[jddw]

First, the reactors are consuming the fuel while deployed, but no waste is stored at the sites. It is stored centrally so there are a few centralized sites that hold the waste for a few hundred years. After which you could make things out of the material and use them around your home without issue.

The reactors cannot be deviated for nefarious purposes. And the materials are not less secure. The materials are being consumed by the reactor, and they are not dangerous as they are. In fact these reactors could destroy weapons grade material that is slated to be destroyed for fractions of the cost of programs the US is pursuing. Plus the reactors are secured when deployed. They are also buried and completely cooled by natural forces so they always stay cool. No fuel overheating.

The reactors cannot be hacked, and if a bad actor commandeered one, all they could do is turn it off safely. Even if they tried to make it hotter it would just turn off and cool down. There just isn't enough fuel in the core to do anything else.

[abalone]

To store it centrally, wouldn't you be transporting nuclear waste that is still toxic for hundreds of years all over the place? What if there's an accident during transportation? More reactors = more transportation = more nuclear waste accidents on the highway. Right?

> The reactors cannot be deviated for nefarious purposes.

I'm no nuclear expert but a quick search on Thorium reactors brings up some controversy over its potential for weaponization:

Thorium, when being irradiated for use in reactors, will make uranium-232, which is very dangerous due to the gamma rays it emits. This irradiation process may be able to be altered slightly by removing protactinium-233. The irradiation would then make uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232, which can be used in nuclear weapons to make thorium into a dual purpose fuel. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Po... which cites http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is-the... which cites Nature

[chinathrow]

All your statements seems to good to be true. Can you back them up with some facts?

[DennisP]

It's a 1MW reactor. That's a thousand times smaller than conventional nuclear reactors. It doesn't seem unlikely that it could be passively cooled.

For the rest, a great source is the book Plentiful Energy, by the chief scientists of another small fast-reactor project at Argonne. For that reactor, the fuel is a mix of plutonium isotopes which can't be used for bombs and are much more difficult to purify than natural uranium ore. The waste goes back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple centuries.

http://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Energy-technology-scientific...