In current conditions, is it more expensive to build fast reactors than thermal reactors?

Abstract

From the beginning, the goal in creating fast reactors has been to breed plutonium and to ensure satisfactory rates of nuclear power development despite the scarcity of natural uranium. Because of the significantly scaled-back estimates of nuclear-power development, the need for plutonium breeding is much less urgent. At the same time, new problems are emerging: in the short-term, adequate treatment of the up to 30 tons of plutonium stored at the Mayak Production Combine as a result of chemical reprocessing of uranium fuel at the RT-1 plant; in the long-term, dealing with the long-lived radiotoxic actinides accumulating in spent thermal-reactor fuel. In addition, nuclear disarmament is expected to release up to 100 tons of weapons-grade plutonium, which will pose the problem of optimal use for the nuclear-power industry.Estimates show that fast reactors may be reoriented to the solution of the new global problems: utilization of the accumulated plutonium (without breeding) and the burnup of radiotoxic Np, Am, and Cm. In particular, the plutonium generated by the power and weapons industries and stored at RT-1 could be utilized in a complex including a plant for the production of uranium-plutonium fuel and three or four BN-800 reactors at the South Ural and Belorodsk Atomic Power Plants. The impact of these new stimuli to fast-reactor development may be traced in [1, 2], for example.