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France has 50 plants? They need to go headfirst into modular reactors. Usually I would say that nuclear research and development dollars are wasted: they just
by AtlasBarfed 5y ago
France has 50 plants? They need to go headfirst into modular reactors.
Usually I would say that nuclear research and development dollars are wasted: they just displace purchasing solar/wind/storage. But with that big of an extant installed base, with approved/regulated sites and various other infrastructure, they may be the only country that can save money staying nuclear.
Of course, being a LFTR stan I would push for mass manufactured LFTRs the size of a couple shipping containers that can be decommissioned on a regular basis. 50 big nuclear plants replaced with about 1000 or more shipping container sized reactors on a replacement schedule.
LFTR would reduce waste, and separation of other fission products could be done elsewhere.
WHat is the French resistance to LFTR? I know that the US has strange bureaucratic resistances to LFTR built into academic funding and their regulatory agencies as an artifact of the ORNL reactor vs PWR reactor politics from the 1950s.
If France just piggybacking on the solid fuel rod reprocessing industry of the US and its same resistance to new reactor designs?
- VaxWithSex 5y agoNone of these modular "blueprint reactors" has been build. not a single one is producing power on gridscale.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoYou are correct, but nuclear is weird: it has so many regulatory and NIMBY hurdles that change is hard. However, what has happened is that many many people have taken a swing at scalable reactors for a long time in the design phase. And we do know the test ORNL reactor for MSR/LFTR practically fit in a closet, at least for the actual reactor. So there is an opportunity.
- ryathal 5y agoThe U.S. Navy has a few hundred samples built. They just put boats around them.
- _ph_ 5y agoIts 56 even. That is a huge fleet to replace. I am not in the details of their decisions, but I think one can simply conclude that if a nation, which is so all-in on nuclear like France, doesn't have a good answer yet, it seems to be a non-trivial problem. France has their own fuel reprocessing industry and had breeding reactors in the past but gave up on them.