Russia Makes Decision ...Go with Fast Breeder Reactors...

Sure looks like a better design to me.

Although nuclear power comes with some risk, so does driving a car.

I say build em.

Don't know enough about possible risk involved to make a comment without doing more research on it, which would be intensive.

Russia should also put the risks out there and what contingencies and plans to mitigate them,

Only because I question the level that Russia would put safe guards on any accident.

Let's hope better safeguards than this... ?

The US certainly had their share of nuclear mishaps. They all pale in comparison to this. I hope the Soviets Russians do a better job with this promising approach.

That was my point...... They did not build a concrete containment over the reactor. and as I understand it relied heavily on controls and procedures or Standard operating Procedures. (SOP.

Problem is an SOP is worthless if not followed.

As far as the AP response

Actually the AP thinking he was clever, unintentional made my point.

People were very fortunate it didn't go off with blame to go around, it was just fortunate that United States had enough redundant safety checks in it, interesting enough if it had one less redundancy safety check (because the others failed) it would have went off. In other words, it worked.

Unlike the example you just cited.

Indeed how many accidents could have been avoided had the designers added in 'one more safety check'?

Interesting that you mention blame. Everyone wants to point the finger and place blame when things go wrong, but who lays the responsibility on the engineer when things go right?

.... there is nothing at all interesting about blame. When things go wrong, as I said, there is plenty of blame to go around.

and when mitigating, it also takes courage to challenge the reasoning of why things failed...... face to face and treat it seriously, so it doesn't go off as "it a learning experience", or "better luck next time."

Without hi-jacking this thread......

Lets get back to back to the point. The U.S. put in redundant safety checks (depending on the risk) without a reliance on just one safety contingency.

Will the Russians do the same....... imo, then you have to look at the Russian history, even if the history goes back to the USSR era.

As far as your comment: "but who lays the responsibility on the engineer when things go right?"

Feedback is good, and there are people that love the reinforcement of a job well done.

But for an engineer more times then not, "No news is good news." And if people can't except that, then get into management.

lo volt ....... my comment

"there is nothing at all interesting about blame. "

I took it as you were just being facetious.

A lot of info here....

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Fast-Neutron-Reactors/

I wonder if they took a good look at the Thorium reactor technology as is starting to develop in India and China. It may not be as sexy but I understand it is very safe with no nasty by-products. The CANDU is a safe design that could not have ended in the fashion of the Chernobyl situation since it does not require massive amounts of cooling water instead all you have to do is dump the heavy water to stop the action. I only worked in these stations on shutdowns but the CANDU outside of Nuclear Cost has not had a bad history as far as safety matters are concerned.

Idaho had a breeder reactor a few years ago that had to be shut down. I hope this is a better design.

"they can even be run so they produce no net waste" is a misleading statement centered on the word "net". The new fuel that is bred can offset the waste depleted uranium and plutonium by products so there is no "net" loss of fuel, but to achieve this new U238 has to be added and old depleted uranium and plutonium removed. Agreed the depleted uranium can be recycled but that process produces large amounts of low level waste. The argument that the waste is produced in the recycling process rather than the reactor is just semantics. Not defining plutonium as a waste product because it has a military use is a neat way of writing off what would otherwise be waste. Finally all reactors have to be maintained and in the process the maintenance tools become contaminated. They are then either considered as contaminated waste or decontaminated for re-use, typically by boiling in a vat of hydrofluoric acid. Either option generates low level waste that has to be stored embedded in concrete and buried in special landfill sites.

Dounreay in the UK was the worlds first breeder site and a lot was learned about the use of sodium as a coolant. When I was there in the 1960's corrosion problems created by the sodium were a major headache. If every few years the Russian plants have to have all their corroded stainless steel pipe work replaced, that has to be factored into any waste production equation.