Problems with fast reactors I worry about are the fear of proliferation (not proliferation) constricting what you can use for fuel and (more so) the plutonium nanoparticle problem w/ MOX fabrication. People still compare nuclear to coal although coal has been economic for a long time for the same reason as the LWR. So much of the literature still looks like a stopped clock. I like fast reactors and molten salts but have a hard time being enthusiastic about HTGR and friends. It requires some kind of reactor that runs at a higher temperature than the LWR. Between the absolutely huge and massive steam turbine and absolutely huge and massive heat exchangers (look at how big the steam generators are in the PWR or the huge tube-in-shell heat exchanger used at Dounreay)Ī closed cycle gas turbine will fit in the employee break room of the turbine house of a conventional LWR. That is, no nuclear reactor which uses a steam turbine is going to be economically competitive with fossil fuel fired gas turbine generators. One of the most interesting features of the FFTF was a sodium-to-air heat exchanger which is a key to fast reactors having superior economics. that was unfortunately shut down for political reasons that, retrospectively, look like a terrible mistake. Look to FFTF for a completely successful fast reactor run in the U.S. Is there going to be a daycare center or country club in there? Where the hell are the cooling towers? I'm all for nuclear power, but we shouldn't be down playing the seriousness of nuclear power systems. I'm disturbed by the way they talk about their reactor as a "community meeting place" with their modern glass A-frame without any power generating equipment. This was not done lightly to a company often featured in the WSJ and Popular Mechanics.ħ. NRC really went out of their way to publicly reject this with press release and all. etc) not unlike the other great MIT nuclear startup Transatomic.Ħ. The founders peddle some serious BS (bitcoin mining, TED talks. The founders lie to congress claiming their reactor “can consume the used fuel from today’s reactors” when each reactor is actually going to require 3 tons of pretty pristine HALEU.ĥ. It has terrible fuel utilization: 1% burn-up of fuel, with 100 metric tons uranium / GWe-year compared to 5-10% in other normal and advanced reactors.Ĥ. It's a fast reactor so lots of high energy neutrons that will cause faster material degradation, higher maintenance cost, more downtime - the economics for fast reactors have never worked (not even in Russia or China), and this is probably why fusion reactors will never be economical (32x greater neutronicity).ģ. It's likely hiding incompetence and lack of design work / maturity.Ģ. The company is totally opaque on even basic design details. I think it is probably a bad reactor and a questionable company.ġ.
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