Transmutation of radioactive waste. Reactor and accelerator-driven technologies approach together the main problem of nuclear energy

The 145 nuclear power plants in the European Union produce 2500 tons of spent fuel every year. In the long term partitioning and transmutation could avoid 99% of this waste. A system of a subcritical reactor and a neutron source can transform the actinides U, Pu, Am and Cm by neutron capture into short-living isotopes. The isotope Pu-239 bred during the process van be used in light-water reactor as nuclear fuel. The worldwide uranium reserves last only for about two hundred years, recycling by partitioning and transmutation could elongate the availability of nuclear fuel to several thousand years.