New 'Safer' Nuclear Reactor May Offer Hope for Waste Disposal

摘要

British scientists are to research whether a new type of supposedly safer, smaller, cheaper nuclear reactor could help reduce the UK's radioactive waste stocks. A team from Cambridge will investigate the potential for using thorium-based fuel in a new reactor under development in the US that would be small enough to manufacture in a factory but produce as much energy as current power plants. Using a combination of the abundant material thorium and plutonium from the UK's waste stocks to power a nuclear reactor could theoretically reduce reliance on the rarer element uranium and produce waste that was dangerously radioactive for a much shorter period.