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pfdietzyesterday at 5:18 PM1 replyview on HN

"Old" as in "we built it and discovered it's not wanted". The French basically gave up on the idea of fast reactors (as did the Japanese, although their fast reactor program appears to have been an excuse to obtain a stockpile of separated plutonium in case they need to make bombs). There's no market for them. The Russians have continued to try, but they're selling LWRs.

The big problem with fission is that it's too expensive. Fast reactors make that main problem worse. There is no economic margin to do fancy (and expensive) things to try to address the lesser issue of nuclear waste.


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gregbotyesterday at 10:17 PM

>There's no market for them

In an economic sense, when compared to burner reactors, this is correct. As the rise of wind and solar has shown however, political will and popularity matter more than pure economics. Burner reactors are more of a 22nd century technology, assuming the grid storage problem doesn’t get solved by then and we just go full renewable on economics. But nothing is set in stone

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