Word: breeders
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...been uncertain about when and how to lift controls on natural gas and has a narrow grasp of the issues involved. His major initiative has been to support the troubled nuclear power industry, primarily by speeding up licensing procedures and pushing forward with the Clinch River breeder reactor in Tennessee, a $3.2 billion boondoggle whose principal beneficiary will be Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. At best Edwards gets a C. That would hardly matter, unless, of course, the nation is hit with another energy crisis, which the shrinking department is totally unprepared to handle...
...agricultural scientists "to write their own ticket." In California venture capitalists have provided "seed" money for Calgene in Davis and Phytogene in Pasadena. In St. Louis Monsanto has just added a gleaming molecular biology center to its agricultural research facilities. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, the nation's top breeder of seed corn, has broken ground for its own high-tech molecular biology lab in Des Moines...
...heart of the Clinch River debate are not its finances but its technology; the 375-megawatt plant to be built is a breeder reactor, which creates more atomic fuel than it burns. The physics behind this alchemy is not new. A few light bulbs were powered by the first tiny breeder 30 years ago, and a 200-MW breeder plant was fired up-and failed-near Detroit in 1966. Conventional nuclear reactors also create fuel, but about 35% less than they consume, rather than, like breeders, about 20% more. Says A. David Rossin of the American Nuclear Society: "Breeder reactors...
Indeed, Britain, West Germany, the Soviet Union and France are already operating breeders more advanced than the one not yet built at Clinch River. To critics this argues against a U.S. commitment to the expensive Tennessee project. "It's like the Concorde," "says Vanderbilt University Physicist John Barach. "Let the French do it. If we need it, we can get them to license a breeder to this country...
Clinch River's proponents insist (hat breeders are the only means that the U.S. has to guarantee itself an unlimited domestic supply of atomic fuel. But even this advantage may not justify the costs. "There won't be a shortage of conventional uranium for at least 50 years," says Jan Beyea, a physicist on the staff of the Audubon Society. "Certainly there is no urgent rush to get into breeder technology." President Jimmy Carter, worried about the proliferation of plutonium, tried to stop Clinch River. Even Budget Director David Stockman, while he was a Michigan Congressman, opposed Clinch...