Can fuel from nuclear power plants be recycled?

19 October 2008

Part of the show Fusion - The Real Solar Power

Question

Can fuel from nuclear power plants be recycled indefinitely so there’s no waste? How would that apply to fusion? You were mentioning that fusion generates its own fuel anyway in a sense.

Answer

Steve - With the current designs we have fusion power stations. These are conceptual. We haven't built one yet. With the current designs we burn deuterium which we extract from sea water and we burn lithium which you get from salts. There's millions of years-worth of this fuel. The by-product is helium which you can put in kid's balloons if you really like. They don't have any long-lived wastes from this. It's really an ideal way to make energy.