The History and Status of Fast Breeder Reactor Programs

The findings of a recent report, “Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status” will be summarized. This report, prepared for The International Panel on Fissile Materials and co-authored by Thomas B. Cochran (USA), Harold A. Feiveson (USA), Walt Patterson (UK), Gennadi Pshakin (Russia), M.V. Ramana (India/USA), Mycle Schneider (France), Tatsujiro Suzuki (Japan) and Frank von Hippel (USA), reviews the history of breeder reactor programs in France, India, Japan, the Soviet Union/Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The rationale for pursuing breeders was based on the following key assumptions: a) uranium was, or would become, scarce and thus would become expensive; b) breeders would quickly become economically competitive; c) breeder were as safe and reliable as light-water reactors; and d) the proliferation risks posed by breeders and their “closed” fuel cycle could be adequately managed. Each of these assumptions has proven to be wrong. Some of the smaller research reactors operated successfully, but on the whole, sodium-cooled fast breeders have proven to be, in Admiral Hyman Rickover’s 1956 summation, “expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair.” The prospects look equally dim for the wide-spread application of fast reactors for the purpose of actinide burning to reduce nuclear waste geologic disposal requirements.