After over €700mn in investment, France scraps plans for 4th-gen nuke reactor

The French nuclear agency has admitted it axed plans to build a prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor – at least, in the foreseeable future – after spending over a decade and hundreds of million of euros on its development.

The decision to not build a prototype of any sort for the ASTRID project (Advanced Sodium Technological Reactor for Industrial Demonstration) was first reported by the French daily Le Monde on Friday. The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the country’s nuclear agency, has confirmed it washed its hands of the “dead” project and is not spending any resources or money to bring it to life.

As of late 2017, the project amassed over €730 million ($803 million) in investment, according to public auditor data quoted by Le Monde. The estimated costs of the whole venture – if a prototype had been actually constructed – would have approached a whopping €5 billion ($5.5 billion).

While a revised program for the development of the so-called 4th-generation reactor is expected to be unveiled by the end of the year, the agency admitted the actual industrial use of such an installation belongs to a rather distant future.

The ASTRID project was to be the successor to France’s three experimental fast reactors – Rapsodie, Phenix and Superphenix – all of which were decommissioned long ago. Had the project materialized, it was expected to yield a 600 MW sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor, built at the Marcoule Nuclear Site. Reactors of this type can utilize isotopes, unsuitable as fuel for the pressurized water reactors (PWR) that drive the majority of the world’s nuclear plants. In theory, they can be used to recycle nuclear waste and produce more fission material than the reactor itself needs to operate (hence the ‘breeder’ name).

One of the main problems with such reactors – though at the same time an advantage – is the liquid metal coolant, sodium, utilized instead of water. Unlike water, sodium stays liquid at very high temperatures and does not require heavy pressurized hulls to keep it inside. Chemical reactivity of the element, however, is a major problem, as any leaks can easily lead to fires and explosions – as the infamous 1995 blaze at Japan’s Monju Nuclear Power Plant showed.

The only two industrial-grade reactors of the type – BN-600 and BN-800 – are operated by Russia at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant. A few other nations, however, including China and India, have operational experimental installations with the fast-breeder reactors.

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