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ForewordIt is very timely that Alan Waltar, Donald Todd and Pavel Tsvetkov have undertaken the effort to update the classic Fast Breeder Reactor text, written in 1981 by Alan Waltar and Albert Reynolds. Indeed, there is presently a strong and growing interest in building new nuclear plants as part of the carbon-free solution to the world energy needs and this brings the question of long term supplies, leading to the development of fast breeder reactors.Energy, in abundant and affordable supplies, is universally recognized as basic to the advancement, and indeed survivability, of humanity. The progress of civilization can clearly be traced to the discovery and adoption of new energy sources that have relieved human drudgery and allowed more time for enhancing the quality of life. The energy needs are still growing, in relation with the increase of the world population and also to reduce the important fraction of humanity, near 25% today, which yet has access to any organized energy network.Unfortunately, most of the energy we use today is coming from burning fossil fuels, resources that are in finite supply and not evenly distributed throughout the globe. Furthermore, the continual burning of carbon based fuels is widely considered to be polluting our atmosphere, in particular by enhancing the greenhouse effect, thus creating serious concerns about the risks associated with climate change.The electrical component is a growing part of our total energy consumption, currently based nearly 70% upon the burning of fossil fuels. Therefore, many nations are now giving serious attention to developing non-carbon, renewable sources of providing electricity. As such, a plethora of windmill farms and solar plants are being constructed, largely financed with substantial subsidies from supportive government agencies. Such a movement can generally be embraced as progressive, for we will need to seriously address any form of producing electricity that can lessen our dependency on fossil fuels.But the use of such renewable resources is limited because of their own characteristics: they rely on a very diffuse source of energy, rays of the sun, which means large collection areas to produce meaningful supplies of energy, and they are intermittent, thus requiring either massive and expensive storage units or the availability of other means to generate a continuous supply of electricity. Hence, it is essential to have another reliab...
