence of this and other factors, including
their ability to run without the need for pressurization, the capital costs of LFTRs
could be around half those for conventional nuclear plants (Hargraves and Moir
2011). This was very speculative, even assuming mass production, but the prospect
of lower costs has driven interest in the idea, as have the inherent safety features that
are claimed—notably, that LFTRs cannot melt down and can be designed to avoid
overheating (see box 3.2).
Certainly, in theory, the use of molten fluoride salt should allow for the reaction
to be self-limiting. The Weinberg Foundation said that ‘MSR temperature regulation
is passive, so no control rods or active cooling system are required. The heat generated
by fission expands the molten salt, decreasing the level of reactivity, which leads to
contraction of the molten salt and an increase in reactivity, and thus a self-regulating
system.’
In addition, ‘the passive temperature system enables MSRs to load-follow
automatically. As more heat is extracted from the reactor, the salt temperature goes
down, causing power output to increase, thus responding instantaneously to demand. In
addition, MSRs have far greater load-following capability than solid-fuelled reactors
due to their capacity for online removal of xenon gas. Xenon is a neutron-poison which
increases in quantity in solid-fuelled reactors when the power level is lowered, thus
3-6
limiting load-following operation. In MSRs, xenon is constantly bubbled out of the

reactor via the off-gas system which enables MSRs to be among the most flexible load-
following nuclear reactors’ (Weinberg 2014).
Xenon poisoning and flash-off were key factors in the Chernobyl disaster, so one
would need to be very sure that this new untried concept really worked. Apart from
this (and in the case of the thorium variant, the radiation from U232 decay), the
safety case for MSRs generally has been seen as relatively good, compared to
standard PWR reactors (Elsheikh 2013). Proliferation resistance is also said to be
good (no plutonium is produced directly), but there are some security issues with the
thorium variant. U233 fuel, with its highly radioactive U232 content, is hard to work
with, but it can be used to make weapons, so thorium reactors can have implications
for weapons proliferation (Phys.org 2012).
Clearly, in terms of hardware, there are plenty of issues, but some companies are
developing MSRs, for example in the UK and the US, some of which include
thorium variants. There are also some thorium projects in India, China, and
elsewhere (see box 3.3), although the thorium option is not yet fully proven, as its
fuel management and waste burnup issues are still to be resolved—can it all be done
safely, efficiently, and economically?
Meanwhile, although, as noted earlier, it is sometimes claimed that waste burnup
may be possible in IFRs and perhaps also in MSRs, there is also the direct waste
transmutation option, which converts highly radioactive isotopes into less active
forms using particle beams from accelerators. They are sometimes called accel-
erator-driven systems (ADSs). Carlo Rubbia at the CERN Laboratory in
Switzerland has suggested firing a beam of neutrons into a sub-critical mix of
thorium and plutonium; the neutron flux would convert wastes into less hazardous
variants. The energy output is seen as a byproduct. It is claimed to be fail-safe, since
fission could be instantly halted by switching off the accelerator.
However, there are issues: only some wastes would be suited to transmutation,
and achieving significant conversion rates would probably need a multi-stage
process, with repeated reprocessing steps to separate out target isotopes for retreat-
ment. Moreover, at each stage, new wastes would be created (NEA 2002).
There has nevertheless still been some interest in accelerator-driven systems,
perhaps as a new Gen IV option. For example, the Electron Model for Many
Applications (EMMA) system, developed by researchers at the UK’s Daresbury
Labs in Cheshire, would bombard thorium and (some) nuclear wastes in a sub-
critical reactor, producing heat, which could be used to generate power. Essentially,
this is a development of Rubbia’s idea (Burns 2012). However, in general, while
there is still some interest in the waste-burning role that molten salt/fast neutron
reactors might play, conventional reactor- or accelerator-based transmutation is not
usually seen as a viable route for dealing with nuclear waste on any significant scale
(Zerriffi and Makhijani 2000).
3-7
Another random document with
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THE CHOIR SCHOOL
The Choir School building, which cost nearly $180,000, is the gift of Mrs. J.
Jarrett Blodgett in memory of her father Mr. John Hinman Sherwood. At
Eastertide, 1914, the late Commodore Frederick G. Bourne, who had sung as
a boy in Trinity Church and in later years in the Church of the Incarnation,
endowed the school with $500,000; and by his will, probated March 15, 1919,
gave $100,000 to the Cathedral toward the building of the Nave and about the
same amount to the Choir School endowment. Members of the Diocesan
Auxiliary to the Cathedral contributed generously toward the furnishing of the
school. A tablet in the porch reads:
“In Faithful Memory of ‖ John Hinman Sherwood ‖ Just Upright True ‖ Erected by
his daughter ‖ 1912.”
St. Faith’s House

St. Faith’s House (D. on plan) is the home of the New York Training School
for Deaconesses, an independent corporation which was founded in 1890 by
the late Rev. William Reed Huntington, D.D., and which occupies a site in the
Cathedral Close by permission of the Trustees of the Cathedral. The building
of Indiana limestone and brick is in Tudor Gothic architecture, and measures
68 by 137 feet on the outside. It is the gift of Archdeacon Charles C. Tiffany in
memory of his wife. The architects were Messrs. Heins & LaFarge.
The Synod House

The Synod House, (E. on plan), standing in the southwestern angle of the
Close on the corner of Cathedral parkway and Amsterdam avenue, is the
meeting place of the Diocesan Convention and other secular gatherings of the
Diocese. It also contains the Bishop’s office and the offices of the Suffragan
Bishops, the Rt. Rev. Arthur Selden Lloyd, D.D., and the Rt. Rev. Herbert
Shipman, D.D. It is of Kingwood. W. Va., sandstone with pink tinges, quite
unlike any other stone in the Cathedral group. The Architecture is pure French
Gothic of the 13th century, Messrs. Cram & Ferguson being the architects. Its
outside dimensions are 73 by 171 feet. The Western Entrance is a fine
example of a mediaeval recessed porch in its architecture and an interesting
illustration of the progress of Civilization and Christianity in its sculptures. It
contains 43 figures in the round and a relief of 12 figures in the tympanum.
The key-note to the composition is the relief in the Tympanum representing
Christ sending out his Disciples to baptize and teach all the nations of the
world. Beneath this is the inscription:
“All power is given unto me in heaven and earth ‖ Go ye therefore, and teach all
nations, baptizing ‖ them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and ‖ of the Holy
Ghost; teaching them to observe all ‖ things whatsoever I have commanded you;
and lo ‖ I am with you always even unto the end of the world” (Mat. xxviii. 18-20).
THE SYNOD HOUSE
The archivolt outside of the tympanum is composed of three ranges of

Gothic niches in the voussoirs, containing 36 little figures in the round. The
outer range represents 14 ancient and modern Apostles of Christianity as
follows, beginning at the lowest figure on the left-hand side and reading
upward to the center, and thence downward to the lowest right-hand figure: (1)
Count Zinzendorf, 1700-1760, German reformer, founder of Moravian
Brethren, missionary to American Indians; (2) St. Boniface, 680-755, Apostle
of Germany; (3) St. Francis Xavier, 1506-1552, Apostle of the Indies, one of
the founders of the Society of Jesus; (4) St. Denis, 3d century, Apostle of the
Gauls, Patron Saint of France; (5) St. Olaf, 995-1030, Patron Saint and King
of Norway; (6) St. Augustine, died 604, missionary to Britain, first Archbishop
of Canterbury; (7) Innocent of Moscow, 1797-1879, Apostle of Alaska and
Kamchatka, Archbishop of Moscow; (8) St. Patrick, circ. 372-460, Apostle and
Patron Saint of Ireland; (9) John Eliot, 1604-1690, Apostle of American
Indians, translator of Bible into Indian language; (10) St. Willibrod, 658-739,
Apostle of the Frisians, Archbishop of Utrecht; (11) St. Cyril, 827-869, Apostle
of the Slavs, inventor of the Cyrillic alphabet; (12) David Livingstone, 1813-
1873, British explorer and missionary in Africa; (13) St. Columba, 521-597,
Apostle of Caledonia; (14) Charles George Gordon, “Gordon Pasha,” 1833-
1885, British General, promoter of Christianity in China and Egypt. The 12
figures in the middle range represent the Arts and Sciences. In the same
order they are: (1) Natural Science, man with microscope; (2) Sculpture, man
with mallet and chisel; (3) Medicine, man with book and skull; (4) Literature,
woman reading a book; (5) Chemistry, woman holding aloft a retort; (6)
Industrial Art, man with vase; (7) Painting, man with palette; (8) Astronomy,
man with globe; (9) Mathematics, man wearing spectacles and gown, holding
cone and truncated pyramid; (10) Physics, woman with telephone; (11) Music,
man with violoncello; (12) Architecture, man[50] holding model of building. The
10 figures in the innermost range represent the Crafts and Industries, as
follows: (1) Bookbinding, man making a book; (2) Agriculture, man sowing
seed; (3) Metal Industry, man pouring molten metal from ladle; (4) Textile
Industry, woman with distaff and shuttle; (5) Navigation, sailor holding
telescope with rope at feet; (6) Building, man laying brick; (7) Engineering,
man holding tape measure; (8) Fishing, sailor with seine; (9) Mining, man with
pickaxe and miner’s cap; (10) Shoemaking, cobbler at his last. Below these, in
niches in the splays and central pilaster of the door-way, are 7 larger figures
representing Seven Famous Christian Rulers who have carried out the
injunction in the tympanum, as follows, (left to right): (1) Emperor Constantine,
once ruler of the Roman World and founder of Constantinople, who
proclaimed religious toleration and presided over the council which adopted
the Nicene Creed; (2) Charlemagne, King of the Franks, Emperor of the
revived western Roman empire, who introduced Christianity into conquered
countries, maintained popular assemblies, and promoted science, art and
letters; (3) Alexis, one of the ablest Emperors of Byzantium and friend of the
Crusaders; (4, in center) George Washington, to whose character as Christian
soldier, statesman and first President of the United States, attaches local
interest from the fact that he commanded the American troops in the Battle of
Harlem Heights which was fought partly on the ground occupied by the
Cathedral Close; (5) Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, one of the greatest
generals, who, with his army in Germany, saved the cause of Protestantism in
the Thirty Years War; (6) St. Louis, King of France, the most distinguished
monarch of his age, who was noted for his piety, justice and mercy, and who
died on a Crusade; and (7) Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, who bore the
brunt of the Danish invasions and was a promoter of education and
Christianity. The sculptures are by John Evans & Co. of Boston. The Interior
decoration of the high roof and open timbers of the truss-work in polychrome
is typical of the Middle Ages and the wood panelling is a reminder of 15th
century work. The latter is by Messrs. Wm. F. Ross & Co., of Cambridge,
Mass. The grisaille windows are by Mr. Charles J. Connick of Boston. The
main hall, which seats 800 on the floor and 400 in the gallery, has a large pipe
organ built by the Ernest M. Skinner Co. of Boston. The Undercroft
(basement) is equipped for use as a refectory. The building cost about
$350,000. In the main vestibule, over the outer door-way, is this inscription:
“To the Glory of God and for the Service of His People ‖ This Synod House was
Given in the year A. D. 1912 by ‖ John Pierpont Morgan and William Bayard
Cutting.”
Open Air Pulpit

The Open Air Pulpit (F. on plan) standing in the midst of the Cathedral
Close, is in the form of an open-work Gothic spire 40 feet high, built of
Daytona stone. On its four sides are the usual symbols of the four Evangelists.
The pulpit was designed by Messrs. Howells and Stokes and was presented
by Miss Olivia Phelps Stokes in memory of her sister Miss Caroline Phelps
Stokes. It was suggested by the outdoor services held here before the Choir
and Crossing were ready, and by the open air pulpit attached to the cathedral
church at Perugia.
Organizations
The following organizations of men and women aid in the Cathedral work:
The Diocesan Auxiliary to the Cathedral: President, Mrs. Henry W. Munroe;
Vice-Presidents, Mrs. John Greenough, Mrs. Haley Fiske, Mrs. W. M. V.
Hoffman; Secretary, Mrs. Louis Mansfield Ogden; Assistant Secretary, Mrs.
Francis C. Huntington; Treasurer, Mrs. Harold F. Hadden.
The Cathedral League: President, Mr. John S. Rogers; Vice-President, Hon.
Thomas C. T. Crain; Treasurer, Mr. John A. Hance; Secretary, Dr. John B.
Walker.
The Laymen’s Club: President, Mr. Theophilus Barratt; Vice-Presidents,
Messrs. William W. Borman, Henry M. Sperry, Robert Livingston Stedman;
Treasurer, Mr. Charles P. Dietz; Secretary, Mr. J. Hardwick Stagg. Organized
1908, incorporated 1920, “to promote and stimulate interest in the influence,
growth and completion of the Cathedral; to bring the Cathedral and its work
more completely within the knowledge of the community; and to promote the
general welfare of the Cathedral.” Among its activities are the publication of
this Guide Book and the Cathedral post-cards, the improvement of the
Cathedral grounds, the assisting of a choir boy to complete in some well-
known preparatory school his preparation for college, the training of the
Cathedral Troop of Boy Scouts, the giving of free lectures, the ushering in the
Cathedral, etc.
The Cathedral Ushers are members of the Laymen’s Club as stipulated in a
resolution of the Cathedral Trustees passed April 25, 1911, and are
designated from week to week by the Canon Sacrist. The badge of the Ushers
is a vesica-shaped[51] gold medallion, having in the center an episcopal mitre,
surrounded by the legend “Ecclesia Cathedralis S. Johannis Theologi;”
suspended by a purple ribbon from a gold bar bearing the word “Usher.”
Guide Book
Copies of this Guide Book may be procured at the Cathedral from the
Verger or the Ushers, or will be sent by mail upon request addressed to the
Verger (p. 23). In stiff paper covers 50 cents (by mail 60 cents); in purple cloth
covers stamped with gold $1.00 (by mail $1.10).
FOOTNOTES
[1] The service on Nov. 24, when the flags of 12 liberated nationalities
were carried in the procession, and that on Thanksgiving Day when the
flags of 27 allied nations were carried, were two of the most moving
religious services ever held in this country. The liberated peoples
represented in the former were the Armenian, Albanian, Czecho-Slovak,
Jugo-Slav, Greek Irredentist, Italian Irredentist, Lithuanian, Polish,
Rumanian, Uhro-Rusin, Ukranian, and Zionist.
[2] The quality of divinity appertaining only to the Deity.
[3] This was a stone tower similar to the one so well preserved in Central
Park. The remains of another are at the northern end of Morningside Park.
[4] See note on page 116.
[5] The pastoral staff was presented to Bishop Manning in 1923 by the
Bishop, clergy and laity of the Diocese of London. See reference to the
Diocese of London on page 24.
[6] The processional cross, a memorial of the late Walter D. Davidge,
Chairman of Ushers, is overlaid with pure gold, and mounted upon a
carved mahogany staff. In its center is a large topaz jewel with many
facets. It was made by Messrs. J. & R. Lamb.
[7] Mr. Heins was born May 24, 1860, in Philadelphia, Penn., and died
September 25, 1907, at Mohegan Lake, N. Y., where there is a church
erected in his memory.
[8] Morningside Heights are so named because they front eastward.
[9] See description of corner-stone on page 100.
[10] This is true in both the natural and the spiritual worlds. The oak
grows more slowly than the pine; and the moral achievements which are
worth the most and last the longest are the hardest to accomplish.
[11] The figures of the Virgin and the Child suggest the fact that the
Chapel of St. Saviour occupies the position usually given to the Lady
Chapel in European cathedrals.
[12] The diagonal cross of St. Andrew symbolizes not only the mode of
his martyrdom but also humility. The legend is that when condemned to
death, he asked to be nailed to a cross of a form different from the
Saviour’s, as he was not worthy to die on the same kind.
[13] The usual symbol of St. Bartholomew, the knife with which he was
flayed alive, and that of St. Matthew, the money bag, indicating his
occupation before he was called, are not apparent.
[14] There is a tradition that St. Luke painted the first portrait of Christ.
Pictures of the Madonna attributed to Luke are not uncommon in southern
Italy. There is one such in the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul at Citta
Vecchia, Malta. See article entitled “Knights and Sights of Malta” in
Harper’s Magazine for July, 1923, p. 159.
[15] ΙϹ and ΧϹ are the Greek letters iota sigma and chi sigma, (uncial
form,) being the first and last letters in each case of the Greek words for
Jesus Christ. The letters ΝΙΚΑ are read together and spell the Greek word
which means “conquers.” Mrs. Jenner, in her “Christian Symbolism,” says
that this inscription “is stamped upon every altar-bread of the Orthodox
Eastern Church, and it occurs on every eikon of our Lord.”
[16] What is here informally called the central aisle is sometimes called
by architects the Nave, to distinguish it from the parallel passages called
aisles.
[17] These sculptures are surpassingly beautiful. The Supper at
Emmaus has a particularly dramatic quality. Note the amazement of the
two Disciples as they recognize the Saviour after his crucifixion, their
attitudes and facial expressions, and the vein standing out on the neck of
the one in the foreground.
[18] The use of the grape-vine to symbolize Christ dates from the very
beginning of the Christian era. A silver chalice found in Antioch by Arabs in
1910 and believed to date from the 1st century, is covered with a grape-
vine of twelve branches in the midst of which are figures of Christ and the
writers of the Gospels and Epistles (See N. Y. Evening Sun of Jan. 3,
1920, and N. Y. Times of May 14, 1922.)
[19] These symbols, supposed to be derived from the Revelation of St.
John (iv. 7) and the prophecy of Ezekiel (i. 10), are variously interpreted.
One explanation of each follows: The man or cherub is given to St.
Matthew because he dwells on the human side of Christ; the lion to St.
Mark because he is called the historian of the resurrection, and ancient
naturalists believed that the lion was born inanimate and came to life three
days after birth; the ox, the emblem of sacrifice, to St. Luke because he
dwells on the priesthood of Christ; and the eagle to St. John because he
soared in the spirit to heaven and saw God.
[20] These Romanesque features are part of the original design which
was subsequently abandoned. There is a plan for changing them to
Gothic.
[21] There is much ambiguity in the use by architects of terms to indicate
the sub-divisions of the eastern limb of a cathedral which is called
comprehensively the Choir. The designations here used—the Choir proper,
the Presbytery, and the Sanctuary—are sufficient for present purposes
without confusing the reader with conflicting definitions.
[22] For details of intentional departures from absolute levels, and from
regularity of height and spacing of arches, see “Temperamental
Architecture” in “The New York Architect” for April, 1911.
[23] See Abbott’s “History of King Alfred” for legends concerning the
cakes. One is, that Alfred, when a fugitive from the Danes, was hiding one
day in a peasant’s cottage, and while sitting by the fire-place mending his
bow, he was requested by the house-wife to watch her cakes which were
baking. Absorbed in thoughts of his kingdom, he forgot the cakes, and for
his neglect was roundly scolded by the woman who little realized his
character.
[24] St. Francis, founder of the Franciscan Order, literally interpreted the
text “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature”
(Mark xvi. 15) and a famous fresco by Giotto in the church of San
Francesco, at Assisi, represents him preaching to the birds.
[25] “Cathedral Choirs ... have for ages been divided into two portions
facing each other and respectively named Decani, or the side of the Dean,
... and Cantoris, or the side of the Cantor” or Precentor.—Hunt’s Concise
History of Music.
[26] Brother of Horatio Potter and father of Henry Codman Potter,
Bishops of New York.
[27] See reference to the symbols of the four Evangelists on page 44.
[28] See page 93 for anecdote of the Dove of Peace connected with this
window.
[29] See page 74 following.
[30] The poetic beauty of this window tempts one to re-read Milton’s
“Paradise Lost.” The beautiful legend of St. Raphael, the friendly traveller,
a favorite subject of art, is to be found in the Book of Tobit, in the
Apochrypha.
[31] Uncle of Bishop Henry Codman Potter, seventh Bishop of New York,
whose tomb is in the Chapel of St. James.
[32] The symbolism applicable to Bishop Potter’s work is that of the
familiar adage, “Great oaks from little acorns grow.”
[33] The congregational singing, always a feature of the Cathedral
services, is remarkable on these occasions, especially with the colored
congregations, among whom are often heard voices of exceptional quality.
[34] Concerning the ΙϹ-ΧϹ symbol, see page 34. Concerning the Ichthus
symbol, see page 116.
[35] These letters ihc and the corresponding capitals ΙΗϹ (iota, eta,
sigma,) are the first two and last letters of the Greek word for Jesus. They
are frequently associated with the letters ΧΡϹ (chi, rho, sigma,) the first
two and last letters of the word for Christ. When converted into the Roman
form of ihs or IHS, they are sometimes construed to be the initials of the
words Jesus Hominum Salvator (Jesus Saviour of Men).
[36] This rare representation of God the Father in human form is after
examples developed during and confined almost entirely to the 14th-16th
centuries. The triangular nimbus is peculiarly the symbol of God the
Father. Note description of Reredos.
[37] Grisaille, from the French “gris” meaning “gray,” so-called on
account of the grizzled or grayish brown glass often employed. Windows in
geometrical designs are also called pattern windows. Other examples of
grisaille windows are those in St. Columba Chapel.
[38] The designer has taken artistic license with these colors. Strictly, the
arms of the City of Rheims are: On a silver field, a green wreath of oak and
laurel with red fruit; on a blue chief three fleurs de lis of gold.
[39] Strictly, the arms of the Archbishop of Rheims are: On a blue field
sprinkled with golden fleurs de lis, a silver cross over all.
[40] In 1376, Charles V. fixed the number of fleurs de lis in the royal
arms at three “to symbolize the Holy Trinity.” Some persons consider that
the three leaves of the conventional fleur de lis also symbolize the Trinity.
[41] This representation of the Transfiguration, like that in the reredos of
the Chapel of Saint James described on page 71, is after Raphael’s last
work, the original of which is in the Vatican. In both cases the poses of the
six figures have been adapted to the spaces occupied.
[42] In the following table ac. indicates date of accession to title. Some of
the dates here and on page 86 are only approximate.
[43] Only the nimbus of the Deity is ornamented with the cross. In a front
view, but three arms of the cross appear; and sometimes these are
represented as rays of light. A few writers, including G. J. French and W. &
G. Audsley, contend that the three rays on the nimbus of the Deity have no
connection with the cross, but symbolize the Trinity. The similarity of the
floriated terminals to the French fleur de lis has no special meaning, the
real significance being, as stated on page 74 the flowering or
productiveness of the Christian religion.
[44] A Bishop’s crozier is usually in the form of a pastoral staff, or ornate
shepherd’s crook; an Archbishop’s staff has a cross instead of a crook at
the upper end; and a papal staff has a double cross at the upper end.
[45] The founder of a see is usually represented holding the model of a
cathedral.
[46] As an illustration of a peace legend connected with a European
church may be mentioned that of the Golden Virgin of the basilica of Notre
Dame de Brebieres, in Albert, France. In the bombardment of 1914, the
figure of the Virgin and Child which surmounted the spire was thrown over
and remained suspended at right angles for over three years; during which
time the belief sprang up locally that when the Golden Virgin fell, peace
would come. The Virgin fell during the bombardment of 1918, and peace
ensued a few months later.
[47] Some years ago, when Canon Douglas was visiting Worcester
Cathedral, England, Canon Wilson pointed to a spot in the wall where an
ancient carved stone had been replaced by a modern stone, and said: “A
good while ago a man of the name of Huntington, who introduced himself
as Rector of a church in Worcester, Mass., begged me to give him a bit of
carved stone as a symbol of the ties between England and America.” This
led Canon Douglas to ask for a similar gift to be placed in St. Ansgarius’
Chapel, which is a memorial of Dr. Huntington, in a House of God where
Englishmen and Americans often meet and where members of the
Daughter Church have constant occasion to recall their indebtedness to
the Mother Church of England.
[48] The Corner Stone also contains a Bible, a Prayer Book, a Hymnal,
Journals of the Diocesan Conventions 1882-1892, Journals of the General
Conventions 1889-1892, Centennial History of the Diocese of New York,
several church periodicals, three different almanacs for 1893, Catalogue of
the General Theological Seminary and St. Stephen’s College 1892-1893,
New York daily papers of December 27, 1892, the form of service for laying
the Corner Stone, names of the Cathedral Trustees, several charges and
addresses delivered by Bishop Potter on various occasions, letters from
the Bishop to the clergy and others concerning the Cathedral, the badge
and rules of prayer of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, medal of the
Missionary Society, lists of principal officers of the United States, N. Y.
State and N. Y. City governments, and a list of the objects placed in the
stone.
[49] For details, see description in the Architectural Record for August,
1914.
[50] Ralph Adams Cram.
[51] Several ideas associated with the fish-shape of the vesica piscis
have caused it to be recognized as a symbol of Christ. In an ingenious
rebus of a very early date, the five letters of the Greek word for “fish” ἰχθύς,
form the initials of the Greek words Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς, Θεοῦ Υἱὸς, Σωτήρ,
which mean “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.”
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Nuclear Power Past present and future

2nd Edition Elliott

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Author biography vii

1 Introduction: the nuclear vision 1-1

2 Nuclear innovation: the early days 2-1

3 New brooms–in the 2000s 3-1

4 Progress in the 2020s 4-1

5 Nuclear power revisited 5-1

6 Conclusions: the way ahead 6-1

Appendix 1: Public opposition to nuclear power 7-1

Appendix 2: Nuclear and renewables—the basics compared 8-1

Further reading, contacts, and videos 9-1

Guide to technical terms and units

A quick guide to key atoms…

Nuclear Power (Second Edition)

1.1 Nuclear energy: uranium in a bucket

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-5152-2ch1 1-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

1.2 Atoms for peace

1.3 The rise and fall of nuclear power

Box 1.2. Nuclear closures in the USA.

1.4 On to generation IV?

Chernobyl Forum: 2003–2005 (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency) http://unscear.

Nuclear Power (Second Edition)

2.1 Early US experiments

doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-5152-2ch2 2-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

sources of power production. Their overwhelming advantage is that they enable a

2.2 Thorium reactors and fast breeders

Box 2.1. Early US molten fluoride salt reactor work.

2.3 What next?

2.4 Design parameters, choices, and constraints

Box 2.3. Reactor types—a simple summary of pros and cons.

Generation I The early days of full-scale plant operation

Nuclear Power (Second Edition)

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3.1 Back to breeders—and thorium

Box 3.1. NNL thorium fuel review.

Box 3.2. LFTR fuel cycle.

tetrafluoride, thorium tetrafluoride, and plutonium trifluoride, and, in a reactor

limiting load-following operation. In MSRs, xenon is constantly bubbled out of the

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