[–] KyJoCaThe2nd 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Research continues, but the powers that be can decide that research isn't needed any longer. An example is the Integral Fast Reactor that was shut down in 1996, when the Clinton Administration and a Democratic majority in both Houses defunded research into a plant that had been in development for 10 years (with only a handful of years left anyway), would be able to reprocess it's spent fuel (greatly minimizing the actual waste material generated), and was proved to be immune to meltdown due to systems failures (like those that afflicted Three Mile Island #2 and Chernobyl #4).
To truly use nuclear power as a transition from fossil fuels to fully renewable power, we need better education of the populous and the policy makers, and more privately funded research into developing the better reactor designs that can be achieved.
If you're interested in the current state of the world's nuclear power industry, you might want to look at the World Nuclear Industry Status Report. Be warned, the full text is 200 pages.
[–] 01011011101101 ago
I've heard that the uranium and plutonium reactors are used because: #1 its infrastructure is already in place and #2 the leftovers can be easily enriched to bomb fuel.
[–] KyJoCaThe2nd ago (edited ago)
To a degree, but even the number of U/Pu reactors being built was tapering off before Chernobyl and fell off sharply after a small return after Fukushima.
Not really, and this was the crux of the Iranian nuclear talks for several years. You can achieve useful power generation with extremely low levels of enrichment, but once that fuel hits end-of-life, the amounts of useful uranium aren't present to make meaningful heat, let alone catastrophic detonation. What would be present is a great deal of Plutonium, but due to all of the fission products, handling spent fuel isn't viable for weapons-grade fuel when we can use specially designed reactors to breed Plutonium and special processes to enrich to very high levels of U-235.
Now, just because it's weapons-grade, doesn't mean that it possesses the ability to detonate like Little Boy. Certain geometry and a few other concerns are needed. You can make a power plant using >80% enriched uranium, but because the fuel will be laid out in a different way with neutron absorbents and active coolant, the core won't detonate. It can still go prompt critical*, have a massive power excursion, vaporize all the water in the core, then rupture like an over-sized pressure cooker, but that's a different beast.
* This is the only time the word "critical" means something bad in nuclear physics, and it needs the word "prompt" to mean that. A critical reactor is one that is exactly self-sustaining. If power is going up, it's supercritical. If power is going down, it's subcritical.