ERRORS in rebuttal to "Pandora's Promise"

[PamW]

29. 100% WRONG as ALWAYS!!

But your assumptions above are WRONG.

The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) does NOT increase the potential for nuclear weapons proliferation; in fact just the OPPOSITE because it is an actinide ( i.e. Plutonium ) "BURNER".

Perhaps you can tell us why you "think" that the selection of coolant ( liquid sodium ) determines the composition of the spent fuel and whether it can be used for weapons or not. Please show us your technical acumen!!

Argonne National Lab BUILT an Integral Fast Reactor in Idaho and operated it for over a decade. If a national laboratory can build such a reactor; why can't a utility. It didn't cost billions when the anti-nukes couldn't interfere.

The IFR has a PROVEN safety record. It operated SAFELY in Idaho for OVER 10 years and all the while being subjected to potential accident scenarios as the scientists at Argonne ATTEMPTED to get the reactor to fail. It didn't.

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.

As Dr. Till indicates; one of the scenarios that the IFR was subjected to, and WITHSTOOD was the scenario that caused the Chernobyl accident. Unproven safety record, my foot; you have ZERO evidence as to the safety characteristics of the IFR. In the academic / scientific community, you can't just MAKE UP evidence because you don't like something merely because it's the competition to something else that you prefer. Evidence is NOT FABRICATED or MADE UP on the basis of someone's whim.

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

PamW