Word: breeders
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plans to build a number of new nuclear plants; then--last week--the announcement of a sale of enriched uranium to India. Perhaps the best example, however, of the Carter administration's softening of its earlier stand on nuclear energy is in its attitude towards the liquid metal fast-breeder reactor and the deadly plutonium it employs. The story of the watering down of the anti-breeder position is a many-faceted one involving Executive-Congressional power struggles, the background and geographical origins of individuals involved in the dispute, and questions of illusion versus reality in the creation...
Designed as a demonstration breeder for the U.S., Clinch River has been jinxed from the start. When Richard Nixon gave the go-ahead in 1971, its cost was projected at $699 million. Seven years later the price tag is $2.2 billion and ground has yet to be broken in the Tennessee valley. What's more, the architectural firm given the contract for the project wrote in a 1973 report that Clinch River was "one of the worst sites ever selected for a nuclear power plant based on its topography and rock conditions." And with the increased amounts of uranium...
...Administration and Congress neared a compromise in the fight over construction of a fast-breeder reactor at Clinch River, Tenn. The attraction of the fast-breeder is that it produces more fuel in the form of plutonium than it uses. But President Carter fears that some of the plutonium could find its way into unfriendly hands and increase the danger of atomic-weapons proliferation. The Administration also considers the project too costly for current needs. The likely compromise: if Congress abandons the Clinch River project, as Carter wants, the Administration will agree to bankroll another, more advanced, large demonstration breeder...
...next March's elections, charges that the policy of headlong nuclear expansion was reckless, "launched like a railroad engine at 400 kilometers an hour." In August, some 30,000 protesters tried to slow the train down by staging a noisy demonstration at Super Phenix, the big French plutonium breeder reactor east of Lyon. Now there is concern about a new element in the government's aggressive program. It is a plan to help pay for the country's nuclear expansion by making France a major dealer in that growing international commodity, "spent" atomic fuel...
Some readers have found McPhee's past choice of subjects eclectic to the point of anarchy: basketball, breeder reactors, canoes, conservation, oranges, Scottish lairds. McPhee points out the skein that links all this apparent disparity: "Just about everything I've written touches on subjects that interested me as a kid." The third child of a doctor who worked regularly with Princeton athletes, McPhee heard about sports as far back as he can remember. His passion for games grew, but his physique failed to keep pace; the aspiring basketball star topped out at 5 ft. 7 in. Summers were...