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The nuclear industry has begun testing a new type of fuel designed to burn
plutonium without breeding it. If successful, it could help rid the world of its
stockpiles of plutonium waste from nuclear weapons and power stations. Before it
is irradiated in reactors, plutonium is mixed with uranium oxide, some of which
is changed into more plutonium by the radiation. In the “inert matrix fuel”
being tested at the Halden research reactor in Norway, the uranium is replaced
by a compound called yttrium-stabilised zirconium oxide. This will still produce
radioactive waste, but with a much shorter half-life than plutonium,…