11 months apart, two of the UK's top technologists are worlds apart
"Nuclear power has always been a controversial issue. But whatever view you take about the future role of nuclear energy, successive governments have rightly tried to establish a permanent solution for the radioactive waste generated by our military and existing civil nuclear programmes.
These plans are now at a critical stage of development.
My belief is that we must not continue to pass the buck. We have a choice.
We can either continue to store this old waste above ground indefinitely and leave the final solution for future generations to resolve, or we can tackle this once and for all with a permanent geological disposal facility.
The latter course is the only responsible way to proceed".
Voice of Business: Time to solve this toughest nuclear problem
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According to figures calculated for the Guardian by the American writer and fast reactor advocate Tom Blees, this alternative approach could – given a large enough number of [PRISM] reactors – produce enough low-carbon electricity from Britain's waste stockpile to supply the UK at current rates of demand for more than 500 years.
MacKay confirmed this figure. "As an upper bound on what you could get from those resources in fast reactors I think it's a very reasonable estimate. In reality you'd get all kinds of issues so you wouldn't achieve the upper bound but I still think it's a reasonable starting point."
New generation of nuclear reactors could consume radioactive waste as fuel
New generation of nuclear reactors could consume radioactive waste as fuel
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