Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project
The Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project was a project to build a fast breeder reactor in the USA, but it was abandoned in 1983 primarily for economic reasons and because of the feared proliferation of weapons .
Construction began in 1972. The nuclear power plant was supposed to deliver electricity to the grid with a capacity of 350 megawatts, the cooling water would have been taken from the Clinch River . The construction work was interrupted several times. In 1983, however, the United States Congress definitely stopped funding before construction was completed because it was far more economical to build and operate light water reactors . The risk of weapons proliferation from the weapons- grade plutonium that was produced in large quantities in the reactor also played a certain role. This means that breeder technology in the United States never got beyond the stage of the Experimental Breeder Reactor I , which was the first in the world to generate electricity using nuclear energy, but which later also experienced a core meltdown .
Today the site on the Clinch River is again being discussed for the construction of a modular small reactor (SMR), which is one of the light water reactors. The application for this was submitted in May 2016.
Web links
- Technical details (osti.gov; see "Full Text" , PDF file)