Recent developments in both the Congress and various federal agencies may have significantly altered the once rosy future of the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) program. Only four years ago, the program was endorsed by the Nixon Administration for commercial development in this decade as urgently as the Kennedy Administration pledged to place an astronaut on the moon by the end of the last.¹ As recently as his State of the Union Message last January, President Ford stressed the importance of the breeder reactor as a means of achieving energy independence. But the program has received an increasing amount of criticism over the last several years on the basis of seemingly inherent environmental, safety and economic problems. A battle royal thus seems to be brewing over the breeder, of which we may have seen only the opening skirmishes. This Article will recount and examine the arguments of both sides in this dispute, and will then focus on certain recent legislative and administrative developments in an attempt to determine where the breeder program now stands and to discern the likely directions of future conflict in this area.