IF SCIENTISTS ever succeed in building working fusion reactors, the
technology could help make nuclear waste safer, say Chinese and American
scientists. They think that fast neutrons released by fusion could smash the
waste into substances with much shorter half-lives.
Lijian Qiu from the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of
Sciences in Hefei is proposing a hybrid fusion and fission reactor. This would
split atoms of plutonium and other radionuclides that last hundreds of thousands
of years into isotopes that only last hundreds of years. After 30 years of
operation, more than 96 per cent of the…
