Are either of those similar to the Advanced CANDU reactor design?

Sorry to be repeating myself from 6 years ago, but the Advanced CANDU design just sounds too cool to ignore.



EDIT: I just looked up the Wikipedia entry for ESBWR. It looks like it's cheap to build, cheap to maintain, and quite safe -- but unlike the CANDU designs, there's no mention of any ability for the reactor to operate on a lower grade of nuclear fuel.

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The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.

Sorry - I'm not familiar enough with CANDU, advanced or older.

Are Fast Integral Reactors More Economical than Third Generation Reactors?

I've recently been told that 4th generation Fast Integral Reactors are a huge advance over 3rd generation reactors, but I'm afraid I don't really see the advantage, or at least not from an economics point of view. I appreciate that they use much less fuel and produce much less waste than standard reactors, however the cost of fuel and waste storage is only a small fraction of the total cost of nuclear power. I believe it is about 7%. And while reducing the cost of nuclear power by 7% would be beneficial, Fast Integral Reactors would generally require a secondary cooling loop and an on site reprocessing plant which would add to the total capital cost. This means they may not have a cost advantage and it will be quite some time before we learn if they do. It has been suggested that by using a standard design and modular construction their cost per kilowatt could be low, but the same applies to other reactor designs.

I've been told that their much more efficient use of fuel is a big advantage, however, this doesn’t appear to be a large advantage to me. Current known reserves of uranium are enough for about 130 years at current consumption rates and unless the rate of reactor construction increases, the total number of reactors in the world may decrease in coming years as old ones reach the ends of their operating life. This means there is no real need to rush to develop more efficient reactors. We lose nothing by waiting because almost all the uranium and plutonium in spent fuel from traditional reactors will still be there in usable form. It won’t go to waste. Well, it is nuclear waste, but you know what I mean. So if in 20 years, or 30 years or a hundred years we decide we need Fast Integral Reactors, we won’t have lost anything by delaying.

Is anyone actively comtemplating moving an IFR design to production? The Nuclear Energy Institute's page on new reactor designs doesn't even list the IFR.

Barry Brook is pushing for them in Australia. He's a nice guy but seems overly impressed by the fuel efficiency and reduced waste angle. I really don't understand why an Australian would want people to use uranium more efficiently. And while nuclear waste worries a lot of people and there are all sorts of problems with yukky mountain in the US, when you live not that far from the largest natural deposit of uranium in the world, a little nuclear waste doesn't seem that scary. Not that I would want to lick it or anything.

Except running into a massive dearth of energy and resulting societal mayhem that'll make WWII look like a stubbed toe during the mandatory transition to other fuels caused by oil and gas run running out...

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

Why would we run out of energy? It's not going anywhere. It's still there in the spent fuel from current reactors and can be used in Integral Fast Reactors in the future if that turns out to be helpful.

Oh, I'm not talking about nuclear energy - I think that's great. I'm talking about our seriously jeapordized overdependance on fossil fuels.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.