Reply #5: I had no idea that Monju was to restart. Some of my nuclear friends are not as fond of plutonium [View All]

as I am, but I'm glad to see this reactor running again, although truth be told there are many better approaches to fast reactors than LMFBR.

In order to derive the energy value of the uranium that has already been mined we will certainly want to have fast spectrum reactor experience.

Right now the longest operating experience belongs to the former Soviet reactor in Kazakhstan, the BN-350, the small Phoenix - the Superphoenix remains closed because of ignorance and stupidity - and the Indian fast breeder prototype.

But like I say, this sort of reactor is hardly the best approach to fast spectrum systems - and I'm somewhat ambivalent about it - but as China and India both plan extensive FBR programs, each planning on building 4 - it will be good to accumulate more operable reactor years of experience.

Although I strongly believe in the necessity for using fast spectrum reactors, I also realize that we can make very good use of our depleted uranium reserves - which are an enormous asset - by engaging in a thermal Pu -> Th/U-233 -> U-233/U238 -> Pu cycle. This is much simpler and could be employed readily with a few tweaks in must existing thermal reactor infrastructure.

The IEAE's fast reactor working group consists of 14 countries: Belarus, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Republic of Korea, Russia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States of America. Belgium and Sweden have observer status on the working group.

We may list the members who have or have had official "nuclear phase out" programs: Germany, Italy, Belgium and Sweden. I guess even they don't take their phase outs seriously. No one should. Nuclear phase outs are all environmental disasters designed by the fossil fuel industry as a red herring to keep itself rolling in "green," where "green" refers not to any environmental concern but purely to money, money, money.

There are some other ironies in this group. For instance it would appear that Belarus is not tuned into all the rhetoric of lightweight scientifically illiterate bloggers who think that Chernobyl is the only reactor that ever operated, even though Belarus experienced the most contamination from Chernobyl. They seem to be laboring under the belief that everyone in their country wasn't wiped out by Chernobyl, even if lightweight anti-science bloggers wish to represent that everyone in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine died as a result of Chernobyl.

What I don't necessarily like about the working group is that this is a liquid metal crowd. Like I say, there are far better approaches.