The Energy Department plans to announce on Tuesday a significant step toward building a new kind of nuclear reactor that could be used to replace the fossil fuels normally needed to complete high-temperature processing at chemical plants, fertilizer factories and oil refineries. Such facilities typically burn oil or natural gas — both of which contribute to global warming — to generate high-temperature steam needed for proper processing. Nuclear reactors, meanwhile, normally don’t run beyond 600 degrees, which is not hot enough for this purpose. The new reactor, however — under development at the Idaho National Laboratory — would run at temperatures approaching 1,500 degrees, making it a viable alternative to oil or natural-gas-fired processing. Among the innovations the Idaho researchers have developed is a casing for the uranium fuel made of a form of graphite — a material that does not melt and does a good job of sealing in the radioactive materials produced in the reactor.

Originally posted by mkross1983
reply to post by x2Strongx

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I just don't understand how they can call Nuclear Plants safe when their byproducts are nuclear waste that has thousands of years shelf life, has to be buried underground, and nobody wants to store it. Either way it doesn't help the Earth.