Talk:Breeder reactor

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Contents 1 Article recreation 2 When & where are breeder reactors used?

There is another page on this subject fast breeder. To my knowldege, breeders require more highly enriched uranium since the fast-neutron cross section of U235 is smaller, so greater enrichment is needed to sustain fission. I'm no expert, though. The early graphite reactors which produced plutonium used unenriched fuel, enrichment having yet to be accomplished. But I don't know that breeders are designed or in service which, as roadrunner suggests, use unenriched uranium.

Please sign your posts on talk pages, User:BobCMU76. (This is possibly a futile message as your contributions ceased in 2003. Hope you are well.) Andrewa 17:59, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article recreation

There are possible, proposed and even prototype breeders that are not fast neutron reactors, and therefore not fast breeder reactors. These use thorium feed stock to breed U-233. To accomodate these types, I intend to recreate this article.

I haven't looked to see whether the material from previous versions of this article was actually merged elsewhere, because it contained so many mistakes and confusions anyway that IMO it's better to start again. Andrewa 17:59, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. See also discussion at Talk:Fast breeder reactor#BWR risk and article name. Andrewa 20:46, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] When & where are breeder reactors used?

I looked up this article to see if Breeder reactors are currently in use, or haven't been developed yet (I've heard both claims). The article isn't quite as clear as it could be - I get the impression here that they're in use, but I couldn't see information on when they were first developed and when are where they are/were used for power generation. --Singkong2005 ^talk 05:04, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

It depends what you mean. Some breeder reactors are in use ( such as the Pheonix reactor in France ). However, in many countries nuclear power has been opposed politically and thus many breeder reactors have been shut down, or are planned to be shut down, with various justifications. As an example, the US currently bans reprocessing of spent fuel and closed down EBR-II as a consequence. In France a large breeder reactor called Superphoenix was shut down because it was deemed more expensive than PWR reactors ( tho there are allegations of this decision being politically rather than economically motivated ). In the UK the breeder reactor program was slashed as the government withdrew support from the nuclear industry in general. India runs a few breeder reactors and are planing building more. Japan has a breeder reactor, Monju, scheduled to be reopened in a few years after having been shut down for repairs and safety inspections following a sodium leak that damaged it's secondary coolant loop. All in all there are a few breeder reactors actually used for power generation, there are a few planned, and quite a few are being used for research related to the Generation IV reactor initiative. Additionally, several countries, including the UK and France, run reprocessing programs to extract the plutonium breed from their thermal reactors. Most of this information can be found in the fast breeder reactor and nuclear reprocessing articles.137.205.192.27 22:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)