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The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) was an advanced nuclear reactor and complete fuel cycle technology development program. The IFR program began in 1983 and ran until September 30, 1994. The IFR included improvements to nuclear power with respect to safety, waste management, fuel efficiency, and proliferation resistance. From its beginning, the IFR program had one overriding goal: To produce an improved nuclear reactor and fuel cycle technology that would be directly responsive to public and business concerns about future reliance on nuclear energy. Although an IFR reactor plant has yet to be built, the EBR-II served as an IFR prototype for many years.
The concept behind the IFR fuel recycling process |
The heart of an IFR power plant was a liquid-sodium-cooled reactor with a new type of metal-alloy fuel. With this new fuel, 10-20% of the nuclear fuel actually fissions to produce power before the fuel must be recycled. This is much more efficient than the 3-6% that current reactors achieve.
The spent fuel that remains was to be sent through the IFR fuel recycling process, called the pyroprocess. This simple, inexpensive process would remove the uranium, plutonium, and other transuranic elements from the other fisson products. This serves two purposes:
Another breakthrough in the IFR is its passive safety. Its design features made many of the complex safety systems used in current reactors unnecessary. The IFR took advantage of the natural characteristics of materials and design. While protective barriers and primary safety systems are retained, reliance on expensive systems for emergency protection were replaced by reliance on laws of nature.
The IFR's passive safety was demonstrated in 1986 in the IFR prototype, EBR-II. In these tests, conditions were created that would be expected to lead to severe core melt-down in most types of reactors. EBR-II simply shut itself down without the operation of any active safety systems, without operator intervention of any kind, and without any damage. These tests, unprecedented in any other reactor, demonstrated that nuclear accidents of the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island type are not possible with an IFR plant. (Click here for a java simulation of these tests.)
The IFR pyroprocess was designed to be 'proliferation resistant'. Simply put, this means that fuel recycled with IFR technology can't be easily used as material for nuclear weapons. Attempts to extract material to produce a nuclear weapon would require a huge, easily detectable, investment in the same type of facilities and equipment that would be required to produce the material directly from spent fuel from any type of reactor.
IFR technology also included the ability to recycle spent fuel from other reactors as fuel for IFR's.