Ehud Greenspan
M.Sc. Nuclear Science and Engineering, Technion, Israel, 1963
Ph.D. Nuclear Science and Engineering, Cornell University, 1966
Nuclear Reactor Theory, Design and Analysis
Conception, design and analysis of advanced (primarily, Generation-IV) nuclear reactors and advanced nuclear fuel cycles. Specific objectives are: Improving the sustainability of nuclear energy by increasing the utilization of the uranium and thorium fuel resources; minimizing the amount and radiotoxicity of the nuclear waste; improving proliferation resistance of nuclear energy along with improving the safety and economics of nuclear reactors.
Current Research Focus (performed in collaboration with Prof. M. Fratoni):
Breed-and-Burn (B&B) Liquid Metal Cooled Fast Reactors
A B&B reactor is a breeder reactor that converts into fissile fuel a significant fraction of the fertile feed fuel and then fissions a significant fraction of the bred fissile fuel without fuel reprocessing. B&B reactors can offer uranium utilization that is between 50 to 120 times that of LWRs. The amount of electricity that could be generated in B&B fast reactors using the presently available depleted uranium stockpiles (nuclear “waste”) is the equivalent of between 8 to 20 centuries of the total present US demand of electricity. The latest NEUP funded project completed searched promising designs of sodium cooled fast reactor (SFR) cores made of a critical seed and a subcritical B&B blanket. Specifically, we identified most promising ways to make beneficial use of the large fraction (up to 30%) of the fission neutrons that leak out from a seed designed to effectively transmute trans-uranium elements (TRU) from LWR used nuclear fuel to drive a B&B thorium fueled blanket to generate as large a fraction of the core power as possible without exceeding the presently acceptable radiation damage level of the fuel cladding material – 200 displacements-per-atom (DPA). Results obtained are highly promising – the reactivity increase with burnup of the B&B blanket greatly improves the performance of the TRU transmuting seed while the excess seed neutrons enable to generate close to 50% of the core power from the blanket while fissioning 7% of the thorium without the need for reprocessing the thorium fuel.
Enhanced Performance Fast Reactors with Engineered Passive Safety System
This project purpose is to make use of the innovative Autonomous Reactivity Control (ARC) system, invented in our group in a previous NEUP project, for a couple of performance improvements in sodium cooled fast reactors (SER): (1) Improving the passive safety of medium (1000MWth) and in particular large (3000MWth) SFR cores without impairing their other performance characteristics. (2) Increasing the power from a reactor module of a given diameter while preserving the reference core passive safety level and conversion ratio. This project is to be terminated at the end of 2018.
Past Research:
Research projects completed within the past fifteen years include: Resource-renewable BWR (RBWR) that can be either fuel-self-sustaining or transmuter of TRU from LWR with unlimited recycling; reducing the radiation damage required for designing a sustainable B&B SFR by using 3-dimensional rather than 2-dimensional fuel shuffling; design of nuclear battery type transportable reactors for proliferation-resistant, safe and secure energy for developing countries and remote sites; study of improvement possibilities in the performance of light water reactors using hydride fuel; development of efficient approaches for transmutation of nuclear waste in molten salt and other reactors; neutronic design of fluoride salt cooled pebble-bed high temperature reactors (Prof. Peterson project); design of highly compact fission-multiplied accelerator neutron source for medical and industrial applications; and nuclear design optimization methods development and their application.
S.G. Hong, E. Greenspan and Y.I. Kim, “The Encapsulated Nuclear Heat Source (ENHS) Reactor Core Design,” Nuclear Technology, 149, 22 – 48, January 2005
- Fratoni and E. Greenspan, “Transmutation Capability of Molten Salt Reactors Fed with TRU from LWR,” Proc. Third Workshop on Advanced Reactors With Innovative Fuels - ARWIF-2005, Oak Ridge, TN, February 16-18, 2005
- Greenspan, P. Hejzlar, H. Sekimoto, G. Toshinsky and D. Wade, "New Fuel Cycle and Fuel Management Options in Heavy Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors," Nuclear Technology, 151, 177-191, August 2005
- Greenspan, M. Fratoni, F. Ganda, F. Ginex, D. Olander, N. Todreas, P. Diller, P. Ferroni, J. Malen, A. Romano, C. Shuffler, J. Trant, B. Petrovic and H. Garkisch, “Hydride Fuel for LWRs—Project Overview,” Nuclear Engineering and Design, 239, 1374-1405, 2009
- Ganda and E. Greenspan, “Analysis of Reactivity Coefficients of Hydride Fuelled PWR Cores,” Nuclear Science and Engineering, 164, 1-32, January 2010
- Ganda, J. Vujic, E. Greenspan and K.N. Leung, “Accelerator-Driven Sub-Critical Multiplier for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy,” Nuclear Technology, 172, 302-324, December 2010
- Fratoni and E. Greenspan, “Search for Equilibrium Core Composition Methodologies for Pebble Bed Reactors,” Nuclear Science and Engineering, 166, 1-16, September 2010
- Fratoni and E. Greenspan, “Neutronic Feasibility Assessment of Liquid Salt Cooled Pebble-Bed Reactors,” Nuclear Science and Engineering, 168, 1–22, May 2011
- Ganda, J. Vujic and E. Greenspan, “Thorium Self Sustaining BWR Cores,” Proceedings of ICAPP’11, Nice, France, May 2-5, 2011
- Greenspan and F. Heidet, “Energy Sustainability and Economic Stability with Breed and Burn Reactors,” Progress in Nuclear Energy, 53, 794-799, 2011
- Heidet and E. Greenspan, “Neutron Balance Analysis for Sustainability of Breed and Burn Reactors,” Nuclear Science and Engineering, 171, 13-31, May 2012
- Qvist and E. Greenspan, “Automated Fast Reactor Core Design using the ADOPT Code,” ICAPP-2013, Jeju Island, Korea, April 14-18, 2013
P.M. Gorman, G. Zhang, J.E. Seifried, C.R. Varela, J.L. Vujic and E. Greenspan, “The Fuel-Self-Sustaining RBWR-Thorium Core Concept and Parametric Study Results,” International Congress on the Advances in Nuclear Power Plants - ICAPP 2014, , Charlotte, North Carolina, April 6-9, 2014.
Staffan Qvist, Jason Hou and Ehud Greenspan, “Design and Performance of 2D and 3D -Shuffled Breed-and-Burn Cores,” Annals of Nuclear Energy, 85 (2015), pp. 93–114
- A. Qvist, C. Hellesen, R. Thiele, A. E. Dubberley, M. Gradecka, and E. Greenspan, “Autonomous Reactivity Control (ARC) — Principles, Geometry and Design Process”, Nuclear Engineering and Design, 307, 2016. Pages 249–274
Guanheng Zhang, Massimilano Fratoni, Ehud Greenspan, “Advanced Burner Reactors with Breed-and-Burn Thorium Blankets for Improved Economics and Resource Utilization,” Nuclear Technology, 199 issue 2, 2017. Pages 187-218.
Guanheng Zhang, Massimiliano Fratoni, Ehud Greenspan, “Fuel Cycle Analysis of Advanced Burner Reactor With Breed-and-Burn Thorium Blanket,” Annals of Nuclear, Energy, 112, February 2018, Pages 383-394.
