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The Integral Fast Reactor – no more than a a Nuclear Pipe Dream

Nuclear power: no solution to climate change, Green Left , quoting Mark Diesendorf, 17 April 2010“……….The integral fast reactor [which promises to use existing stockpiles of nuclear waste to make carbon-free energy,] doesn’t exist — it is the archetypal ink-moderated paper reactor. It’s true that a tiny physical version of this concept, called Experimental Breeder Reactor-2, once operated in the US. But experimental energy technologies are just that — experiments, designed to test a concept.

They have to be redesigned before they can be scaled-up to a medium-sized demonstration stage. Then, provided several successful demonstrations can be achieved over a period of many years, they usually need further design modifications before they could possibly move to commercial scale with full mass-production.
Realistically, this whole process would take at least 20 years in the US — much longer in Australia if our government was so foolish as to become involved.

Even if the integral fast reactor could somehow be brought to commercial reality in 2030, its proponents are naive to claim that it cannot be used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. A government that controls such a reactor could still build a conventional reprocessing plant to separate the plutonium from the other high-level nuclear waste. Safeguards are grossly inadequate….
Green Left – Nuclear power: no solution to climate change

April 19, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, technology | antinuclear, fast breeder, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear technology, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons, plutonium, reactors, recycling, reprocessing, uranium