An Energy-Rich Future for Every Individual, Even When the Population is 9½ Billion!

Tom Blees is presenting the IFR case to this Climate CoLab Conference: 
Crowds and Climate - MIT Climate CoLab Conference

Here's his Video Presentation: Integral Fast Reactors - Electric Power Sector

Tom is President of The Science Council for Global Initiatives (SGCI): 
Science Council for Global Initiatives 

and Author of Prescription for the Planet: 
429 Page - Free Download

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62 years ago, it all began - The first Atomic Electricity generated at the Argonne National Laboratory.

What would now be the state of atmospheric and oceanic chemistries had this technology taken its rightful place in providing the world's electricity and other energy forms?

Weak-kneed politicians and ranting members of the anti-nuke lobby have a lot of explaining to do to today's young people, when current IFR technology, in the form of the PRISM reactor, starts to roll!

EBR-II demonstrated the inherent safety of this Argonne concept, with a control room full of atomic energy scientists and technologists. 

They put their money where their mouths were - they bet on their scientific understanding - and the reactor shut down according to the laws of physics - without human intervention - under conditions of the total loss of power and safety systems (as Fukushima)!

EBR-II and hence IFR technology is orders of magnitude safer than the technology of the LWRs (Light Water Reactors) planned for the UK's 'New Nuclear'.

"...The IFR project developed the technology for a complete system; the reactor, the entire fuel cycle, and the waste management technologies were all included in the development program. The reactor concept had important features and characteristics that were completely new and fuel cycle and waste management technologies that were entirely new developments..."

Argonne National Laboratory and the IFR

Have you heard the one about the Entrepreneur, the Climate Scientist and the Nuclear Engineer?

Some of what the Letter had to say:

Energy Security: "...Unlike today's nuclear reactor, the IFR can generate unlimited amounts of inexpensive clean power for hundreds of thousands of years..."

Proliferation Resistant: "...It provides an excellent solution for what to do with our nuclear waste because it can use our existing nuclear waste for fuel and it is significantly more proliferation-resistant than other methods of dealing with nuclear waste..."

Much Much Safer: "...The IFR is also inherently safe. In an emergency, unlike today's reactors, it shuts down without human intervention and without requiring electric power …"

Affordable: "... Hundreds of nuclear scientists believe this technology has the ability to generate carbon-free power at a cost per kW less than coal..."

Meet the Man Who Could End Global Warming. Meet the Technology that can do it!

"....The man who is going to save the world is an ordinary-looking man. He's average in height, with an average face. He has blue eyes and sandy hair. He wears eyeglasses. He's forty-eight years old....a classic all-American Homo suburbanus, but in fact he is a former officer of the United States Navy with a Ph.D. in a fiendishly complicated type of engineering. 

He is low-key and unassuming, with a quiet midwestern sense of humor....The man who is going to save the world is also a damn good father, a tendency that is at the heart of this world-saving business...."

Read more: Nuclear Waste Disposal - Eric Loewen's Disposal of Nuclear Waste - Esquire 

Eric Loewen: Best and Brightest 2009 Honoree on Nuclear Waste.

The next thing you should know is that Loewen's miracle technology is not some airy concept. It cost billions of dollars to develop. Some of the biggest companies in America spent ten years refining it under the close supervision of the U. S. government — before the program was shuttered and abandoned in a hasty political decision that makes Who Killed the Electric Car? look like a promotional film for General Motors.

"...."So what is nuclear waste? It's still uranium! Right? It's 95 percent uranium. It's still usable. But we've got these evil things called transuranics, which is 1 percent of the total and 99 percent of the headache..."

"...."...And that is my fuel. The problem becomes the solution."...."

"....Transuranics are highly radioactive elements like plutonium, typically regarded not as sources of energy but for their capacity to vaporize cities.

"But if I build a different kind of reactor that uses liquid sodium instead of water to slow things down, I can have a higher neutron speed and that stuff becomes a fuel. You just mix it in the crucible, put in the transuranics, put in some uranium, put in some zirconium, and you cast it into thin rods. That technology's been developed, it's easy to do, and you do it in a room about this size [a conference room]...."

...."So [GE] sat down and said, You know what, we're pretty good at making washing machines and jet engines in a factory and replicating them. Why don't we make a sodium-cooled reactor that's factory-built, modular, with passive safety and replicate that, instead of trying to scale up?"

Passive safety meant that it would shut itself off automatically instead of melting down. 

Replicability meant the reactor vessel couldn't be more than twenty feet in diameter, because that's the biggest you can ship down a rail line. So they would gang reactor modules together to power a single turbine. They named it the Power Reactor, Innovative Small Module, or PRISM.....

....much of the environmental movement continues to hate nuclear power as an article of faith, and armchair scientists point to the difficulties of the fast nuclear plants in Russia and Japan, and the infinite armies of inertia simply avert their eyes....

The point is, PRISM isn't half as complicated.... "That's how I answer the naysayers who say we can't build this till 2040," he says...."

Let's cut to the Nitty-Gritty

A White Paper, joint authored by Tom Blees and Barry Brook, presented at WORLD ENERGY FORUM 2012

Cutting to the Nitty-Gritty means looking at 'The Way Forward' 

6. The Way Forward

There is a pressing need to: 

(a) displace our heavy dependence on fossil fuels with sustainable, low-carbon alternative energy sources over the coming decades to mitigate the environmental damage of energy production and underpin global energy security and 

(b) demonstrate a credible and acceptable way to safely deal with used nuclear fuel in order to clear a socially acceptable pathway for nuclear fission to be a major low-carbon energy source for this century. 

"....we are faced with the necessity of a nearly complete transformation of the world’s energy systems. Objective analyses of the inherent constraints on wind, solar, and other less-mature renewable energy technologies inevitably show that they will fall short of meeting future low-emissions demands. A ‘go slow, do little’ approach to energy policy is not defensible given the urgency of the problems society must address, and the time required for an orderly transition of energy systems at a global scale...."

What is needed now is a two-pronged approach, for completion by 2020 or earlier, that involves: 

(i) demonstration of the pyroprocessing of LWR spent oxide fuel, and 

(ii) construction of a PRISM fast reactor as a prototype demonstration plant, to establish the basis for licensing and the cost and schedule for subsequent fully commercial IFR plants. 

Once demonstrated, this commercial IFR will be expected to show very significant advances in nuclear safety, reliability, nuclear fuel sustainability, management of long-term waste, proliferation resistance, and economics. 

The time has come to capitalize on this exceptional energy technology, with the benefits of this development extending throughout the global energy economy in the 21^st century.

The Case for Near-term Commercial Demonstration of the Integral Fast Reactor/

" .... the forces of nature shut the reactor down .... "

Dick Lindsey: " .... being associated with some of the .... early pioneers in the nuclear business .... the attitude the designers brought with them, it was a can-do attitude and it stayed that way for all the years I worked here ...."

Dr Sackett: ".... the significance of EBR-II to the nuclear science community, was proof that reactors were safe .... that worst accident is complete loss of power to everything .... and failure of all the safety systems .... we did that at EBR-II and the reactor protected itself. It shut itself down safely .... "

Darrell Pfannenstiel: " .... we got to watch the forces of nature shut the reactor down .... we'd found a reactor that could protect itself .... "

Dr Sackett: " .... the day of the final test was one of the most exciting days of my time. To see all these colleagues, respected scientists from around the world, come and watch this event in a live reactor .... "

Darrell Pfannesteil: " .... if I [n]ever see another Pressurised Water Reactor again, it would not bother me. This is the technology to go with .... "

Dr Sackett: " .... there was a vision about EBR-II that had to do with secure energy, safe energy, clean energy .... some of the things that drove the vision of the people who started this, [it] is really compelling .... "

Dr Sackett: " .... The Integral Fast Reactor was the combination and integration of all the things we had learned from the EBR-II and the fuel cycle facility experience. It integrated all of the best of the technology that we had developed and discovered, not only here but worldwide .... "

Dick Lindsey: " .... this facility is one that virtually gives the Earth and its inhabitants an unlimited power supply .... "

Dr Sackett, talking about 4 distinct periods of testing in EBR-II's history. Period 1:
Dr Sackett: " .... One was its initial operation as a complete power plant, producing electricity, recycling fuel .... "

Period 4 included burning up transuranic elements in recycled fuel rods:
Dick Lindsey: " .... because we were burning the transuranics, .... that then would make our waste repository change[s] from a mega-thousand year problem to a thousand year, maybe at the most, and we have buildings older than that .... "

Dr Sackett: " .... used in a system like this, we already have enough uranium mined and set aside to supply the energy needs of the United States for several centuries .... "

Dr Sackett: " .... the debate in the senate initially started out as a debate over budgets and the Japanese stepped up and said 'We're willing to add another $60 million to the budgets at EBR-II. So they took away the budget argument. And then it became an argument about the political nature. If the United States terminates its work in nuclear power, the rest of the world might follow .... "

Dr Sackett: " .... when I had to go to the operating crews and tell themthat we had the order to shut EBR-II down, the reaction was not 'What is going to happen to me?' the reaction of all of the crews was 'Doesn't the Country realise what they're losing here?' .... "

Dr Sackett in tears - the integrity of this man is beyond reproach and his despair at the waste of this opportunity for the USA and the planet is visceral.

Dr Sackett: " .... I remember directing shutdown and the SCRAM and then just silence .... "

The most plausible conspiracy theory suggests it was Bill Clinton's payback to the environmentalist movement for its support.

Thanks again anti-nukes everywhere. It's only been the best part of a 20 year delay, but breeder reactors will prevail and there's still a chance that your children and grandchildren will not hate you quite so much.

Doesn't the Country realise what they're losing her?

Do yourself a favour and try to think if you can make a contribution to supporting a breeder reactor programme:  Making a Contribution: The Story of EBR-II