PLENTIFUL ENERGY

Argonne had been a part of the development. It was certainly not a major player
in CRBR design and construction itself, but it had fairly important development
programs supporting it. The principal development laboratory for the breeder from
the beginnings of nuclear power development, Argonne had taught scientists much
of new possibilities in breeder development. Argonne still had the capability to do
development, with a highly trained and motivated staff and large facilities for doing
the necessary experiments. And we were certain of the importance to the nation and
to the world of success in development of this huge, indeed unparalleled, source of
electrical energy. On this basis, then, we began the development of a more perfect
from of the breeder reactor, a more perfect form of nuclear power.
The problems of CRBR itself were to the last degree political. But the limitations
of the CRBR line of development of the breeder had contributed to its vulnerability
too. It needed large and expensive reprocessing facilities to allow its fuel to be
recycled. Such facilities were identical to those used to purify plutonium for nuclear
weapons—vulnerable to misuse where they did not already exist. Where they did,
with one or two exceptions, they had been used in weapons fabrication. Safety was
also a concern: calculations indicated that the most serious kinds of accidents
possible, unlikely though they were, could lead to explosive energy releases that
were containable but with difficulty. Further, CRBR waste would have lifetimes of
hundreds of thousands of years, no different than spent fuel left untouched. And the
breeding characteristics of the technology, although adequate, were never more than
that, and were not close to the best that fast reactor nuclear characteristics would
allow.
Although the primary purpose of the IFR development program was to provide
an alternative technology giving unlimited electrical power, we intended to attack
all the problems found in CRBR technology and more. We would do it by proper
choices in the technology itself. We would eliminate—and where we could not
eliminate, at least ameliorate—the concerns that seemed legitimate to us about the
present forms of nuclear power. Where legitimate, we wanted to see what could be
done about them.
Just a handful of choices—the reactor configuration, the materials to be used,
and the technology for processing the fuel—lock in place the characteristics a
reactor system will have. In appearance the IFR will be much like any other nuclear
power plant: several acres of buildings housing service facilities of various kinds,
an electrical switchyard array, cooling towers, a reactor building enclosed in stout
containment, and particular to the IFR, a small fuel processing facility. But it will
be a much different system than reactors of today. It will be a ―breeder:‖ it will
―breed‖—create via nuclear transmutation of uranium—more new plutonium fuel
than it consumes. It will recycle its fuel over and over until at last it will have used
its fuel a hundred times more efficiently than reactors of the present day. And it will
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