Who Killed the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)?

[PamW]

23. Wrong as usual....

Fast spectrum research died after TMI and LWRs have ruled the day.
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In the USA, the principal Laboratory for fast reactor research is Argonne National Lab.

The fast reactor program at Argonne National Laboratory didn't die off after TMI, as erroneously claimed above. The fast reactor program at Argonne continued all during the '80s in the Reagan, and Bush I Administrations, as well as the first year or two of the Clinton Administration.

It was during this time that Argonne developed the breakthrough technology associated with the Integral Fast Reactor or IFR. Argonne developed a fast reactor that is inherently safe, as demonstrated by actual testing with the prototype, as mentioned in the following interview by PBS's Frontline with then Associate Director of Argonne, nuclear physicist Dr. Charles Till:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: And you in fact ran an experiment that was comparable to what happened at Chernobyl?

A: Yes, yes. Let me go on a little bit about that, because it is a rather dramatic characteristic. The Chernobyl accident happened in April 26 of 1986. Earlier that month, the first week in April, with our test reactor in Idaho, in fact the same reactor control room where we're now sitting, we performed a demonstration of that characteristic, where if you cut off the coolant from the reactor, what would happen? And there are two ways to cut off the coolant. One is that simply the pumps that are pumping the reactor stop. The reactor just shut itself down. And in the afternoon, we brought the reactor back up to full power again and did an accident situation where the reactor's unable to get rid of the heat it produces, because the heat normally is taken away by the electrical system, and so we isolated the electrical system from the plant, and the reactor then has to deal with the heat it produces itself. Again, another real accident situation. Again, the reactor just quietly shut itself down.

The IFR reactor is also an "actinide burner", it can burn the long-lived components of nuclear waste down to short-lived fission products. The IFR is also designed to be proliferation resistant:

Q: So it would be very difficult to handle for weapons, would it?

A: It's impossible to handle for weapons, as it stands.

It's highly radioactive. It's highly heat producing. It has all of the characteristics that make it extremely, well, make it impossible for someone to make a weapon.

PamW