> reused with fast reactors

Please name an industrial ready-to-deploy fast reactor. AFAIK there it doesn't exist, therefore its (after decades of expensive R&D in many nations) just a vague hope, not a potential part of the solution.

many proved it worked, including the Phenix and Superphenix, but were closed due to political reasons. Now russia is the leader with bn-600 and india/china are catching up

Phenix was not industrial (250 MWe) but a research reactor. Superphenix was an attempt to haul it to industrial scale and it failed to do so, just as every other similar project.

Russia BN-600 is obsolete and was so leaky (sodium!) is isn't even funny. It was superseded by the BN-800 which started in 2014 and has various problems (most related to fuel, the core of this challenge). This path is officially paused (a planned BN-1200 project didn't start). If it works satisfactorily, as you implicitly claim, please state why it isn't declined (other units built) while Russia tries another breeder architecture (BREST-300, using lead instead of sodium)?

India is even farther away, encountering major difficulties with a prototype ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor ).

China is also exploring ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFR-600 )

Nothing industrial and ready-to-deploy, as I wrote it.

> phenix and superphenix were closed mainly for political reasons

Phénix is not pertinent, it worked perfectly but was a research reactor (small, expensive...).

Superphenix never reached the industrial stage, even the enterprise exploiting it (NERSA) never said so. They simply declared that they were willing to continue and hoping to reach the goal (13 years after first reactor divergence, 24 years after project start, with gigantic amounts of money poured at the project).

Does “catching up” mean this is actually working somewhere it can be measured - like we have been with renewables - or is this still theoretical?

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Fuel-loading-beg... https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Fuel-for-Chinese... I mean, google is free

Google is free but you linked to a prototype and a “will be” article rather than proven results.

they did build the stuff, so 'catching up' is a pretty correct statement. I didn't say they catched up, for that they'll need much more time and effort, but they do have progress

It’s still a non-answer to the original question. Look, we all get that you’re a fan and there’s nothing wrong with that (especially here) but overstating things does not help the cause. Nuclear power proponents often act like there’s some conspiracy to suppress the technology when basic economics is a simpler explanation. In this case, it’s great that progress is happening but it’s still the case that if our goal is decarbonizing you’ll see almost immediate reductions taking the same money and bringing renewables online a decade or more sooner. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t consider nuclear for some of the edge cases but there’s still too much R&D needed for it to be a primary source.