173 comments on Russia's Unique SVBR-100 Nuclear Reactor
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173 comments on Russia's Unique SVBR-100 Nuclear Reactor
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Breeders have been around for quite some time now. It's just that nuclear fuel and waste handling are both really cheap, so there hasn't been any real economic incentives to abandon conventional reactors for the more frugal but also more complex breeders.
SVBR-100 and other ideas such as LFTR can be employed large-scale (replacing all other electricity generation) with moderate effort the day economic fundamentals change. Such a change would be heavy carbon taxation, for example, or peak coal. Until then, uranium reserves can easily provide the small amounts of uranium necessary for our small fleet of conventional plants.
In contrast with pressurized water thermal reactors (PWRs)and sodium cooled fast breeder reactors (SFRs), the heavy metal reactors (lead and lead-bismuth) are being designed to be much simpler in concept and operation with an absolute top priority being given to safety. In other words they are supposed to be idiot proof. Safety systems for the SVBR-100 reactors are 100% independent of the operational status or conditions of the turbines and generators within the electric plant of which they are a part.
In a fast reactor world as the Russians conceptualize it, the reactors are supposed to be relatively cheap, and very robust. The largest "nuclear" investments in an economy that is built around fast reactors will be in the plants constructed to handle fuel reprocessing, recycling and disposal.