The Integral Fast Reactor
I am a big fan of the Liquid Fluorine / Thorium reactor design but had totally forgotten about one of its predecessors, the Integral Fast Reactor.
Both have the advantage of running "hot" enough that the dangerous and long-lived actinide waste is burned up so your worst-case scenario for spent fuel storage is about 200 years. There is some high-level waste but it is 1/20th the volume of an equivalent water reactor, emits Protons instead of Gamma Rays (can be 100% shielded with one half of an inch of cement or steel plate -- Gamma takes yards of lead) and it takes 400 years to die down. The kicker is that the current water reactors only burn about 5% of the usable Uranium in a fuel rod before it becomes 'contaminated' with the actinides and is unusable and has to be replaced. This technology is literally sixty years old.
These fuel rods can have another 90% of remaining capacity burned off in an IFR -- this means that we have several hundred years of operation before we need to mine any more Uranium. It is that efficient.
Some more information can be found here:
The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project
We almost had these -- research began in 1984 and a test unit was being built.
Sadly, the project was killed by Bill Clinton's Sec. Energy Hazel O'Leary (a Lawyer) and Sen. John F. Kerry.
My big hope is that some day, the "greens" will wake up and see the damage they are doing to this planet with their petulant "my way or the highway" mewling. A bunch of self-centered onanistic asshats who do not have the mental power to find their way out of a paper bag.
Posted by DaveH at December 25, 2010 5:51 PM