Light water nuclear reactors use half a percent of the energy in nuclear fuel. The rest goes to waste as heavy elements that decay to safe levels of radioactivity over hundreds of thousands of years. What if we could use all of the heavy elements and have a waste that contains only lightweight fission products that decay to background levels of radioactivity in 500 years? This is an advanced reactor design that could use all the energy in nuclear fuel, remove short lived, light fission products as waste with AIROX dry separation and recycle heavier elements in a closed nuclear fuel cycle.
This is General Atomics proposed EM2 250 MWe high temperature, helium gas cooled fast nuclear reactor. They have built helium cooled reactors. It is not new technology but uses 21st century methods and materials. It will use silicon carbide fuel cladding rather than the aluminium alloy cladding used at Chernobyl and Fukushima – where the cladding melted generating hydrogen that then exploded dispersing radioactivity over large areas. The silicon carbide cladding can’t melt down at any feasible temperature. I note that they have recently announced a joint venture with a subsidiary of Électricité de France to develop a 50MWe version aiming for commercial deployment is 2035. A 50MW fast modular reactor (FMR) would be ideal for plug and play use with many applications.
Factory built – runs for 30 years without refueling. Return the entire unit to the factory – no need to open the fuel core on site at all.
Recycle fuel and remove fission products.
Many times using conventional nuclear waste as a source of 100’s of years of safe reliable energy.
Creating much less waste – that has much lower activity.
Terra et Aqua 