DeWitt: Fast reactors can reduce nuclear waste storage timelines to centuries
Jake DeWitt · Will advanced reactors solve nuclear's problems? · Feb 25, 2022 · at 1:00:28
Oklo CEO Jake DeWitt discusses how advanced fast fission reactors can recycle spent nuclear fuel and reduce waste longevity.
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“Fast reactors in particular have some neat attributes where they can not just use this fuel efficiently, but they can use waste from other reactors and themselves quite efficiently and economically so, right? That's been one of the big hangups and holdups for recycling with today's reactors. It's just economically pretty hard, but some of these other technologies, it's a pretty significant paradigm shift thanks to the fundamental physics of the plants because they just use fuel in a much more efficient manner. And so you have a potential for radically simplified and reduced waste stream that can open the door for, you know, disposing the waste in coated glasses and metal forms that then you reduce the sort of storage times and disposal timeframes from perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions of years to maybe hundreds or thousands of years, right?”
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