Hi Denis,

Thanks for the context.

I live in Kyoto City, Japan, not far from a snowballed experimental fast-breeder reactor on the coast of Fukui Prefecture. They had problems with the sulphur cooling system a few years ago (hot sulphur leaks that killed one or two front-line workers), and now it has become public knowledge that there are active faults under the reactor.

After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, nobody trusts nuclear energy here, and the industry has been stockpiling waste (spent fuel) in risky, barely protected water pools all over the country in the hope that the technology for reprocessing waste and generating more energy will take off.

Meanwhile basic research on how to avoid generating the most toxic wastes appears to have been stalled (according to a Scientific American article I read a few years ago).

Nuclear energy could be a lot more efficient and clean, but introducing radically new technology would put the existing nuclear industries out of business. This is a global, structural problem.

We should be talking about this in our energy research communication group !

Unfortunately, I don't know enough to really lead any discussions there.

This pictures are elements of Moskow Meson Factory, nuclear physics research center based on the beam of 600 Mev proton linac. Project mean power of pulsed beam is 600 kW. In fact, beam target is equivalent of a pulsed reactor with fast neutron spectrum and the same power.
This center was build by Russian Academy of Sciences as a part of fast breeder nuclear reactors research program.

a beautiful perspective.. after which i understand nothing (or not even that) :-)

Accelerating structure of proton linac, from 100 to 600 Mev, frequency 991 MHz.

Maximum pulsed current, limited by space charge of accelerated protons 0,1 ampere. Focus structure F0D0. Length of this part is 360 meters.