Uranium is $128.30/kg
After enrichment, conversion and fabrication that’s $3400/kg for 4.95% fuel.
At 36-45MWd/kg and a net thermal efficiency of 25% or $12.5/MWh up front.
With a 90 month lead time (72 month fuel cycle and 18 months inventory) at 3% this is $16.2/MWh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superphénix
Super Phoenix was a prototype super breeder reactor built in France. It has issues in the first years (normal for a prototype) but by the end it was running with an availability of 96%.
Like every other program, if it never made more fissile material than was loaded with, and then ran on that material, it’s just a U235 reactor that caught fire more often
Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think superphenix used any U235. The fuel is Pu239 and U238.
So I don’t understand your claim since no U235 was used in this reactor.
Edit: The reactor in talking about never caught fire. Your whole message is false information
For anyone still reading, Phenix’s fuel cycle (superphenix never really did anything at all except break down but it’s basically the same, just a little bit higher burnup so slightly more Pu and energy at the last step).
Mine 3000t of uranium ore from Nigeria. Leave 2999t of very low level radioactive heavy-metal laden rock and sulfuric acid slurry behind in a poorly built dam for the people of Arlit to deal with.
Separate 130kg of ~4% enriched U with 5kg of U235. Leave 870kg of depleted but highly toxic and corrosive UF6 in a barrel for your grandkids to deal with.
Put the 130kg of fuel in a LWR. Get ~100TJ (140TJ in a gen iii reactor nowadays).
Separate the 1kg of Pu remaining, dump most of the Cs, Tc99 and a few other fission products into the north sea (which is still detectable in safe, but high levels in fish in Norway). This bit costs more than mining the fuel did. Radiate your own people a little with Xe-85.
“Save” the 123kg of Uranium with 1.2kg of fissile isotopes in a “strategic reserve”. Nobody with a centrifuge anywhere outside of Mayak will ever enrich this because it is highly contaminated with U234, U236 and U232. It’s waste. You could pretend it had 20TJ in it if you were a nukebro.
Put the 1kg of Pu in Phenix. Fission 20g of it. Get 200GJ.
Now you have 20g of super-weapons grade plutonium and 980g of plutonium that is too full of Pu240, Pu241, Pu242, Am and a few other elements to use. It’s waste, nobody will ever enrich it.
Congratulations! You did a closed-loop fuel cycle! Energy solved! You have 200GJ worth of fissile material and 0.1% more energy than just using an LWR! If you did it again you could get 0.101% extra energy!
Now let’s go spend the same amount as $85/W PV for the same energy output costs in 1976 on superphenix!
The Pu came from either a graphite pile or an LWR like all other Pu and wasn’t involved in any process that made more than was inserted and turned into waste. MOX with extra steps and no closed cycle is still just MOX.
Also it shut down in 1992 because of air in the molten hot sodium. What do you call hot oxidising sodium?
So far we’ve got:
Combining oxygen with sodium isn’t fire.
Running for a total of 6 months in ten years is 96% availability.
Net consumption of fissile material with no attempt at reprocessing into fuel for another cycle is breeding.
Net importing electricity from germany (and importing every month except for spring and autumn where local wind and solar is most abundant) is exporting “large amounts”.
Do you even understand how ridiculous you sound? Like is this a self-humiliation thing?
Also you’re lying about the second part https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=178
You see, the rule of thumb is very easy. If a nukebro or industry PR tells you something, there’s a 96% chance it’s a lie until someone else checked and they backpedalled at least 5 times. This is in spite of being forced to report the truth through other channels much of the time.