Hi SDF

There aren't millions of tonnes of fission waste - where did you get such rubbish from? A 1 gigawatt reactor makes 25 tonnes per year - 97% of which can be reprocessed into new fuel - so to supply the world's 15,000 gigawatts that's 375,000 tonnes per year. Of course nukes don't provide all the world's energy so it's patently clear there aren't "millions" of tonnes of waste.

Proven uranium stocks and reserves represents only ~ 20 years supply at 100% world energy demand so reprocessing is absolutely vital. We have to bite the reprocessed plutonium bullet - which isn't bomb material anyway despite all the propaganda. So if we reprocess the lot the waste stream drops to 3% of 375,000 tons/year. That's 11,250 tons/year. Individual Coal-fired power stations put out more ultra-fine particulates - proven carcinogens - than that!

Also there's 4 times as much thorium than uranium and with breeder reactors it becomes a viable fuel option. Heck it's viable now except people want f***ing bombs so they like uranium-235 reactors! Combined, the economically accessible uranium and thorium would provide 50,000 terawatt-years of power with 100% reprocessing. Small amounts are continually leached out of the continental crust by water flow into the ocean - if it can be extracted, and the Japs think it can, this renewable supply is sufficient to sustain a ~ 50 terawatt demand until the Sun dies.

The chief bonus of fusion power, since the waste mass is similar, is that the material is intermediate waste and will be safe in mere decades. Fusors, as currently envisaged, will breed their tritium fuel so they won't be entirely without weapons applications. Also the primary heat-exchanger/neutron absorber will be a giant mass of liquid lithium metal - which burns on exposure to air, especially if dispersed as vapour in a sudden magnetic-field failure. Several terajoules of energy will be stored up in the field coils and sudden release would generate a lot of heat.

Adam