[Gwypaas]

We've had fast reactors since the 70s. It is simply that they are even less economical than regular nuclear power plants, and those are already completely uncompetitive compared to renewables.

> Breeder reactors are costly to build and operate. About $100 billion (in 2007 dollars) has been spent worldwide on breeder reactor research and development and on demonstration breeder reactor projects. Yet none of these efforts has produced a reactor that is economically competitive with a conventional light water reactor. The capital costs per kilowatt of generating capacity of demonstration liquid sodium-cooled fast reactors have typically been more than twice those of water cooled reactors of comparable capacity. Although it could be expected that once in production this cost ratio would decline, today few, if any, experts argue that breeder reactor capital costs could be less than 25 percent higher than that of similarly sized water cooled reactors.4

> The breeder reactor dream is not dead, but it has receded far into the future. In the 1970s, breeder advocates were predicting that the world would have thousands of breeder reactors operating this decade. Today, they are predicting commercialization by approximately 2050. In the meantime, the world has to deal with the hundreds of tons of separated weapons-usable plutonium that are the legacy of the breeder dream and more being separated each year by Britain, France, India, Japan, and Russia.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/066003007