The nuclear reactor was developed by Argonne National Laboratory and its antecedents beginning with the Manhattan Project during World War II, and reactors that run ships and commercial power plants the world over trace their origins to the southwest suburban facility. Unfortunately, research into more advanced reactors at Argonne is now threatened by reductions in the U.S. Energy Department`s 1986 budget.
Argonne`s subsidies from DOE may be reduced by $45 million next year, the bulk of that intended for research into advanced reactors. The cuts would result in the cancellation of a program to develop what physicists there believe is a major breakthrough that has worldwide implications--a device called the integral fast reactor.
Other federal budget cuts will also gut research programs in such areas as development of improved batteries that could ultimately power cars, application of improved technology to the ailing U.S. steel and agricultural machine industries and removal of pollutants to permit high sulfur Midwest coal to be burned by utilities without raining acid on the East.
But the most important program in jeopardy is the integral reactor.
Over the years, Argonne`s physicists naively believed that the scientific merit of the proposed machine would prove itself. What happened was that a succession of politically motivated decisions in Washington has kept the integral reactor on the back burner while the government undertook such boondoggles as the now canceled $4 billion Clinch River Breeder Reactor and discovered, as a result of the Three Mile Island accident, major safety problems with its existing commercial program.
The Three Mile Island machine is an evolutionary successor to the world standard light water-cooled reactor that Argonne originally developed. Cooling it requires a complex system of pipes and pumps. But the proposed integral reactor would be fueled by metal rods and cooled by a pool of liquid sodium that Argonne physicists claim would not be vulnerable to the same quality control and human failings that have plagued existing reactors.
Each integral reactor could also breed its own fuel, eliminating the need to transport hazardous radioactive fuel and waste across the country.
Argonne officials fear that cancellation of the integral reactor project will cost the United States its lead in nuclear technology and force it to buy that technology back from France or Japan at some future time.
There appear to be sufficient funds in the more than $370 million that the Energy Department plans to spend on nuclear research next year to continue work on the integral reactor project. Congress should order the department to do so.