PLENTIFUL ENERGY

Supporting the reactor design and construction there must be a closely connected
Laboratory devoted to this technology. Who would suggest that our technology of
today, or more truly that of fifteen years ago, is the best that can be done?
Development must be continued. Rote procedures should be de-emphasized; few
for development work, more, but applied with discrimination, for operations.
Experimental reactor operation by trained and skilled operators should have
procedures recognized as appropriate by the operators themselves.
IFR technology depends on economic recycle. The electrochemical process
development is crucial. The R&D work most needed is resumption of an all-out
development effort to perfect the electrorefining processes. This has two parts.
First is picking up the R&D on plutonium cathode development and second is a
prototype processing facility for treatment of oxide LWR spent fuel. The first
should be easy, requiring only the will and the charter to do it. It can be done. This
is an area where the work can just be picked up as the old Argonne resources for
this are still largely in place. The hot cells are there at INL. The chemical
engineering crew is there, still fairly young and very knowledgeable, and they need
the charter to do this work.
The second is to move ahead with the 100 ton pyroprocessing plant focused on
processing spent fuel from the present reactors as described in the last chapter.
Some such facility is on the critical path as spent fuel from present plants is a driver
for, or a barrier against, all nuclear construction, LWR or IFR.
A full-scale IFR power plant scaled down to prototype in a fairly complete
design is required. Design work led by Chang was done at Argonne in the eighties
by people who had worked on the design of EBR-II, and also by MacDonald and
associates at Atomics International, a group very experienced in sodium work. But
the best choice needs care and - like it or not - we have the time.
Any significant next steps require real changes in governmental attitudes toward
a realistic energy future. Righting the mistakes in practice and in legalities that is
our legacy today may seem impossible but effort to get this done is crucial, and in
time may not be as difficult as it seems today.
Finally, in concluding our work two quotes from the final pages of Richard
Rhodes‘ short book, ―Nuclear Renewal: Common Sense About Energy‖ (1993)
seem apt. In the first he quotes David Lilienthal, Chairman both of the TVA, 1941-
46, and of the Atomic Energy Commission, 1947-50, from Lilienthal‘s book,
―Atomic Energy: A New Start‖ (1980):
―We rely heavily on nuclear power to keep our economy going….For the near- and
long-term future, the energy we now have and can count on, from all sources, is not
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