Best Nuclear Reactor?

[GWestphal]

With 4th gen reactor designs out there, is there a best? Or is the a best for certain regions? The only one I really know much about is the pebble bed reactor design. What design do you think the world should start implementing?

 

[Howard]

You can't build a gen 4 reactor right now.

 

[Subyman]

No way to know right now. Any recommendation would be pretty academic since they are still 20-30 years away from actually being built as commercial power reactors. You can pretty much take out the fast reactors from the running. The VHTR and molten salt reactors still have a lot to overcome and haven't proven to be worth the additional safety issues that go along with keeping molten salt close to a large amount of water (the heat exchanger.)

To be honest, iterative changes to PWRs and CANDU reactors would be perfectly fine for the next 100-200 years. IMO, the SCW reactors are the best bet. They are built upon the decades of experience running BWRs and PWRs and give a substantial increase in efficiency while also reducing the two phase design of the more efficient PWR (relative to the BWR.)

If you want to know why I say fast reactors aren't going to be around any time soon just look at the Phenix reactor. It was an economic nightmare with horrible up time.