nuclear-news

Despite Bill Gates’ support, Fourth Generation nuclear reactors look dodgy

some nuclear experts who warn that the promise is a snare and a delusion.

Fourth generation nuclear power may not be the clean energy silver bullet, FinancialTimes, by Ed Crooks, 18 Feb 2010

The huge cost, and delays and budget over-runs in construction, of third generation reactors such as Areva’s EPR, along with concerns about their safety, has inspired a search for new smaller designs, including some that are only the size of a garden shed.

There is also renewed excitement over fourth-generation reactor technology that can use spent uranium fuel as its feed-stock.

Bill Gates has been advocating one version of that technology, the “travelling wave reactor”, and has invested in a company developing it.

The promise is great: cheap power without the waste problems that have still not yet been solved. Gates says we need an “energy miracle”, and fourth generation nuclear power is it. But there are also some nuclear experts who warn that the promise is a snare and a delusion. The International Panel on Fissile Materials, which campaigns against nuclear proliferation, has released a report on “fast breeder” reactors,…The report argues:

The rationale for pursuing breeder reactors – sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit – was based on the following key assumptions: 1. Uranium is scarce and high-grade deposits would quickly become depleted if fission power were deployed on a large scale; 2. Breeder reactors would quickly become economically competitive with the light-water reactors that dominate nuclear power today; 3. Breeder reactors could be as safe and reliable as light-water reactors; and, 4. The proliferation risks posed by breeders and their ‘closed’ fuel cycle, in which plutonium would be recycled, could be managed. Each of these assumptions has proven to be wrong.

One of the big issues is the reactor coolant: liquid sodium….The IPFM report details the instances of the problems this has caused with prototype sodium-cooled reactors in the past…….Regulators will take a lot of convincing that those incidents can be avoided in the future before they will give the go-ahead for sodium-cooled reactors in the US…http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/02/18/fourth-generation-nuclear-power-may-not-be-the-clean-energy-silver-bullet/

February 19, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA | antinuclear, AREVA, fast breeder, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear spin, nuclear technology, nuclear weapons, radioactive