As President, I will authorize the construction of a full scale Integral Fast Reactor nuclear power plant.
“the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) pyroprocessing system … uses pools of molten cadmium and electrorefiners to reprocess metallic fuel directly on-site at the reactor[8]. Such systems not only commingle all the minor actinides with both uranium and plutonium, they are compact and self-contained, so that no plutonium-containing material ever needs to be transported away from the site of the breeder reactor. Breeder reactors incorporating such technology would most likely be designed with breeding ratios very close to 1.00, so that after an initial loading of enriched uranium and/or plutonium fuel, the reactor would then be refueled only with small deliveries of natural uranium metal. A quantity of natural uranium metal equivalent to a block about the size of a milk crate delivered once per month would be all the fuel such a 1 gigawatt reactor would need[9]. Such self-contained breeders are currently envisioned as the final self-contained and self-supporting ultimate goal of nuclear reactor designers.” (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor )
The National Center for Public Policy Analysis think tank has issued the following report (written by a PhD Nuclear Physicist), which says that Integral Fast Reactors are safe, clean and 99% efficient in extracting energy from Uranium. The US was very close to building one of these IFR’s until John Kerry killed the project in 1994 to help President Clinton balance the Federal Budget (while retaining a lot of pork barrel spending). It is now understood that the legislators who canceled the Integral Fast Reactor in 1994 did not properly understand the technical issues which are involved.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
Filed under: Charles Skelley
