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You can just as easily dig up ordinary LWRs from that era with that same degree of ridiculous cost overrun -- the kind of LWRs of which are cheap today and exist in the hundreds. It was not so much the particular design, SFR or LWR, but the toxic and obstructionist political climate common to both. Carter banned fuel reprocessing -- the key part of the Clinch River fuel cycle -- while that plant was being built. Wikipedia says that SNR-300 construction was interrupted for 4 years from political outrage at Three Mile Island, and a redesign ordered when it was half built.

>The next generation of reactors in development are only around 15% more efficient than the best extant facilities.

I'm not sure what figure you're referring to, but breeder reactors with full reprocessing are 200 times more efficient than LWRs.



My point is that every breeder reactor ever built has been a massive boondoggle. Certainly there were political reasons behind the failure of some of them, but it remains a completely unproven technology. The technology may well work brilliantly, but we can't base the future of our civilisation on the assumption that eventually we will build a breeder that actually works. The history of nuclear technology is littered with expensive dead-ends.

Breeders might hypothetically be very efficient indeed, but the plants we are actually building or have actual plans to build are PWRs and BWRs with only marginally better efficiency.




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