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Use steel reinforced concrete for shielding just like all existing production plants. The bigger issue is that Bill Gates is not taking the lead and using it as the coolant with the designs promoted by Terrapower.

Terrapower has 2 designs: 1) an old school LWR style reactor with a different method of managing the fuel rods and 2) a DMSR using a chloride salt as a coolant. I don't particularity like either design. I don't think Chlorine is a great replacement for Florine and we know less about how a chloride salt works in a nuclear reactor. I'm glad he is funding investment into nuclear though and the more we know about the technology, the more safely we can utilize it.

Use steel reinforced concrete for shielding just like all existing production plants. The bigger issue is that Bill Gates is not taking the lead and using it as the coolant with the designs promoted by Terrapower.

The two companies I respect the most are NuScale whose new reactor has been certified by the NRC as being passively safe(ie meltdown proof). These reactors can be factory built and shipped on truck. The second is Bill Gates' company TerraPower who are building their first reactor in China.

These companies along with 50+ others will save the world and reduce energy poverty

Nuclear power is finite. You are again implying it is infinite.

I never did that. Not once did I say nuclear was infinite. I just said solar was finite(which it is), and nuclear is sustainable(which it is). I was countering the argument that because nuclear is finite we should not build them.

Who's We?

The human race stupid. The adoption of nuclear energy benefits the entire human race and every other species on this planet.

Do you work in the nuclear industry designing nuclear reactors?

No. My background is in math, comp sci and computational neuroscience.

Well out with it then - let's see what your plan is.

I can not speak for the rest of the world, but for the United States we need to triple our nuclear capacity. There are a lot of ways of doing that, but I would focus on development of 4th generation nuclear. The United States built the first 4th generation reactor called the Experimental Breeder Reactor II. GE has developed plans for 10x version of the reactor called the Prism. Bill Gates' Terrapower is building their first reactor in China. NuScale has filed paper work with the NRC for a factory built small modular reactor. Terrestrial energyis developing a thorium reactor based on a successful experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960's. And of course Russia has a working 4th generation reactor which they are already exporting to the rest of the world. There are 50 other companies doing related work. We need to make the NRC accept and support 4th generation nuclear plants. We need to provide loan guarantees, and we need to restart nuclear R&D. I could list more but it is getting late.

What, specifically, do you blame the fossil fuel industry for?

Other then greenhouse gasses? You do know climate change is real right?

What is it that is so bad that they are doing to the nuclear industry?

Their constant lawsuits artificially increase the price of nuclear. Having a judge stop construction for years is expensive. Even right now the Koch brothers are backing lawsuits against the nuclear industry all over the United States. The fossil fuel industry spends billions of dollars convincing people such as yourself that nuclear is bad when in fact it is the safest and cleanest energy source.

I was being polite so I didn't embarrass you by calling it complete and utter bullshit.

You were being stupid. It is not a strawman argument. My arguments are also based on facts(which I cite)

and you continue to make unsupported accusations.

The second sentence from the wiki page said "Friends of the Earth was founded in 1969 as an anti-nuclear group by Robert O Anderson." Anderson was an oil tychoon. There are more examples then just Friends of the Earth, but you can use google those yourself.

You're a shill.

No I do not get paid. I just have a moral obligation to leave a better planet for the next generation.

Maybe he's looking for a site to build one of his new reactor gadgets?

http://terrapower.com/updates

Bill Gates is throwing billions of dollars at Gen 4 nuclear power through the company Terra Power: http://terrapower.com/

Reprocessing is just one step. In order to achieve a true closed cycle, we'll need fast neutron waste burners. We've built them. We've got designs ready to go. Some pilot commercial plants have already been built. And we've got refinements in the pipeline that will make them even better. Unfortunately, the modern environmental movement has turned into a religion and some of them are mistaking Slashdot for their soap box.

In practice it is nothing but a ticking time bomb easily capable of effectively wiping a large cities right off the map with additional affects world wide. And it's the poster child for inefficient.

The latter point is worth considering; nuclear is expensive and should be considered with cost-efficiency in mind just like any other energy source. Unfortunately, comparing the costs of energy sources in practice is very difficult; recall that we are in this problem because fossil fuels appear much cheaper on the market than they actually are: if they were priced correctly, the market would sort out using better energy sources without laws like the one being discussed.

On the other hand, the former is pure BS. Fukushima was a very old design that shouldn't have even still been running and it had a more or less worst-case disaster where the damage was no where comparable to "effectively wiping a large cities right off the map". Any new nuclear plant built would be built to modern safety standards which prevent such disasters from being possible (one of the problems with Fukushima is that it required generators to maintain its safety and the generators failed; modern nuclear designs are safe when completely unpowered).

I assume the GP was referencing TerraPower which sounds like an interesting idea. (Google around about it, that link is to the company webpage which of course is going to be overly positive and low on information.)