Everything I know about breeder reactors comes from the Radioactive Boyscout, which says they sounds great but are insanely unstable and not yet workable.
Is that true? What’s the state of breeder reactors today?
Russia has been operating big ones for decades just fine. The US had a few excellent and beautiful prototype ones (EBR-2 and FFTF), but Clinton shut them down. France built 2 big ones, the first (Phenix) was great and the 2nd (4x larger, SuperPhenix) had various non-nuclear problems and shut down with a poor overall history. China and India both have small ones running fine and big ones under construction.
Many Breeder type reactors also exhibit natural safety characteristics, where they can both shut down and remove afterglow heat with no external power or user intervention at all. This is because of low-pressure coolants like liquid metal or molten salt. They can handle loss of heat sink, loss of flow, and tranisent overpower (e.g. rod widthdrawal) without the control rods going in. Normal water cooled reactors could not survive such events without melting.
So there's a strong argument to be made that while regular reactors are very safe, breeder reactors can be even safer.
France has abandoned their fast breeder effort. As in, put the research on the shelf and stopped funding. That should tell you what they think its prospects are.
Many Breeder type reactors also exhibit natural safety characteristics, where they can both shut down and remove afterglow heat with no external power or user intervention at all. This is because of low-pressure coolants like liquid metal or molten salt. They can handle loss of heat sink, loss of flow, and tranisent overpower (e.g. rod widthdrawal) without the control rods going in. Normal water cooled reactors could not survive such events without melting.
So there's a strong argument to be made that while regular reactors are very safe, breeder reactors can be even safer.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002954...