مشروع مفاعل كلينش ريفر المولد

One issue was the continuing escalation in the cost of the project. In 1971 the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that the Clinch River project would cost about $400 million. Private industry promised to contribute the majority of the project cost ($257 million). By the following year, however, projected costs had jumped to nearly $700 million.^[11] By 1981 $1 billion of public money had been spent on the project, and the estimated cost to completion had grown to $3.0-$3.2 billion, with another billion dollars needed for an associated spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility.^[10][12] A Congressional committee investigation released in 1981 found evidence of contracting abuse, including bribery and fraud, that added to project costs.^[12] Before it was finally canceled in 1983, the General Accounting Office of Congress estimated the total project cost at $8 billion.^[9]

Another issue was the high cost of building and operating breeder reactors to produce electricity. In 1981, it was estimated that construction costs for a fast breeder reactor would be twice the cost of building a conventional light-water nuclear reactor of similar capacity. That same year it was estimated that the market price of mined, processed uranium, then $25 per pound, would have to increase to nearly $165 per pound in 1981 dollars before the breeder would become financially competitive with the conventional light-water nuclear reactor. United States electric utility companies were reluctant to invest in such an expensive technology.^[10]

Concerns about potential nuclear weapons proliferation were another serious issue for the commercial breeder reactor program, because this technology produces plutonium that potentially could be used to make nuclear weapons. Because of international concern about proliferation, in April 1977 President Jimmy Carter called for an indefinite deferral of construction of commercial breeder reactors.^[10]

President Carter was a consistent opponent of the Clinch River project. In November 1977, in a statement explaining his veto of a bill to authorize funding for the continuation of the project, Carter said it would be "large and unnecessarily expensive" and "when completed, would be technically obsolete and economically unsound." Furthermore, he said the project would have little value for determining the commercial viability of breeder technology in the United States.^[13]

Congress persisted in keeping the Clinch River project alive over the President's objections, and Carter repeatedly chastised Congress for its actions. In a speech in 1979, after the House Science and Technology Committee had voted to proceed with the project over his opposition, he said "The Clinch River breeder reactor is a technological dinosaur. It's a waste of more than $1-1/2 billion of taxpayers' money. It's an assault on our attempts to control the spread of dangerous nuclear materials. It marches our nuclear policy in exactly the wrong direction. ... This is no time to change America into a plutonium society." Instead of investing public resources in the breeder demonstration project, he urged attention to improving the safety of existing nuclear technology.^[14]