Not necessarily - one of the proposed use cases for SVBR-100, soviet/russian SMR design, back in 1995 was to provide small power plant distributed to cities or industrial areas, providing 100MWe power or combined heating and electricity. They would compete directly with still common metropolitan power plants, especially CHP in cities with municipal heating.
One of the main issues of the design was that we simply do not produce enough bismuth for the lead-bismuth coolant, and lead-only variant was iirc more problematic due to higher operating temperature. The lead-bismuth design was tested for mnay years as submarine reactor.
Russian research actually found polonium to be a net benefit!
Namely, the short half-life and the fact that it undergoes alpha decay into lead meant that a) it was very easy to detect leaks b) cleanup was also easier. Also, the rate of polonium production turned out to be pretty low.
The bigger issue is that Bismuth production would be utterly, completely drained by mass production of SVBR-style reactors.
Comments
Not necessarily - one of the proposed use cases for SVBR-100, soviet/russian SMR design, back in 1995 was to provide small power plant distributed to cities or industrial areas, providing 100MWe power or combined heating and electricity. They would compete directly with still common metropolitan power plants, especially CHP in cities with municipal heating.
One of the main issues of the design was that we simply do not produce enough bismuth for the lead-bismuth coolant, and lead-only variant was iirc more problematic due to higher operating temperature. The lead-bismuth design was tested for mnay years as submarine reactor.
Also, under neutron radiation bismuth transmutes into polonium, which is somewhat nasty to deal with.
Most current research on lead-cooled reactors use pure lead. The downside, as you say, is higher melting temperature.
Russian research actually found polonium to be a net benefit!
Namely, the short half-life and the fact that it undergoes alpha decay into lead meant that a) it was very easy to detect leaks b) cleanup was also easier. Also, the rate of polonium production turned out to be pretty low.
The bigger issue is that Bismuth production would be utterly, completely drained by mass production of SVBR-style reactors.