New reactor technology under development all but eliminates waste and safety problems of the old fission reactors. It's actually a revival of an old idea, the molten salt reactor, by Transatomic Power:
... fueled by uranium or spent nuclear fuel (it burns waste)This seems to have a lot of potential. False bogeyman though CO2 emissions are, Transatomic's sales pitch hypes the global warming scare as a reason to go nuclear, but that's pretty standard these days.
... extremely efficient fuel utilization ... reducing the total volume of waste by 96%. ... majority of the waste ...remains radioactive for only a few hundred years, rather than hundreds of thousands of years.
... extremely safe (walk-away safe), and does not require active cooling, even in the worst-case accident scenarios.
... molten salt remains liquid at atmospheric pressure, even at the very high temperatures present in a nuclear reactor ... does not require a full containment dome ...
