Regardless of how much you hate (or love) nuclear power, it is important to remember that radioactive decay is a stochastic process that doesn't give a crap about politics, policy, or nation states. As such, any prudent forward looking nuclear path needs to include methodology to transmute the unfortunate nuclide spectrum left over from light water reactors (LWR) into shorter lived species that don't need storage measured in epochs. New nuclear reactor technology with different neutron spectrums is likely the most prudent approach to effect this transmutation at scale.<p>The "green movement" anti-nuclear camp cannot seem to see the scientific need to continue with nuclear fission at least long enough to clean up most of the mess we've already created. A coherent "full stop" nuclear policy should still include reprocessing and transmutation of the existing waste stockpile. Stopping short of this makes the extant waste problem catastrophically worse.<p>---<p>I took radiochemistry in graduate school several years before the the origin story in the Brooking's article, and the appeal of molten salt reactors was well known then, albeit with more conventional fuel loads.<p>The engineer in me gravitates towards the elegance of the proposed "Gen IV+" nuclear technologies, but the convoluted realities of nuclear power in today's form makes it hard for me to justify continuing the current path towards bigger and bigger light water reactors.<p>My personal opinion is that we need to diverge from, or stop, the building of ever larger LWR. Because these reactors operate at elevated pressure, and have multi-megawatt levels of decay heat, accidents are always a specter.<p>Research energy must then be diverted into technologies that will consume most of the long lived TRU waste. By the time the existing waste is transmuted, the performance of the transmuting reactor systems will be established enough that retaining or shuttering of those systems should be more clear. There will also be a long enough stretch of time in parallel to ascertain the asymptotic maturity state of the various renewable energy technologies.