It seems like something that only a crazed conspiracy theorist would come up with. A source of carbon-free energy that holds the potential to provide base load power for the planet for thousands of years hence, and which could be built along the existing transmission grid and even be housed within retrofitted coal-fired power stations. A process that could eat existing nuclear waste instead of needing to store it in highly secure vaults such as Yucca Mountain for hundreds of millennia. A technology that enjoyed large investments in R&D by government, only to have the funding zeroed for political reasons when close to large-scale demonstration — and then the scientists involved told not to publicise this fact. Well that, in caricature, is the basic story of Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) nuclear power.
Perhaps it is too good to be true — almost everything that’s been hyped as ‘the future of…’ is, after all. But not everything — the exceptions to the ‘hype rule’ now dominate our modern technological society (home computers, mobile communications, satellite communications, etc.). So what if IFR is the real deal? Well, some very clever folks have been looking into this and conclude that it is — or at least worth pushing. As I described in an earlier post, Hansen is among them — at least in terms of seeing the value in giving this tech a fair go — and he’s certainly not alone. Mark Lynas for instance, author of ‘Six Degrees‘, has also pitched in. Read more...