Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor Program. Volume III. Environmental Statement Page: 34 of 622
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energy research and development program for the Nation at the request of the
President, allocates about one-quarter of the projected five-year energy research
and development budget for the LMFBR while three-quarters is reserved for other
systems. It is evident that LMFBR research and development should not, and does
not, preclude pursuing any other promising energy technology.
Also, with respect to relative energy research budgets, the opinion is often
expressed by the commenters cited above that far too much money is directed to LMFBR
research and development as compared with alternative technologies. Some of the
commenters then state that if there were more equal funding among the alternatives
they would be developed more quickly and the LMFBR would not be needed. This argu-
ment neglects two key points: the relative stage of the technologies and the
speculative nature of assuming that the alternative technologies will indeed prove
out their potential and become viable energy options.
With regard to the first point, the LMFBR is a high cost technology which is in the
final and most costly stages of its development, the large scale testing and demon-
stration phases. Other high cost technologies, such as controlled thermonuclear
fusion, are in the initial stages of development where research costs are less and
the expensive, large-scale equipment and machines are only beginning to be required.
It is misleading to compare annual costs in a year such as FY 1975 for two technol-
ogies in such disparate stages of development. A better gauge would be to compare
the total projected development costs of CTR (estimated at this early stage to be
in the $8 to 10 billion range for either magnetic confinement or laser fusion) with
a total projected cost for the LMFBR of about the same magnitude.
For other technologies, such as solar energy, geothermal, and wind power, the research
and development costs are relatively less substantial and the funding level should be
correspondingly lower. An optimum level of support should be determined and each
concept funded at a level as close to the optimum as possible. Determining an optimum
level, however, entails many factors in addition to determining the total funds
needed. Many potential alternatives, as the word potential implies, have substantial
uncertainties associated with them, such as the amount of energy actually convertible
to economic use, the geographical distribution of the energy (in order to determine
the importance of the energy source), and the requirement for ancillary technology
such as energy storage (in order to make the energy system functionally meaningful).
These uncertainties must be explored either in advance of full-scale technology
development or at the very least in parallel with it. It would be improvident to
abandon or delay an energy technology option which is in a mature stage of development6P-8
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Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor Program. Volume III. Environmental Statement, report, December 1, 1974; Washington, District of Columbia. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1019855/m1/34/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.