Superphénix ( en, Superphoenix) or SPX was a
nuclear power station
A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a generator that produces elec ...
prototype on the
Rhône
The Rhône ( , ; wae, Rotten ; frp, Rôno ; oc, Ròse ) is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and southeastern France before discharging into the Mediterranean Sea. At Ar ...
river at
Creys-Malville in France, close to the border with Switzerland. Superphénix was a 1,242 MWe
fast breeder
A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes. Breeder reactors achieve this because their neutron economy is high enough to create more fissile fuel than they use, by irradiation of a fertile mate ...
reactor with the twin goals of reprocessing
nuclear fuel
Nuclear fuel is material used in nuclear power stations to produce heat to power turbines. Heat is created when nuclear fuel undergoes nuclear fission.
Most nuclear fuels contain heavy fissile actinide elements that are capable of undergoing ...
from France's line of conventional nuclear reactors, while also being an economical generator of power on its own.
Construction began in 1976, the reactor went critical in 1985 and was connected to the grid in 1986.
The project suffered cost overruns, delays and enormous public protests. Overall, the reactor totalized a very low operation factor of 14.4%.
Despite many technical issues related to being a first-of-a-kind project (as of 2022 Superphénix is still the biggest fast breeder reactor ever built) most of its downtime was caused by administrative procedure: the plant was technically capable of resuming operations but was forbidden to do so.
Technical problems were solved over time and, by 1996, the plant had reached an availability of 95%.
The plant was powered down in December 1996 for maintenance, and while it was closed it was subject to court challenges that prevented its restart. In June 1997, the newly elected Prime Minister,
Lionel Jospin
Lionel Robert Jospin (; born 12 July 1937) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.
Jospin was First Secretary of the Socialist Party from 1995 to 1997 and the party's candidate for President of France in ...
, announced that Superphénix would be closed permanently; this was made official by ministerial decree in December 1998.
Design
Background
France had considered the problem of
plutonium
Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibi ...
production just after the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. At the time, the conventional solution to this problem was to use a graphite moderated air or water cooled reactor fueled with
natural uranium
Natural uranium (NU or Unat) refers to uranium with the same isotopic ratio as found in nature. It contains 0.711% uranium-235, 99.284% uranium-238, and a trace of uranium-234 by weight (0.0055%). Approximately 2.2% of its radioactivity comes fr ...
. Such designs have little economic value in terms of power production, but are simple solutions to the problem of "breeding" plutonium fuel, which can then be separated from the original uranium fuel with chemical processing.
It had long been known that another solution to the
breeder reactor
A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes. Breeder reactors achieve this because their neutron economy is high enough to create more fissile fuel than they use, by irradiation of a fertile mate ...
design was to replace the graphite with liquid sodium metal. The graphite is used as a moderator, slowing the
neutron
The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the nuclei of atoms. Since protons and neutrons beh ...
s released in the nuclear reactions to a speed that makes other uranium atoms receptive to them. If the natural uranium fuel is replaced with fuel sensitive to
fast neutron
The neutron detection temperature, also called the neutron energy, indicates a free neutron's kinetic energy, usually given in electron volts. The term ''temperature'' is used, since hot, thermal and cold neutrons are moderated in a medium with ...
s, typically
highly enriched uranium
Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 (written 235U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Naturally occurring uranium is composed of three major isotopes: uranium-238 (238U ...
or
plutonium
Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibi ...
, the reaction can run without the use of a moderator.
While this design eliminates the need for a moderator, the core still needs to be cooled. Ideally the coolant would be both highly efficient, allowing the core size to be reduced, as well as being largely transparent to neutrons. The most studied example of such a material is liquid
sodium
Sodium is a chemical element with the symbol Na (from Latin ''natrium'') and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 of the periodic table. Its only stable iso ...
, although salts and other metals have also been used.
This not only greatly reduces the size of the reactor, but the fast neutrons from a single reaction are capable of causing several breeding reactions. By surrounding the core with additional fertile material such as
natural uranium
Natural uranium (NU or Unat) refers to uranium with the same isotopic ratio as found in nature. It contains 0.711% uranium-235, 99.284% uranium-238, and a trace of uranium-234 by weight (0.0055%). Approximately 2.2% of its radioactivity comes fr ...
, or even nuclear waste from other reactors, the breeding reaction will take place in a larger volume and in otherwise useless materials. This section is known as the ''blanket''. Such a design also has the quality that it generates more fuel than it consumes, as long as the ''breeding ratio'' is greater than 1.
Such a design has three major advantages over conventional military designs.
* The entire reaction cycle occurs much faster so it breeds new fuel at a faster rate
* It can use a wider variety of breeding materials because it is not used as the fuel as well
* It generates ample amounts of heat, which can be used to produce power
The downside is that it has to be fueled with some sort of enriched fuel, although the fissile material being bred in the blanket can be used.
Earlier work and Phénix
Plans for a French fast reactor date as far back as 1958's ''Rapsodie'', and followed up in 1964 for a larger design with a power output of 1 GWe. Construction of the Rapsodie facility started in 1962 and went critical on 28 January 1967. It did not have power producing systems, but its 22 MW of thermal output (MWth) would translate to perhaps 8 MW of electrical output (MWe). Experiments on core configurations were carried out in the ''Masurca'' facility starting in 1966, and design of a larger power-producing facility was already well underway.
During the 1960s, interest in
nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...
was reaching a crescendo. For France, with little
uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
supply of its own, large-scale nuclear generation would be subject to supply constraints, especially given that nuclear power was experiencing a boom in construction that suggested the available supply would be limited even on a worldwide basis. In France's plans, breeders would serve the twin purposes of producing fuel for its conventional
light water reactor
The light-water reactor (LWR) is a type of thermal-neutron reactor that uses normal water, as opposed to heavy water, as both its coolant and neutron moderator; furthermore a solid form of fissile elements is used as fuel. Thermal-neutron reacto ...
fleet, as well as producing that fuel from the waste fuel from those reactors, thereby reducing the amount of
nuclear waste
Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons r ...
it would have to dispose of. Only a small number of breeders, estimated to be around 20, would be required to fuel the fleet of about 200 light water reactors.
France began construction of the
Phénix
Phénix (French for phoenix) was a small-scale (gross 264/net 233 MWe) prototype fast breeder reactor, located at the Marcoule nuclear site, near Orange, France. It was a pool-type liquid-metal fast breeder reactor cooled with liquid sodium. I ...
demonstration plant in November 1968, only a year after Rapsodie went critical. It was fueled with 931 kg of highly enriched plutonium, around 77% Pu-239. The fuel load is capable of running for about 90 days maximum, but in practice it normally ran for two month periods. Due to its design, refueling required the reactor to be shut down. As a result, it had a low
capacity factor
The net capacity factor is the unitless ratio of actual electrical energy output over a given period of time to the theoretical maximum electrical energy output over that period. The theoretical maximum energy output of a given installation is de ...
(CF), on the order of 65%. As a prototype plant, a high CF was not a design goal, although any practical design would have to improve this.
Phénix demonstrated a breeding ratio of 1.16,
meaning it produced 16% more fuel than it consumed, while also producing 233 MWe in normal operation.
Phénix ran without problems through the 1970s and 1980s, but between 1989 and 1990 experienced 4 power
transients
Transience or transient may refer to:
Music
* ''Transient'' (album), a 2004 album by Gaelle
* ''Transience'' (Steven Wilson album), 2015
* Transience (Wreckless Eric album)
Science and engineering
* Transient state, when a process variable or ...
which triggered automatic SCRAM. A 1991 report did not clearly identified the cause. In 1993 renovation and life extension works started. The reactor was restarted in 2003 with a reduced power of 130 MWe.
Superphénix
![Superphenix](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Superphenix.jpg)
In 1971 and 1972, France, Germany and Italy signed agreements for the joint construction of full-scale breeders, one in France and one in Germany. The
1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis or first oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), led by Saudi Arabia, proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo was targeted at nations that had supp ...
made the issue of fuel security of significant importance. As part of the
Messmer Plan
Since the mid 1980s, the largest source of electricity in France is Nuclear power, with a generation of 379.5 TWh in 2019 and a total electricity production of . In 2018, the nuclear share was 71.67%, the highest percentage in the world.
Sin ...
, France began to plan for a future in which the vast majority of their electrical power would come from nuclear sources.
[Electricité de France Company History]
Electricité de France, accessed 2011-04-11 New priority was given to a follow-on breeder design with the goal of continual operation, high CF, and economic operation even as a stand-alone reactor. This became the Superphénix design.
[
A public enquiry was carried out over an "excessively short" period from 9 October to 8 November 1974. This led to almost immediate opposition. In November, a group of 80 physicists from the Lyon Physics Institute wrote an open letter about the risks of breeder technology, and in February 1975, about 400 scientists signed their name to an expanded letter. On the other side of the argument, Andre Giraud, head of French Nuclear Commission (CEA), stated that they should carry on with the buildout, warning that delays would have "catastrophic consequences on the uranium savings that are expected." In spite of opposition, Superphénix construction pushed ahead in 1976, although this was not made official until the next year, when initial construction was already underway.
]
Construction
Design work began in 1968, the same year as construction began for the smaller-scale LMFBR Phénix
Phénix (French for phoenix) was a small-scale (gross 264/net 233 MWe) prototype fast breeder reactor, located at the Marcoule nuclear site, near Orange, France. It was a pool-type liquid-metal fast breeder reactor cooled with liquid sodium. I ...
, following the abandonment of the graphite-gas designs. The fast breeder design was chosen in the face of fears of disruption to the supply of other fuels; the "plutonium
Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibi ...
economy" seemed viable if oil prices stayed high and uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
supplies dwindled. Construction was approved in 1972 and lasted from 1974 to 1981, but power production did not begin until 1985. Costs rose rapidly during construction. The plant was run by the consortium NERSA, 51% owned by EDF EDF may refer to:
Organisations
* Eclaireurs de France, a French Scouting association
* Education for Development Foundation, a Thai charity
* Électricité de France, a French energy company
** EDF Energy, their British subsidiary
** EDF Luminus, ...
, 33% by ENEL
Enel S.p.A. is an Italian Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturer and distributor of electricity and gas. Enel, which originally stood for Ente nazionale per l'energia elettrica (National Electricity Board), was first established ...
and 16% by SBK (Schnell Brüter Kernkraftwerksgesellschaft).
Protest
The construction evoked much public protest. For example, a march by 60,000 protestors, which included the Anarchist group ''Fédération Anarchiste'', resulted in the protestors' use of molotov cocktail
A Molotov cocktail (among several other names – ''see other names'') is a hand thrown incendiary weapon constructed from a frangible container filled with flammable substances equipped with a fuse (typically a glass bottle filled with flamma ...
s. This July 1977 protest was finally broken up by the CRS with the death of Vital Michalon and over a hundred serious injuries, with the police using truncheons and firing tear gas
Tear gas, also known as a lachrymator agent or lachrymator (), sometimes colloquially known as "mace" after the early commercial aerosol, is a chemical weapon that stimulates the nerves of the lacrimal gland in the eye to produce tears. In ad ...
grenades to disperse the protestors.
Rocket attack
Against a background of ongoing protest and low-level sabotage, on the night of January 18, 1982 an RPG-7
The RPG-7 (russian: link=no, РПГ-7, Ручной Противотанковый Гранатомёт, Ruchnoy Protivotankoviy Granatomyot) is a portable, reusable, unguided, shoulder-launched, anti-tank, rocket-propelled grenade launcher. ...
rocket-propelled grenade
A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) is a shoulder-fired missile weapon that launches rockets equipped with an explosive warhead. Most RPGs can be carried by an individual soldier, and are frequently used as anti-tank weapons. These warheads are a ...
attack was launched against the unfinished plant. Five rockets were fired across the Rhône
The Rhône ( , ; wae, Rotten ; frp, Rôno ; oc, Ròse ) is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and southeastern France before discharging into the Mediterranean Sea. At Ar ...
at the incomplete containment building
A containment building is a reinforced steel, concrete or lead structure enclosing a nuclear reactor. It is designed, in any emergency, to contain the escape of radioactive steam or gas to a maximum pressure in the range of . The containment i ...
. Two rockets hit and caused minor damage to the reinforced concrete outer shell, missing the reactor's empty core
Core or cores may refer to:
Science and technology
* Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages
* Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding
* Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber
* Core, the centra ...
. Initially there were no claims of responsibility.
On May 8, 2003, Chaïm Nissim
Chaïm Nissim (21 November 1949 in Jerusalem[Chaim Nissim]
, biography on Chaim Nissim's blog – 11 April 2017 ...
, who in 1985 was elected to the Geneva cantonal legislature for the Swiss Green Party, admitted carrying out the attack. He claimed that the weapons were obtained from Carlos the Jackal
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (; born 12 October 1949), also known as Carlos the Jackal ( es, link=no, Carlos el Chacal) or simply Carlos, is a Venezuelan convicted of terrorist crimes, and currently serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murder ...
via the Belgian terrorist
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
organisation Cellules Communistes Combattantes
Cellules Communistes Combattantes (CCC; Communist Combatant Cells, also known as Fighting Communist Cells) was a Communist Belgian urban guerrilla organization.
The cells were active for less than two years in the mid-1980s; primarily engaged i ...
(Communist Combatant Cells).
Operation
Designed electrical power output was 1.20 GW, though year to year its availability was from zero to 33%. As time passed, problems developed from another source: the liquid sodium cooling system suffered from corrosion and leaks. These problems were eventually fixed and in December 1996 the power reached 90% of the nominal power.
In December 1990 structural damage occurred to the turbine hall, following heavy snow
Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes.
It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout ...
fall. Power production did not resume until the ''Direction de la sûreté des installations nucléaires'' approved it in 1992.Operating Experience History - SUPER*-PHENIX
The plant was connected to EDF grid on 14 January 1986 and produced 4,300 GWh of electricity, worth about a billion 1995 Franc, during 10 months of operation, up until 1994. In 1996 it produced 3,400 GWh, worth about 850 million Francs, during 8 months of operation.
In September 1998, the plant was closed. Two incidents earlier in the year had culminated in a third, which triggered an automatic shutdown.
During 11 years, the plant had 53 months of normal operations (mostly at low power), 25 months of outages due to fixing technical problems of the prototype, and 66 months spent on halt due to political and administrative issues.
Closure
Superphénix had been a focus point of many groups opposed to nuclear power, including the green party
Les Verts, since its planning and construction. A national network called
Sortir du nucléaire was formed, bringing together hundreds of organisations: local committees, ecological associations, citizen movements and parties.
Power production was halted in December 1996 for maintenance. However, following a court case led by opponents of the reactor, on February 28, 1997 the
Conseil d'État (Supreme State Administrative Court) ruled that a 1994 decree, authorizing the restart of Superphénix, was invalid. In June 1997, one of the first actions of
Lionel Jospin
Lionel Robert Jospin (; born 12 July 1937) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.
Jospin was First Secretary of the Socialist Party from 1995 to 1997 and the party's candidate for President of France in ...
on becoming
prime minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
was to announce the closure of the plant because of its excessive costs.
A 1996 report by the French Accounting Office (Cour des Comptes) acknowledge low availability factors (below 10%) but also noticed improvements in 1996 and evaluated that availability above 46% would had made economically convenient to keep the plant open at last up to 2001. The total expenditure on the reactor was estimated at 60 billion
franc
The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' (Style of the French sovereign, King of the Franks) used on early France, ...
s (9.1 billion
euro
The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...
).
A 1998 "Inquiry commission on Superphenix and fast neutrons reactor sector"
reported that "decision to close Superphénix was included in Jospin's program ... in the agreement between Socialist Party and Green Party". Also the same report says "despite many difficulties, the technical results are meaningful". In the explanation of vote at the end of the report, commission members says "give up on Superphenix has been a big error" and "Superphenix has to die because is a symbol".
The last of the 650 fuel rods was removed from the reactor on March 18, 2003. They are now stored in
spent fuel pool
Spent fuel pools (SFP) are storage pools (or "ponds" in the United Kingdom) for spent fuel from nuclear reactors. They are typically 40 or more feet (12 m) deep, with the bottom 14 feet (4.3 m) equipped with storage racks designed to hold f ...
s.
A
public inquiry
A tribunal of inquiry is an official review of events or actions ordered by a government body. In many common law countries, such as the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Ireland, Australia and Canada, such a public inquiry differs from a royal ...
was launched in April 2004 to consider plans to set up a plant to incorporate the 5,500 tonnes of sodium coolant in 70,000 tonnes of
concrete
Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wi ...
. The plan is similar to that used following the closure of the
Dounreay Fast Reactor
Dounreay (; gd, Dùnrath) is a small settlement and the site of two large nuclear establishments on the north coast of Caithness in the Highland area of Scotland. It is on the A836 road west of Thurso.
The nuclear establishments were creat ...
in the United Kingdom.
Superphénix was the last fast breeder reactor operating in Europe for electricity production.
See also
*
List of nuclear reactors
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby union ...
*
Soviet influence on the peace movement
During the Cold War (1947–1991), when the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in an arms race, the Soviet Union promoted its foreign policy through the World Peace Council and other front organizations. Some writers have claimed that ...
*
Nuclear power in France
Since the mid 1980s, the largest source of electricity in France is Nuclear power, with a generation of 379.5 TWh in 2019 and a total electricity production of . In 2018, the nuclear share was 71.67%, the highest percentage in the world.
Since ...
References
External links
Superphénix NewsCreys-Malville Super Phénix(drawing)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Superphenix
Former nuclear power stations in France
Nuclear technology in France
Liquid metal fast reactors
Eco-terrorism
Électricité de France