Talk:Integral fast reactor

message: I'm not so sure that this entry complies with the NPOV requirement.  I intend to research this topic more fully and attempt to moderate its view point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.232.60.10 (talk • contribs) 
:I hope your research has reassured you, as you don't seem to have made any edits to the article! Andrewa 01:35, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: This seems to good to be true. However, I know the plant existed. Don't people understand those implications? It's equivalent to the Department of defense killing ARPANET! Where is the "I told you so" and outrage over this? I support terrorists everytime I buy gasoline...and yet if we had this we may not even need to import oil! Is this characterization exaggerated? RMartinez
:Relax RMartinez, the IFR is being reborn as we speak as the Advanced Burner Reactor, check out the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program for details. Good ideas never truly die!
:Well, there is not much overlap between gasoline and nuclear.  The US burns very little oil for electricity.  Most electricity is from coal, natural gas and nuclear.  Only golf carts and fork lifts run off of electricity.  Until about a year ago, uranium was cheap so people lost interest in breeders.  In the entire history only 50,000 tons of high level waste have been generated, and 40,000 tons of this would fit in dry storage on 120 acres on Goshute land.  So waste is not a real big problem. Paul Studier
I talked about the oil because Nuclear power plants can make the hydrogen needed for next-generation cars. Also, many environmentalists have forced us to use coal because solar and wind (while useful) simply can't meet the demand, only nuclear can do that. Their biggest talking point is waste from nuclear. However, I don't know the political climate for nuclear as of now. RMartinez
Hydrogen is a scam.  See The Hype about Hydrogen. Paul Studier 07:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hydrogen is far from a scam, if produced by electrolysis from nuclear powerplants hydrogen powered cars would produce no greenhouse emissions, no acid rain, no carbon monoxide, no cancer causing hydrocarbons etc... It is true that it has been hyped up a bit tho. In particular the difficulties in storing it, the enormous financial investment needed to set up a hydrogen economy, and the, at present, rather short lifespan of fuel cells have been downplayed. However, all of these are problems which appear to be solveable within a few decades. Several car companies already have hydrogen powered prototypes. All in all H2 powered cars are likely to start becoming important in about 30 years or so. They have some way to go still, but they are far from a scam. 137.205.192.27 17:25, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

text: "cancer causing hydrocarbons" =hilarious  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.56.239.57 (talk) 16:48, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Why is replacing the current infrastructure, including all the cars, a better plan than just gradually moving from an Ethanol/Gasoline mix to a Biodiesel/Plugin-Hybrid model? It seems like a giant waste of money. 129.63.28.113 18:53, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Biodiesel is CO2 neutral, but it still emits other pollutants, such as carbon particles, sulfur and nitrous oxides that contribute to acid rains etc... With hydrogen fuel cells the only emission is water. Furthermore, biodiesel will require vast areas of land to grow the crops for the fuel, unlike hydrogen which can readily be produced from water using electrolysis. Thus hydrogen is more scalable, and less likely to contribute towards deforestation. 194.117.188.248 23:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a 'Scam' in that it isn't practical. Hydrogen is very difficult to contain and move. For example, the piping  used to move natural gas to a home to day would leak hydrogen, so all that needs to be changed out for a much more expensive to and harder to maintain piping. Electric is where vehicles will be in 15 years. You are correct, biodiesel can not work on a large scale either. IFR(ABR) and Industrial solar thermal is where the future is.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.162.223.250 (talk) 22:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

text: A person who drives to work might consume a gallon or two of gasoline.  If he burned hydrogen, very approximately he would produce a gallon or two of water.  Not too much more than he would produce from burning the gasoline.  By comparison, I sometimes use hundreds of gallons of water a month to water the plants in my yard.  Shouldn't be a problem. Paul Studier 00:32, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I am dumbfounded 

message: So the reactor can re-use fuel, but does anyone have data on what it needs to be charged with? I'm specifically interested in the U235/U238 ratio ... can it use natural abundance? -- 01:07, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not initially, like all fast reactors it needs enriched uranium and/or plutonium in the initial fuel charge. But it can use natural abundance as feedstock from then on. Andrewa 01:39, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Initial Fuel 

message: Current article reads:
(Currently, companies building nuclear reactors do not bear the costs associated with long-term storage of transuranic waste.  If these costs were passed on to the industry, IFR would become more financially competitive.)
I think that the first statement is quite simply false. Practice varies from country to country, but in the USA, for example, there's a surcharge levied on every megawatt-hour produced to cover these costs. This is typical of practice in most of the world. There is some controversy over how much should be charged; For the antis, no amount of provision would be adequate, while many advocates of nuclear power (including myself) see the existing charges as being on the high side already, leading to a culture of overdesign and overregulation as the money is there to pay for it.
My suspicion is that this false statement comes originally from anti-nuclear propaganda of some sort. But there is possibly a valid point being made in the second sentence, and I'm not quite sure how to rephrase it, without introducing my own POV. Anyone else like to try? Andrewa 01:53, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: POV again

message: Can anyone explain why the specific choice of coolant is sodium? I understand the need for a metal with low-ish melting point, but surely some other metal eg Gallium would also do, and be considerably safer?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.171.29 (talk) 15:12, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Why sodium?

message: This appears to me to be a good article written by knowledgeable people, but it lacks citations to WP:RS reliable sources. I can't find sources myself, but if someone else can find sources, I am willing to help insert citations into the article.  --Dr.enh (talk) 23:32, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: I just added the POV flag in response to the extensive recent edits that make this article read like propaganda for IFR rather than a dispassionate description of the system.  In particular, the theoretical/potential benefits need to be balanced against the practical challenges of realizing them.  In addition to lacking balance, most of the recent additions lack citations. NPguy (talk) 02:35, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I definitely agree that this article (still) reads like an argument and PR piece on "why IFRs are good", "why we NEED nuclear power" etc. etc. etc. as opposed to simple factual statements on this reactor type. Centerone (talk) 07:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV flag 

message: The Advantages section had a lot of repetition. I consolidated most of them and got rid of those that didn't add anything. We might need someone to go in and get rid of the duplicates left over from the Disadvantages.
I tried to combine the advantages/disadvantages into several categories.  I did a lot of moving around, so we probably need someone to go in and fix the voice.  Might need some more 'citation needed's, too. I Think I'm So Smart (talk) 18:10, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Key Advantages" "Key Disadvantages" replaced with "Comparisons to light-water reactors" 

message: Much of the article refers to IFR reactors as if they actually exist. All of these should be changed to something like "The IFR design would ..." 22:29, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  I also think many of the supposed benefits have been demonstrated in an R&D context, but not at a practical level. NPguy (talk) 03:29, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

text: Not hypothetical: Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II - 76.1.37.196 (talk) 19:50, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The IFR is not just a reactor, but an integral system including a reactor and a pyroprocessing plant to recycle the fuel.  That has not been demonstrated. NPguy (talk) 02:37, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe. No IFR has been constructed, but nearly all of the technology has been tested in practice at EBR II. This includes the metallic fuel with the sodium-filled space within the cladding to allow fuel expansion (unique to it and the IFR so far), the sodium pool (common to many other LMFRs), the onsite pyroprocessing, and the fuel fabrication under remote handling conditions using a rectangular air cell and an anular argon cell, and even the plant layout. It's fair to say that EBR-II operated as an IFR. Andrewa (talk) 04:05, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hypothetical 

message: I can imagine that if you oppose nuclear energy altogether, and haven't done any research on fast reactor designs, seeing the facts about the IFR might make you uncomfortable. Because the advantages of this concept are readily apparent.
Anyway, here are some materials about the IFR:
* http://thesciencecouncil.com/index.php/video-ifr-discussion
* http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html
* http://www.skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifr.htm
* http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/logos20-1/passive01.htm
* http://www.nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf
Whether you oppose or support nuclear energy, it should be possible to write factually about the IFR without trying to inject your personal opinion. However, if you feel very strongly one way or the other, it might be best to leave the editing to others.
Also, this paper referenced in the article discusses various fast reactor coolant materials, their properties, advantages and disadvantages:
* http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/SodiumCoolant_NRCpresentation.pdf
76.1.37.196 (talk) 19:40, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: The Canadians have been producing and selling their CANDU reactors for years to other countries.  Why don't we just buy them and use them?Longinus876 (talk) 01:49, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  CANDU? 

message: I found the page in the congressional record that includes his oft-touched-on comments against the IFR. I included it as a citation to the sentences already present that describe his opposition. Ahnrenene (talk) 06:15, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The external link in the article to the vote in the U.S. Senate concerning Senator Kerry's proposed amendment to the appropriations bill is not actually the vote that killed the IFR. On the contrary, the motion to "table" Senator Kerry's amendment (S.Amdt. 2127) meant dismissal of Senator Kerry's attempt to amend the appropriations bill to exclude funding for ALMR/IFR. In other words, the Senate vote in that particular instance represents majority support for the IFR (I think the confusion stems from "motion to table" having a definition that's counter to naive intuition). This only invites the question: where in the appropriations process was the IFR actually killed? It seems that the battle for IFR funding was lost in a joint committee (I'm not yet sure how to get transcripts of committee proceedings, but there's a discussion in the same Till & Chang article mentioned before)—and it was the joint committee's determination that informed the lack of funding for the IFR in the final draft of the appropriations bill. If no one has any objections, I'll try to track down some citations and correct this part. --Ahnrenene (talk) 08:17, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There's probably enough material for a separate article Political history of the IFR. Andrewa (talk) 16:20, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Senator Kerry's arguments against IFR on the floor of the Senate

message: This information all comes from Chapter 5 Choosing the technology of the reference at the end of the section... although not the specific page number cited there.
I'll mark up some specific references when I get the time. But the information is all easily verifiable. The book is available on Amazon, and should be in many libraries. And it is cited at http://www.ne.anl.gov/About/reactors/integral-fast-reactor.shtml which is already cited (twice) in the lede. Andrewa (talk) 16:35, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Basic design decisions 

message: I've reinstated the dubious tag which appears to have been removed without comment.  None of the refs mention lead coolant as far as I can see, and the main source explicitly says that liquid sodium coolant is one of the IFR's key design features. Andrewa (talk) 00:50, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious tag reinstated regarding lead coolant 

message: Article currently reads in part:
 At present there are no Integral Fast Reactors in commercial operation, however a very similar fast reactor, operated as a burner of plutonium stockpiles, the BN-800 reactor, became commercially operational in 2014.
Very similar? The BN-800 uses oxide fuel. The whole concept of the IFR is onsite reprocessing of the metal fuel using pyroprocessing. This is not even possible with oxide fuel.
Actually, pyroelectric processing is possible with oxide fuel, but it must first be reduced to metal using essentially the same process, with the roles of anode and cathode reversed.  Oxygen is removed and converted to CO2 using a graphite cathode.  Metal accumulates at the anode.Van Snyder
It was intended that it be possible to use some metallic and/or nitride fuel in the BN-800, but the fuel load so far has been pure oxide, and there are no plans to use metal fuel as of 2019. 
The IFR on the other hand must use only metal fuel. Andrewa (talk) 17:53, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparable reactors 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 05:25, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: 2,000 staff for ten years can't have been cheap.
Can we have some details on total cost, original budget cost, funding by year, final cost after closedown ? - Rod57 (talk) 18:00, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  What did it all cost 

message: Article currently reads in part The U.S. Department of Energy began designing an IFR in 1984 and built a prototype, the Experimental Breeder Reactor II. But EBR2 achieved first criticality in 1965. Am I missing something? Andrewa (talk) 16:32, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates