Alaskan town opts for “pocket reactor”
Japanese manufacturer Toshiba has told the town it will install its new 4S (super-safe, small and simple) reactor free of charge by 2012. The unit, which would be buried about 30 metres underground, would only have to be refuelled about every 30 years.
Interest in pocket nuclear plants is growing among developing countries and island nations, advocates say. Unlike solar and wind power, the plants would generate power 24/7 and at a fraction of the cost of a diesel generator, they say.
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Current Model For Storing Nuclear Waste Is Incomplete
COLUMBUS - The materials the United States and other countries plan to use to store high-level nuclear waste will likely degrade faster than anyone previously knew because of the way those materials interact, new research shows.
The findings, published today in the journal Nature Materials (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-019-0579-x), show that corrosion of nuclear waste storage materials accelerates because of changes in the chemistry of the nuclear waste solution, and because of the way the materials interact with one another.
"This indicates that the current models may not be sufficient to keep this waste safely stored," said Xiaolei Guo, lead author of the study and…
