Here is a program idea I sent to every member of the Senate and 300 members of Congress. We can bridge to the Integral Fast Reactor with the new Westinghouse reactor. Here is how you make the IFR cost effective:
1)Site the reactor complex on the Hudson Bay,
2)Form the Canadian-American Corporation (CANAM). I envision a cooperative venture between the public and private sectors. CANAM does everything but build the plants. They buy the land, perhaps as much as 100 square miles along the Hudson Bay. They do the environmental impact statements over 20 years at a cost of perhaps $10 billion. They put in the railroads. They establish the transmission corridors. They build perhaps the first dozen light-water plants i.e. existing nuclear technology.
If the reactor complex is never approved, then the dozen or so plants can crack hydrogen with electrolysis, or more efficiently with high temperature gas cooled reactors. Then they serve as the respository for all toxic, biological and solid waste from Montreal, Canada, Chicago, New York and Boston. They will process 10,000-100,000 tons of solid waste/day. Waste goes in and the cheapest steel anywhere in the world (free oxygen), metal hydrides (solid hydrogen), ingots of glass, rolls of aluminum, sheets of plastic and various and sundry metals come out.
The project requires that all the treaties necessary for the project be worked out and get indemnity from any future legal challenges without a 2/3 vote of Congress.
CANAM recoups its investment by taxing the electricity and the worker's wages. The power companies just build power plants. If the reactor complex is approved it could generate 1,500-3,000 gigawatts of power.
Here are the cost savings of the project.
1)CANAM provides a stable economic environment---utilities need stability. They don't want or need another Shoreham,
2)Spread out over 1000 plants, the environmental impact statements would cost only $10 million/plant,
3)The Hudson Bay thermal sink permits once through cooling, the cheapest kind of cooling,
4)Standardized design---there are no separate designs for each plant as has been the case for nuclear power plants in this country.
5)Pre-fabricated construction. These smaller plants (300-500mW) are already predicted to be built in three years instead of the existing ten; seven years of extra power generation matters. Their components will be carried by rail,
6)A stable work force. Since this project would be operational for at least 100 years, we can predict that we would be able to approximate the assembly line approach by shuttling clusters of workers from construction site to construction site. They might work on as many as a dozen plants in any given year,
7)Elimination of the need for Yucca Mountain. The IFR can burn up all the radioactive wastes from existing light-water reactors; this would save about $100 billion,
8)The high temperature gas cooled reactors, in tandem can generate 50% more hydrogen than electrolysis by using a patented process involving copper and chlorine,
9)A "Ponzi" scheme to lure investors to come on board early; they get a cut of the action of every power plant built later in the complex,
10)Saving in line losses by perfecting high-temperature superconductivity over the next several decades,
11)Charging other utilities and other countries to dispose of their wastes from light-water reactors,
12)Since the reactor complex will serve as a sink for all special nuclear materials, the cost of the fuel should be inexpensive as the complex acquires, among other sources, all the plutonium left over from decommisssioned nuclear warheads,
13)The residual IFR radioactive wastes require sequestration in the 100's of years, not 10,000's of years. That waste can be enclosed in a silica gel and injected by hydrofracturing at great depth where it is allowed to die with practically no environmental effects.
Does anyone think that this project would be uneconomic?
RobertW said:
Relative to the other types of reactors in current use, IFRs of the EBRII design are the safest reactors in the world at this time. The Russians have had a fast neutron reactor in continuous operation on their power grid since 1981. The world has about 290 reactor-years of experience with fast neutron reactors. See:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf08.html
The IFR negative that comes to mind first is that the "fuel reprocessing cell" is costly. However, the cost of creating huge water reserviors for cooling light water reactors is also costly. Considering the safety advantage in not having to transport highly radioactive fuels on our highways and railroads, I believe the fuel reprocessing cell is worth its cost.
Another problem with metal-cooled reactors is that the liquid metals, particularly lead, used for cooling may cause problems with the piping used in the reactor. For example, liquid lead can leach some of the metal from the piping. I understand MIT has done research on the leaching problem with highly favorable results. MIT found that chromium and nickel alloys are very resistant to leaching.
I would like to know if you have found anything else WRONG with the IFR.
ok, my 300 W wasn't too far off, no ? But that means that per square meter, you have to spend, at $2,- per peak watt, $ 530,- and not $100,- to get your 50W average. 
The EPR has a double containment. The external structure will have a higher density of rebar, and internal structures less so. The external structures much survive impact loads, while internal structures provide support primarily, and both must be designed for appropriate seismic loads.
