Comments by "Bob thebomb" (@bobthebomb1596) on "'World's most ardent environmental activists' now backing nuclear power" video.

Please don't exaggerate, it does the case for nuclear no good. There will always be a requirement to mine uranium (or thorium) as there is a finite quantity of high level nuclear waste (HLW) in existence. Those "burner" reactors are an excellent technology and will reduce both the quantity of waste produced and the time over which it poses a significant radiological hazard, but they do not produce "practically inert" waste. What they produce are fission products and they are highly radioactive. The good news is that many of those fission products are so highly radioactive that they decay to inert material in a relatively short timescale. Thus a relatively short period of managed storage (tens of years) will see a significant drop in activity and associated decay heat generation. Indeed it is quite possible to imagine a system in which that decay heat might itself be used to generate additional power. Eventually activity will decrease to the point where it is safe to consign the remaining waste to deep burial. That final waste will be shorter lived than that arising from traditional reactors, due to the lack of actinides, but it will remain hazardous for hundreds of years.
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@mrdanforth3744 No, I think he was referring to fast neutron fission.
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