[jabl]

> with breeder reactors and reprocessing (super expensive, but that's another story)

Till and Chang argue in their book about the IFR that if we start building IFR style plants for production usage it's entirely possible that costs drop to about LWR levels.

So far fast breeders have been expensive, but that's largely because they've all been one-off designs largely for R&D purposes without much effort to reduce costs.

For reprocessing, their argument is that electrorefining (pyroprocessing) would be much cheaper than PUREX. To the point that the lower fuel acquisition cost and cheaper waste disposal could make it roughly comparable to once-through LWR costs, even with relatively cheap uranium.

Such a shame IFR was shut down.. sigh