Justin writes: "The alternatives exist already - there's no need or time to wait."

I couldn't agree more, but one of those alternatives that exist already is the Integral Fast Reactor. GE-Hitachi could begin building one immediately.

I myself was antagonistic to nuclear power until I discovered the IFR through the good graces of the physicists who developed it at Argonne National Laboratory. It is so far removed from the nuclear power everyone's familiar with as to be utterly transformative, hence my appelation "newclear power."

But fixing our planet will take much more than a single technology, and any deployment of even "newclear" power is going to require a radical shift in our technological, political and economic energy structures. I hope that people concerned about the future of our planet will visit my web site, where you can read the first part of my book online. Many very active and zealous anti-nuclear activists have read the manuscript and become convinced that the energy revolution I propose (which is about much more than newclear power) is not only reasonable but necessary. Perhaps you will come away with the same impression.

I proudly consider myself to be an environmentalist with the well-being of our planet foremost in mind. I've devoted years of effort to furthering the cause of renewing the health of Mother Earth. Please don't look at a fragment of the whole and dismiss those who should rightfully be welcomed as allies.

"The alternatives exist already - there's no need or time to wait."

The key point is that the Integral Fast Reactor is not a solution that already exists. Yes, it has been developed as a concept, and yes, there were some partial experiments on a small scale done twenty years ago. But it has never been built, and there is zero operational history.

The catch here is that we have seen too many bold and exciting concepts in the field of nuclear energy: cars powered by small reactors, reactors generating abundant electricity too cheap to meter, waste being recycled or shot to the space… and even those fast breeder reactors.

All looked really perfect in the stage of concepts and drawings - but failed terribly when there were attempts to really build and operate them. We have seen serious accidents even on the prototypes of liquid sodium reactors, such as Monju in Japan that was shut a year after it started following a serious leak and fire:

We do not need to go far to see where the problems of the real world - where our dreams suddenly prove to be much more complicated - emerge. Integral Fast Reactor uses liquid sodium as coolant. Well, liquid sodium is extremely flammable and ignites spontaneously on contact with air or water. Thus leaking sodium pipes could give rise to sodium fires, or explosions if the leaked sodium comes into contact with water.

Another very problematic issue is onsite reprocessing that the IFR concept bets on. Again, the pyroprocessing reactor fuel technology proposed for IFR has never been demonstrated on a commercial scale. Again, this is a very polluting and hazardous process, and there is no solution that would exist today to guarantee that it does not end up in a disaster, by mistake, failure or deliberate attack.

Summarized - even if all the problems can be solved (and I seriously doubt it), it would take at least two decades before this technology can start generating any significant amount of energy on a commercial scale. But we need to peak carbon emissions in the next six years and cut them dramatically by 2030.

And for this, proven technologies without those side effects truly exist. In the single year a 2007, newly installed renewable energy sources in a single country of Germany delivered 13 TWh of electricity. That’s as if two large nuclear reactors were added to the grid.