Uploaded by GoogleTechTalks on Dec 22, 2011
Why didn’t it happen?
Short answer–because all of the political, technological, and financial focus was on the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor. Later on, due to fears about non-proliferation, the US cancelled plans to commercially reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium, and the case for the fast breeder reactor was toast. Because there were no fast breeder reactors to take all the plutonium that had been generated from light-water reactors, in 1982 the US government passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and started collecting a tax that would be intended to pay for what would eventually become Yucca Mountain.[ emphasis mine]
Comment:
Even shorter answer: the fast breeder reactor was chosen over the molten salt thorium reactor because of politics and then forgotten after the fast breeder itself became politically infeasible because of proliferation fears. Nobody thought of molten salt thorium reactors because they had forgotten about it.
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