power generation
Interesting technological development from MIT's Technology Review.
I am not totally against nuclear power, rather I am hesitant about its implementation due to the incompetence of many national governments. The long term implications of its use don't seem to register beyond short term mind set of politicians. In the case of the UK, nuclear power was merely away to get the bomb. The nature of many reactors in use today do seem to reflect that original mindset among the leading nuclear development nations; USA, USSR, France, UK (I am not a nuclear engineer so be nice).
If the mindset had been more around power generation and NOT have nasty but nuclear bomb type material, this type of reactor might have been developed earlier.
Travelling wave reactors consume fissile material before it can be extracted, it never needs to be opened during its operational life and runs on what would normally be considered waste material in the traditional nuclear fuel cycle. Of course there is still the issue of waste disposal, hence my scepticism.
However, if nations are going to go ahead and build nuclear reactors, they could do worse than this type.
