letter to the president concerning climate change and the integral fast reactor

7/31/2019 Letter to the President Concerning Climate Change and the Integral Fast Reactor

1/3

May 11, 2012

The Honorable Barack H. ObamaThe White House1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NWWashington, DC 20500

Climate Change and the Integral Fast Reactor

Dear President Obama:

I write as a private citizen on behalf of myself and my grandson, Cavanagh, age 4,and his sister or brother whose arrival is anticipated this fall.

I believe that today civilization is facing its greatest threat ever in the form of climatechange. The principal cause is industrializations reliance for energy on fossil fuels,which emit climate-changing greenhouse gases. The principal cure is a revolutionarynew climate-stabilizing source of energy called the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR). Theadvantages of this technology are summarized in my one-page attachment to thisletter.

Forty-seven years ago President Johnson was warned by his science advisors thatfossil fuel emissions could cause uncontrollable changes in climateand he sowarned Congress. Climate change is a global problem, of course, but the UnitedStates was then, as now, the leader of the free world community. It also happens tobe the leader in climate change; its emissions of the most persistent greenhouse gasover the last century and a half are three times those of any other country. TheUnited States should, therefore, be leading the world in a global response to climatechange. Instead, it is doing, and has done, nothing.

Churchill said you can always count on Americans to do the right thingafter theyvetried everything else. For my grandchildrens sake, I hope thats true, but my readingof history leads me to believe that doing the right thing always requires strong

political leadership. It took all of FDRs skill and commitment to prepare anisolationist-minded country for World War II; still, extension of the peacetime draft

just four months before Pearl Harbor passed the House by only one vote. Preparing aconservative-minded country for a change to climate-stabilizing energy sourcesrequires equal skill and commitment.

Climatologist James Hansen wrote you (as President-elect) with threerecommendations: phase out coal-fired power plants that dont capture and storecarbon emissions; enact a rising tax on fossil fuels with proceeds refunded toconsumers; and fast-track the R&D of 4th-generation nuclear power such as the IFR.Last fall serial entrepreneur Steve Kirsch suggested (in a letter to your assistantHeather Zichal) that you meet with Charles Till, former director of IFR development at

Argonne National Laboratory. I write to add my grandchildrens voices and my own totheirs: IFR is the key to stabilizing the climate.

Sincerely,

Attachment: Integral Fast Reactor


2/3

Integral Fast Reactor

Nuclear power systems create heat through nuclear fission for steam turbines togenerate electricity. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) is a nuclear power systemdeveloped at the US Argonne National Laboratory that replenishes, recycles, refinesand fabricates its unique metallic fuel and meets all five criteria for 4th-generationnuclear power listed below.

1. Reduce the volume and toxicity of nuclear waste.

Existing nuclear light water reactors (LWRs) use only one percent of their uranium fuel andleave vast amounts of radioactive spent fuel including plutonium as toxic waste to besequestered for multiple thousands of years. IFR pyroprocessing recycles its spent fueluntil all the longest-lasting radioactive elements have been used up. Its much smalleramount of much less toxic waste needs to be sequestered for only 300 years.Pyroprocessing can also recycle LWR spent fuel for IFR use.

2. Keep nuclear materials unsuitable for direct use in weapons.

Nuclear fission weapons use uranium (as at Hiroshima) or plutonium (Nagasaki). Whileweapons-grade uranium has to be enriched to increase its fissile isotope, U-235, from underone percent of natural uranium to more than 80 percent, weapons-grade plutonium can bechemically separated from the uranium that breeds it. But in electro-refining during IFRpyroprocessing, plutonium is mixed with other elements that make it unsuitable for

weapons.

3. Be passively safe based on characteristics inherent in the reactor design andmaterials.

Because its fuel is a solid metallic alloy, IFR responds automatically to overheating causedby loss of coolant flow (as at Chernobyl) or output heat sink (Three Mile Island, Fukushima)by slowing or shutting down its reactor power. Overheating causes metal fuel in coreassemblies to expand, thereby increasing reactor size by a miniscule amount but enough toincrease neutron leakage that reduces reactivity and overheating. Other featuresliquidsodium metal coolant with high boiling temperature; large sodium-filled reactor poolresisting the temperature increase; and the weak effect in metal fuel of a natural (storedDoppler) tendency to increase reactivityprovide the time and safety margins for thethermal expansion to take effect. The metal fuel also has a low melting temperature; whenall else fails, it will start melting and then disperse, reducing reactivity.

4. Provide a long-term energy source not limited by resources.

By recycling its used uranium fuel and the plutonium fuel that it breeds from uranium, IFRincreases the productivity of mineable uranium a hundred-fold. (Plutonium, a naturalelement like uranium, has to be bred from uranium since it has no mineable sources.) If IFRor a similar breeder supplied all of the worlds needs for electricity, uranium supplies couldlast as long as the planet. Thus IFR is as renewable an energy source as solar, wind,water and geothermal.

5. Be economically competitive with other electricity sources.

Since IFRs systems are small, simple and designed for remote manufacturing, its capital

costs should be competitive. If the cost of waste storage are accounted for in the operatingcosts of LWRs and the negative externalities of greenhouse gases, toxic emissions and non-conventional mining in fossil fuel plants, IFR should be a runaway winner. Its 24/7availability wherever steam turbines can operate should make it competitive with solar,wind, water and geothermal power.

In 1994 Congress upheld the Presidents termination of IFR development asunnecessary.

References: Yoon I. Chang, Advanced Nuclear System for the 21st Century (2002),http://www.ipd.anl.gov/anlpubs/2002/04/42922.pdf; Charles E. Till, Plentiful Energy and theIFR Story (2005), http://www.sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad0509till.html; and Till and


3/3

Chang, Plentiful Energy: The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor(2011), ISBN 978-1466384606.(Revised 6/17/12)

letter to the president concerning climate change and the integral fast reactor

Documents