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> France has mothballed their entire fast reactor effort, not even building another prototype. Yes due to public pressure/antinuclear lobby. > Fast breeders h
by Kuinox 4y ago
> France has mothballed their entire fast reactor effort, not even building another prototype.
Yes due to public pressure/antinuclear lobby.
> Fast breeders have grave safety issues inherent in their physics.
Yet there has been a dozen of fast breeders reactors, and somes are still operating today.
I trust way more the IPCC forecast on the subjects, than yours. The fully renewable path was rated "very uncertain, very risky" for the exact point I told you.
The fully nuclear path for France was also uncertain and risky, but for another reason, they are uncertain we can build nuclear plant fast enough, which is understandable because they recommand a 2x increase in electricity production.
- pfdietz 4y agoFrance abandoned their fast breeder effort because of serious technical and economic problems. There was no good prospect that anyone would want one, including France. BTW, this shows that for all the talk, France doesn't see nuclear as the global solution to CO2 emissions. Nor does Japan (whose fast breeder program was even more a fiasco) or the US (where we abandoned fast breeders even earlier, after massive cost overruns.) Fast reactors are like ordinary nuclear, only with even more ludicrousness. As for safety, the person to listen to is Edward Teller. He famously and publicly (in 1967) brought up the safety issue I mentioned. Because of that safety issue, I seriously doubt if any heterogenous fast reactor (with conventional fuel elements) would be licensed in the West today. That leaves molten salt fast reactors, but no one has ever built on of those, and they'd have serious problems with neutron damage to reactor structural materials.