Integral Fast Reactors: Source of Safe, Abundant, Non-Polluting Power

George Stanford, Ph.D., is a nuclear reactor physicist, part of the team that developed the Integral Fast Reactor. He is now retired from Argonne National Laboratory after a career of experimental work pertaining to power-reactor safety. He is the co-author of Nuclear Shadowboxing: Contemporary Threats from Cold War Weaponry.

From an interview with George Stanford in National Policy Analysis, Dec. 2001

What is the IFR?

You mean, "What was the IFR?"

O.K., what was the IFR?

IFR stands for Integral Fast Reactor. It was a power-reactor-development program, built around a revolutionary concept for generating nuclear power - not only a new type of reactor, but an entire new nuclear fuel cycle. The reactor part of that fuel cycle was called the ALMR - Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor. In what many see as an ill-conceived move, proof-of-concept research on the IFR/ALMR was discontinued by the U.S. government in 1994, only three years before completion.

You might soon see references to the AFR, which stands for "Advanced Fast Reactor." It's a concept very similar to the IFR, with some improvements thrown in.

Click to read the entire interview at National Center for public Policy Research