There was a concept a long time ago that you would do a different type of reactor called a "fast reactor," that would make a bunch of another element called plutonium, and then you would pull that out, and then... ...
The nuclear industry has this amazing record, even equipment from generations one and two. But nuclear mishaps tend to come in these big events - Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and now Fukushima - so it's more visible.
So we can simulate Richter-10 earthquakes. We simulate 70-foot waves coming into these things. Very cool. We basically say no human should ever be required to do anything, because if you judge by Chernobyl and Fukushima, the human element is... ...
The nuclear approach I'm involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There's a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true - many decades of building demo plants,... ...
The part of uranium that's fissile - when you hit it with a neutron, it splits in two - is about 0.7%. The reactors we have today are burning that 0.7%.
Our flame is taking the normal depleted uranium - the 99.3 percent that's cheap as heck, and there's a pile of it sitting in Paducah, Kentucky that's enough to power the United States for hundreds and hundreds of years. You're... ...
