Re:U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Weren’t Built for Climate Change
by fulafel on Monday April 22, 2019 @07:28AM
(#19718028)
No, there were no good enough designs, and after decades of effort they are still elusive: There has been huge amounts of subsidy money poured into breeder reactors and Pu fuel in the west, much later than China Syndrome.
The subsidies have been in the form of the MOX program, PRISM, and other gov funded fuel recycling programs in many countries. The problems remain: weapons grade Pu profileration risk, unviable cost, dearth of demonstrated working large plants due to technical difficulties inherent in the designs, difficulties scaling up to commercial sizes competitive w traditional designs.
Yes, there are many interesting designs on the drawing table, same as it has been for decades...
Not really, what happened is there were "good enough" designs, there was a China Syndrome inspired move away from nuclear, and the government had little to no interest in reactor designs that made it hard to recover weapon materials.
Bill Gates is championing both molten salt and traveling wave reactors that "burn" nuclear waste.
There are other very interesting designs, including the Xscale helium-cooled pebble bed design. It, and many of the molten salt designs, don't require water cooling. Not needing a source of nearby water vastly expands siting options.
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/x-energy-developing-pebbl...
Another interesting design is ThorCon's molten salt reactor, which it recommends siting 100 feet underground, eliminating almost all security issues including plane strike.
http://thorconpower.com/