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Best Nuclear Reactor?

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G

GWestphal

Golden Member
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?
 
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.
 
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