David Suzuki

[PamW]

21. We HAD one!!

Kolesar,

The USA HAD a working Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) prototype at Argonne-West on the site of the Idaho National Laboratory.

We don't need 30 years or 30 billion to develop it; Argonne already did it during the 1980s and early 1990s. See:

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.

The IFR was an operating reactor at Idaho National Laboratory, that Argonne was running actual tests on; as per Dr. Till's description above.

The good thing about science is that it is true, whether or not you believe in it.
--Neil deGrasse Tyson

PamW