PLENTIFUL ENERGY

Argonne was critical of all of this. Jack Holl [9] quotes the laboratory director,
by then Albert Crewe, at the American Power Conference in April of 1965. Crewe
criticized in detail the Rickover methods now being applied to AEC programs. In
brief, his point was that whereas health and safety were paramount in the submarine
or in space, and therefore high levels of QA through exhaustive procedures and
proof testing were justified, and similarly they were justified where health and
safety issues had to do with the eventual reactor developed by the program,
nevertheless such high levels of QA could not be justified in development itself.
They would slow development, add to cost, and cause scarce resources to be
misdirected. ―If Rickover instead of Fermi had been in charge of CP-1,‖ Crewe
said, he ―doubted whether the United States would have achieved the first nuclear
reaction.‖ He went on to say that existing nuclear technology rested on the
experimental approach: project construction that began early, and problems solved
as the project progressed. A ―cult of perfection,‖ obsessed with avoiding occasional
or even imaginary embarrassments, would so retard the breeder reactor
development that the U.S. eventually would end up buying breeder technology from
Europe. Today, it is hard to argue against these prescient words. The U.S. did not
buy breeders, but its development certainly was so slowed that time and political
trends had caught up with the breeder before it could show what it could do.
Shaw cancelled FARET, dismissing it as ―too small‖ and Argonne‘s program as
―too unambitious.‖ FARET was designed to test fast reactor components, its design
was complete, its cost, $25 million, was reasonable, and it was ready for
construction. Instead, a much larger and very much more expensive test reactor, the
Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) would be built at Hanford to test fuels. Thus
Argonne was stripped of its principal new breeder development project. A Liquid
Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) ―program office‖ was set up at Argonne that
reported directly to Shaw‘s staff in Washington, effectively weakening Argonne‘s
ability to plan and manage its breeder development. Diplomacy was dispensed with.
Shaw simply informed the Laboratory that now Argonne would ―serve as an
extension‖ of Shaw‘s office. No independent initiatives would be allowed. Using
Rickover practice, he had members of his own staff set up ―watchdog‖ offices at
Argonne, in Illinois, and in Idaho. When challenged by one of the Lab‘s University
of Chicago review committees on the importance of independence of research,
Shaw would have none of it; he simply charged that the Laboratory had ―not been
responsive‖ to his direction, and demanded further changes.
Turning on EBR-II, he stated he had no interest in supporting it as a research
reactor. Because EBR-II had been designed as a prototype, Argonne had planned on
proceeding with necessary experimentation to get information to be used later on
the reactor itself to establish the characteristics of its type, and on its fuel cycle, fuel
fabrication, processing, and recycling. Shakedown problems arising from minor
equipment failures, procedures, fuel leaks, and concerns about small anomalies in
reactivity were being worked on, and were straightened out in time. Not in any
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