We cannot wish Britain's nuclear waste away
Posted in The Guardian by George Monbiot, Thursday 2 February 2012 07.58 EST
Opponents of nuclear power who shout down suggestions of how to use spent waste as fuel will not make the problem disappear.
A mixed oxide (Mox) plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, which opened in 2011. Photograph: PA
Duncan Clark's article in the Guardian today should cause even the most determined anti-nuclear campaigner to think long and hard about the choices that confront us. He reveals that Prof David MacKay, chief scientific adviser to the UK government's energy department and author of Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air, has endorsed a remarkable estimate. The UK's stockpile of nuclear waste could be used to generate enough low-carbon energy to run this country for 500 years.
If the material we have seen until now as waste is instead seen as fuel, it has the potential to solve three problems at once: the UK's contribution to climate change, possible future energy shortfalls and a significant component of the massive bill - and massive headache - associated with cleaning up the current nuclear mess.
New generation of nuclear reactors consume radioactive waste as fuelThe new 'fast' plants could provide enough low-carbon electricity to power the UK for more than 500 years Duncan Clark, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 February 2012 07.56 EST 
A generation of "fast" nuclear reactors could consume Britain's radioactive waste stockpile as fuel, providing enough low-carbon electricity to power the country for more than 500 years, according to figures confirmed by the chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc).
Burning energy questions – ERoEI, desert solar, oil replacements, realistic renewables and tropical islandsPosted on 19 January 2012 by Barry Brook
Part II, which I don’t reprint, answered by Iceland’s Thorsteinn Sigfusson, covered the relationship between large-hydro and climate change, and why solar conversion isn’t used more extensively.
Plentiful EnergyThe Story of the Integral Fast Reactor: The complex history of a simple reactor technology, with emphasis on its scientific bases for non-specialists Authored by Charles E. Till, Yoon Il Chang Pollution Solutions
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The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) is a fast reactor system developed at Argonne National Laboratory in the decade 1984 to 1994. The IFR project developed the technology for a complete system; the reactor, the entire fuel cycle and the waste management technologies were all included in the development program. The reactor concept had important features and characteristics that were completely new and fuel cycle and waste management technologies that were entirely new developments. The reactor is a "fast" reactor - that is, the chain reaction is maintained by "fast" neutrons with high energy - which produces its own fuel. The IFR reactor and associated fuel cycle is a closed system. Electrical power is generated, new fissile fuel is produced to replace the fuel burned, its used fuel is processed for recycling by pyroprocessing - a new development - and waste is put in final form for disposal. All this is done on one self-sufficient site.