This appears to be a fission-based solution to nuclear waste. Few people recognize that all the long lived highly radiaocative waste is but 1/2 of 1 prcent of the radiaoctive waste; and is made up of transuranic elements principally Americium and Pu 240.

"Burning" this 1/2 of one percent of the waste results in no long lived highly radiaoctive waste. The ultimate green result. The French already process about half of the these transuranics in their own fission Light Water reactors by fashioning special reprocessed fuel rods,and then burning them up.

This process is called "Actinide Burning". But the French process does not produce enough energetic nuetrons to "crack" and consume all the transuranic waste. About half, or 1/4 of one percent, is immune to the French "Actinide Burning" process.

Theroretically this GEM-STAR process could crack and burn the rest of the radiocative high level waste. Instead of worrying how to store radiaoctive waste for thousands of years, the residual waste would decay in a couple hundred years to th level of raw uranium ore, along with all the 99 and 1/2 percent of the other radioactive waste. We have plenty of experience with storing such a volueme of materials. Look at Fort Knox as an example.

This solves the radioactive waste problem forever.

I myself prefer to use a Fusion based reactor to generate the high energy nuetrons needed. The radioactive waste would be simply placed in the sheilding and transuted as the fusion reactor operated. The radiaoctive waste would have no part of the operation of the Fusion reactor.

The combined functions would make some of the first Fusion reactors more cost efficient, producing two sources of revenue, both electricity and waste processing. To completely process all the world's stockpile of high level radioactive waste, only one or a few Fusion reactors would be needed for the task. So they could be exclusively operated by the government, perhaps by TVA, ensuring the inaccessable access to the high level waste waste by terrorists. Only mild reprocessing to separate the transuranics would be needed, an additional safety feature.

The solution to the highlevel radiaoctive waste problem is much more thorough and complete than any other. It also facilitates the world's coversion to a low radiaoctive, virtual inexhaustible, and abundant energy future. It is the genuine solar enrgy solution, bringing to Earth the power of the Sun.

The purpose of the D persona (and others) is to troll energy forums and divert attention from anything which would actually threaten the position of fossil fuels in the near term.  Trying to convince the public that new "totally safe" nuclear needs to wait for fusion as a neutron source is part of his charter.  There are two psyops angles to this:

1. The public is implicitly told that current Gen III+ technology is still "too dangerous", generates "too much waste", etc.
2. The public is told that we should wait until new technology is available, in 3+ decades.

I do not know how close such ADSRs ACTUALLY are to production status, public acceptance and regulatory approval, but they seem like something that should not be dismissed simply on the assumption that the “current renewable sources” are here and all alternates are the enemy.

The renewables are not fully ready, nor completely here - coal power plant commissioning has not ended and when the old coal plants are replaced they are often replaced by new coal plants or NG plants not solar, wind, geo, surf or hydro.

ADSRs are nuclear reactors and nuclear power is considered unsafe and unclean.

Not a fair assessment;
For instance the Fukushima disaster was a tsunami disaster, not a nuclear reactor disaster.

The tsunami killed 20,000.

The total related to nuclear radiation is:
• No immediate deaths due to direct radiation exposures
• 6 to 12 workers have exceeded lifetime legal limits for radiation
• Up to 100 predicted future cancer deaths.
• 300 plus people have received significant radiation doses

Neither is it true that nuclear waste is a significant threat but the ADSRs should be much more acceptable on both the safety and waste issues; making a case for public and regulatory acceptance.

We need all options pursued as reasonably (LOL) as possible.

Wind is not a threat to solar, nor is NG, geo, surf, hydro, hydrogen, critical or sub-critical nuclear.

I am dismayed that so many people believe that only one or two ways are acceptable; one ball team, one auto company, one computer type (Apple), one form of transportation and one source of energy (and cost is no object).

@dursan:
Polemics such as 'fool cell' are designed to obfuscate real debate.
Those 'fool cells' performed better than either diesels or batteries in keeping the lights and power on during hurricane Sandy and its aftermath, with only one failure, and that due to failure of ancillary equipment.
Since many of them are PEM cells like those to be used in cars and buses, it would seem that such foolish rhetoric is ignorant of the engineering realities.

After fork lift trucks, which are pretty much a conquered market, the next target is buses:

'Ballard has a product in development that it believes will help achieve this:
its seventh generation fuel cell module is being designed-to-cost in an intensive development programme, and redevelopment of other elements of the drivetrain and ancillaries is also underway.
The aim is for the total cost of ownership of a fuel cell bus to match that of a comparable diesel hybrid bus by 2014. A parallel aim is to increase the lifetime of fuel cell units to match that of internal combustion engines in conventional buses in their first lifetime, which means at least 30,000 hours of operation, and it is expected that this target will be met in the second half of 2014. Hydrogenics is also refi ning its fuel cell bus modules to be very compact, light and simple to integrate, and is
producing these in various outputs to suit bus size and level of integration; the company currently offers a warranty to 20,000 hours of stack operation. Automotive OEMs have achieved significant cost reduction of their fuel cell modules towards their FCEV launch targets, and we can expect the fuel cell bus products from these manufactures to benefit considerably as a result.'

http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/media/1713685/fct_review_2012.pdf

I don't call technologies which have good prospect of freeing our cities of very large amount of lethal vehicle fumes a 'fool' technology, and indeed 'fool' would seem a more apt description of those who would seek to use polemical devices to dismiss them and narrow our technological options.

GM's planned obsolescence dictated for a couple decades that people would buy short-lived vehicles.  GM's marketing of flex-fuel trucks as "green" (and lobbying to credit them with petroleum savings they did not and could not create) sold a lot of them.

'How come Davemart can figure that handling spent nuclear fuel is not a problem and fail to recognize that for the last 20 years pollution controls on ICE and industrial facilities have eliminated harmful levels of pollution in such places as the US?'

Its called 'evidence' Kit.

I've quoted umpteen links before demonstrating the harm that PRESENT levels of air pollution do even in advanced economies.

How about you post some of your evidential studies that show no harm, since you ignore those that do?

@Davemart

you obviously don't the difference between PEM and SOFC.

and you sh!t about GM's fool-cell campaign

I am not sure what the advantage of retaining dirty coal is supposed to be, although to be sure the Chinese are looking at a lot of options such as underground gasification which would greatly reduce its pollution burden.

Another Chinese initiative is a high temperature pebble bed reactor, due for completion in 2016.
That sort of technology could produce hydrogen at around the cost per mile that they are quoting to include coal as part of the mix when the superior efficiency of fuel cells is considered. The hydrogen could be used to make methanol, DME etc if that is more convenient.

To be clear I will be perfectly happy if battery technology improves fast enough to provide convenient long distance transport, but we have alternatives if not without having to produce coal.

I do suspect however that fossil fuels will continue to form a substantial proportion of the mix for many decades regardless of the consequences for global warming.

I am not sure what the advantage of retaining dirty coal is supposed to be

'it's cheap to build and doesn't have major bad consequences if it's incompetently operated or maintained.'

Uh? Mass deaths are routine for coal and its emissions.
No crisis needed.

I agree that that is the public perception as against nuclear though.
It is much nicer to contract lung disease from good old familiar coal and diesel, and not have all that nasty new fangled radiation from nuclear to worry about, even if the likelihood of being killed by it is vanishingly small.

@ Kit P

The particulates in diesel exhaust have been shown through public health as well as animal studies to cause lung cancer. These particles tend to be small enough so that they lodge deep in the lungs which the body is unable to get rid itself of.

Fuels containing sulfur will generate particulates at a higher rate than their cleaner counterparts. German car and truck makers have been required to reduce the particulates by exhaust after treatment. Mercedes for instance uses a technology based on injecting ammonia into the exhaust to accomplish this. This development as well as the use of low sulfur diesel has allowed foreign car makers to reintroduce diesel cars once more in California as well as several New England states.

They want to use coal as a feedstock? Forget it. Get back to us when they want to use CO2 from the air.

@ Kit P:
Here is the results of one of several studies associating particulate pollution with increased mortality:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240569/pdf/ehp109s-000483.pdf

Lots more where that came from. Just Google "health effects of particulate pollution".