Considerations of importance to decisions on an alternate nuclear program

Abstract

The nuclear power program of the United States is based on the concept that nuclear plants of the thermal converter type—primarily those cooled and moderated by light water—will fill the generating needs in the early years, and that the fast breeder will be developed on a sufficiently rapid schedule to take over the major portion of the electrical load before our reserves of moderate-cost uranium are used up. In this plan the thermal converter reactors play an important, if not altogether essential, role as producers of plutonium for the initial inventory of the breeders. To reassess this plan, in the absence of any reliable model for the long-term U.S. economy in its relationship to energy supplies and costs, we are forced to use as input some estimate of the energy demand over a period of approximately a century. This input has a profound impact on the assessment, affecting not only our estimate of the urgency of development of the breeder, but conclusions as to optimum choice of converter reactors as well. Inasmuch as the demand is not an independent variable, but will surely depend upon the cost of power, this approach has obvious deficiencies.