A nearly forgotten breakthrough in nuclear power technology has the capacity to virtually replace the use of fossil fuels within 10 years according to researchers. However, the technology was shelved during the Clinton administration at the height of the anti-nuclear movement in the U.S., and kept there by the Bush administration.
Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) technology has been tested and proven viable at the Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho over a thirty year span beginning in the mid-1960's. These "fourth-generation" reactors use existing stocks of nuclear waste as fuel and produce clean energy with virtually no radioactive byproducts. The common objections to use of nuclear power are virtually eliminated.
Based on current research, it is conceivable to meet virtually 100% of our electrical generation needs using the integral fast reactor technology within a matter of years if we were to undertake an aggressive switch to this technology. Using currently available nuclear waste material as fuel would allow for several hundred years of operation at current levels of worldwide energy usage without any need for extraction or mining of additional nuclear fuel. Additionally, the process consumes nearly all of the radioactive material, leaving low volumes of waste material that require containment periods measured in decades rather than millennia.
Further, the reactor design is essentially disaster-proof. Should something go wrong during the process, the reactor naturally shuts down. This has already been successfully tested at the Argonne facility. Concerns over proliferation of nuclear material are reduced as well, since the material used in the IFR is much less suited to weapons development than that of the current generation of nuclear plants.
The primary obstacle seems to be commercialization of the process required to reprocess the existing stockpiles of nuclear waste into nuclear fuel for the IFR. While this technology, called pyroprocessing, has been developed and tested, the cost of handling a large scale effort would require a significant upfront investment.
There is a growing consensus that green-energy technology alone cannot meet our energy needs. Those in the fossil fuel industries have been pushing for increased use of natural gas and coal, which continue to add CO2 and other greenhouse gasses to the already elevated levels in the atmosphere. It seems that a technology that has been neglected for over a decade may hold the key to solving both the worldwide energy crisis and be a major factor in reducing climate change.
Albert Roy publishes an occasional series on politics, the economy and current affairs.
