One of the two ever commercial breeder reactors in the US melted down outside Detroit, which might have something to do with there not being any more.
But the breeder reactor thing seems to be bizarre Reddit lore that has almost no connection to reality. The hype is based on a non-breeder research reactor that showed that it's theoretically possible to build a reactor with a breeder cycle that transmutes some the waste with the longest half-life into waste with a shorter half-life. As far as I know, no such reactor has been designed, proposed, or built.
In real life, there are only two reasons why a breeder reactor has ever been built:
To reprocess weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear fuel as part of an arms control treaty
To supplement expensive enriched uranium fuel with cheap depleted uranium (which was prevalent due to the massive production of nuclear weapons that would later necessitate #1)
One of the two ever commercial breeder reactors in the US melted down outside Detroit, which might have something to do with there not being any more.
But the breeder reactor thing seems to be bizarre Reddit lore that has almost no connection to reality. The hype is based on a non-breeder research reactor that showed that it's theoretically possible to build a reactor with a breeder cycle that transmutes some the waste with the longest half-life into waste with a shorter half-life. As far as I know, no such reactor has been designed, proposed, or built.
In real life, there are only two reasons why a breeder reactor has ever been built: