Engineering360: "Accident-tolerant fuel is powering this nuclear reactor"

This seems more a publicity move than public safety.

There is so much nuclear waste now that cannot be disposed of without killing everything in our streams, oceans and us. An article yesterday explained that one holding company has so much radioactive water they are afraid of an unintentional nuclear reaction, while others have holding containers leaking into the groundwater.

I was hoping this article was about shifting to a thorium fuel. It is long lived mining waste product that could provide the same level of power, for pennies on the dollar, just not the waste that is used to make nuclear weapons. The only reason the oil producing countries wanted nuclear reactors.

With thorium reactors, if damaged there is no contamination. there is no contaminated waste disposal, the savings in the billions a year paid for waste storage alone would pay for the replacement.

Randolph: I think you're talking about fast reactors, which I like too, but hear too little about. People seem fixated on thermal reactors, but the fast reactors are about 100 times better. And they can use for fuel the "waste" from thermal reactors. Also thorium and depleted uranium.