this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2026
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There are many reasons nuclear did not catch on. One of them is that spent fissile material has a half life so long it remains deadly for around 5000-50000 years, and radioactive for up to 250,000. So aside from the extreme cost, political instability of governments controlling the highest supplies of nuclear materials, and meltdown risks of the design of last generation reactors (there are newer, safer designs that cannot physically melt down) you still have invisible fire burning for longer and for more lifetimes than any of us can even really fully conceive. Nuclear is cool, it's part of the solution, but without achievable commercial scale fusion reactors it's not exactly an easy sell.
Fast reactors can "burn the periodic table" and make 300-500 year waste out of existing nuclear waste. Modern designs also tend to be walk away safe.
Also a major part of why old nuke plants were so unstable and unsafe is because their primary purpose was making nuclear material to nuke the soviets... safe power production was a side product... you would need to scroll down quite a ways in the design requirements to find safe power production... and the fact that the USD is basically backed by oil meant if they weren't so useful for making nukes (or for propaganda/political leverage against the soviets showing how futuristic and capable capitalism is during the cold war...) they would have never been built in the first place.
China is building massive amounts of nuclear reactors because they know how useful they are. Our leaders and decision makers in the west are morons...
I was entirely unaware of fast reactors. Very neat technology, and you make some good points.
Yeah when the goal is safe clean nuclear power and weapons grade material isn't a design requirement your options are much better. LFTRs are my favorite type of fast reactor breeder since thorium is so incredibly abundant (its actually a waste product from rare earth production which is why China has the first LFTR pilot plant since 1960)
If they can figure out how to continuously purify the liquid core salt (nuclear kidney is what they call it) then you have a potential contender for all future human base load power until we can figure out fusion.
Also the high grade waste from these plants are miniscule since they're so good at converting large atoms into smaller ones. Continuous reprocessing also means you tap that stream off and can vitrify it inside layers of glass for long term storage constantly.