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OVERVIEW This reactor is cooled by liquid Sodium and fueled by a metallic alloy of Uranium and Plutonium . The fuel is contained in steel cladding with liquid sodium filling in the space between the fuel and the cladding. SAFETY, EFFICIENCY AND FUEL CYCLE The goals of the IFR project were to increase the efficiency of uranium usage by Breeding plutonium and eliminating the need for Transuranic isotopes ever to leave the site. The reactor was an unmoderated design running on Fast Neutron s, designed to allow any transuranic isotope to be consumed (and in some cases used as fuel). The IFR was designed such that the fuel expanded if the reactor were to overheat and the thus chain reaction would automatically slow down due to the lowered density. In this manner, it was Passively Safe . Compared to current light-water reactors with a once-through fuel cycle that uses less than 1% of the energy in the uranium, the IFR has a very efficient (99.5% usage) fuel cycle. The basic scheme used electrolytic separation to remove transuranics and actinides from the wastes and concentrate them. These concentrated fuels were then reformed, on site, into new fuel elements. The available fuel metals never separated the plutonium, and therefore there was no direct way to use the fuel metals in nuclear weapons. Also, plutonium never had to leave the site, and thus was far less open to unauthorized diversion. Another important benefit of removing the long Half-life transuranics from the waste cycle is that the remaining waste becomes a much shorter-term hazard. After the Actinides and Transuranic s are removed from the spent fuel, the remaining waste elements have Half Lives of a few decades at most. The result is that within 300 years, such wastes are no more radioactive than the ores of natural radioactive elements. KEY BENEFITS
KEY DISADVANTAGES
HISTORY Research on the reactor began in 1984 at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois. Argonne is a part of the U.S. Department Of Energy , and is co-run by the DOE and the University Of Chicago . Argonne also has a branch campus nicknamed "Argonne West" in Idaho Falls , Idaho . At the branch campus, physicists from Argonne had built what was known as the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR II). In the mean time, physicists at Argonne had designed the IFR concept, and it was decided that the EBR II would be converted to an IFR. Charles Till, a Canadian physicist from Argonne, was the head of the IFR project, and Yoon Chang, was the deputy head. Till was positioned in Idaho, while Chang was in Illinois. With the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992, and the appointment of Hazel O'Leary as the Secretary Of Energy , there was pressure from the top to cancel the IFR. Sen. John Kerry (D, MA) and O'Leary led the opposition to the reactor, arguing that it would be a threat to non-proliferation efforts, and that it was a continuation of the Clinch River breeder reactor effort that had been cancelled by Congress. Despite support for the reactor by then-Rep. Richard Durbin (D, IL) and U.S. Senators Carol Mosley Braun (D, IL) and Paul Simon (D, IL), funding for the reactor was slashed, and it was ultimately cancelled in 1994. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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