[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

MSR Thorium is the only reasonable power source going 100+ years into the future, sadly no one wants to re-visit the technology from the 1950s that makes 99% less nuclear waste and cannot melt down like current reactors.

Funny how that works. I can shed some light on a few small pieces to this puzzle.
Actually we could have about 96% less nuclear waste if the spent fuel was reprocessed to 2nd generation fuel. Then after 40 years the concentrated waste would lose 99.99% of its radio activity. Raw nuclear reactor waste will remain furiously radio active for thousands of years. The secret is to remove the small amount of waste isotopes that poison the rapid nuclear fission reaction used to create steam and reuse the fuel.
Thorium is useless for creating plutonium for nuclear weapons. That is why the DoE/DoD wouldn't fund it.
We could build reactors that look a lot like what is currently in use, I believe they are called generation III+. They can be built to not melt down. But they are more expensive. They use a reservoir of water held at the top of the containment dome to flood the reactor core in the event of a possible melt down. This works keeping the raw nuclear waste stored on site from melting down which it would if the flow of cooling water were ever cut off.