5 ms·
Aren't breeder reactors mostly still on the drawing board? I get that they're very promising, but my understanding is that there remain some non-trivial issues
by mikepurvis 5y ago
Aren't breeder reactors mostly still on the drawing board? I get that they're very promising, but my understanding is that there remain some non-trivial issues to work out around corrosion and so on.
Anyway, I'm totally a believer in nuclear power for a greener future (yay Michael Schellenberger), but we need to keep these discussions honest: the path forward is to right now be building hundreds of copy-paste instances of existing, proven designs, not making the discussion about what might be possible with technology that's in development or not really in use at scale.
- Ottolay 5y agoSee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor Japan and India also have them. The problem seems to be that at least the Sodium type are more expensive to operate than traditional nuclear plants, so even though the technology has been around for a while, no countries are building very many of them.
- p_l 5y agoAnother is the small modular SVBR-100, which is essentially civilian version of submarine reactor that could be packed onto single rail car, and has no sodium nor fluoride involved. The problem is that since 1995 or so there was never enough funding to go to production.