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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: — The Reactor That Shut Itself Down
Chapter 3: — Argonne, EBR-I, and the Roots of Fast Reactors
Chapter 4: — The Program That Died and the Opening It Left
Chapter 5: — The IFR Idea: One Site, One System, Closed Cycle
Chapter 6: — The Technology Choices That Make or Break It
Chapter 7: — Metal Fuel: How It Learned to Survive
Chapter 8: — “Walk-Away” Safety and the Proof Tests
Chapter 9: — Pyroprocessing: Recycling Without Pure Plutonium
Chapter 10: — Waste, Proliferation, Economics, and Why It Was Canceled
Description
Plentiful Energy is a technical-and-historical account of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), a nuclear power system developed at Argonne National Laboratory between 1984 and 1994. Charles Till and Yoon Il Chang—two leaders of the program—reconstruct how decades of earlier fast reactor work (EBR-I and EBR-II) converged into a “whole system” concept: a sodium-cooled fast reactor, metal fuel, pyroprocessing-based recycling, and durable waste forms, all designed to work together on a single site.
The book aims at non-specialists who can tolerate light technical detail. It walks through the engineering choices (fuel, coolant, reactor configuration), the safety logic behind “inherent/passive safety,” the electrorefining chemistry that enables recycling without producing pure plutonium, and the implications for waste longevity and energy security. It also documents the political rise and abrupt cancellation of the IFR program in 1994, arguing that a near-complete technology was halted primarily by policy, not technical failure.
Who Should Listen
- Engineers and scientifically literate readers who want an accessible explanation of fast reactors, metal fuel behavior, and pyroprocessing.
- Energy and climate policy readers curious why a major U.S. advanced nuclear program was canceled despite successful demonstrations.
- Anyone interested in nuclear waste, proliferation debates, and how fuel-cycle design changes the “waste problem.”