Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The United States government is planning to spend more than $10,000 million to develop a liquid metal fast breeder reactor. The programme is the highest priority energy research and development effort supported by public funds, but it has recently come under heavy criticism and it is beset by technical problems. In the second of a series of three articles, Colin Norman reports.
