MOSCOW (Sputnik) — One of the main trends in modern nuclear energy is increasing the safety of nuclear systems that use an additional outside source of neutrons, usually a particle accelerator or a nuclear fusion machine, therefore ruling out the possibility of an uncontrolled reaction.
According to the report, the Krylov State Research Centre in St. Petersburg developed technical proposals for a small-size (33 feet wide and 115 feet long) nuclear facility with 25 megawatt useful power, which includes a particle accelerator and a sub-critical nuclear reactor with 200 megawatt heat power.
In future, such facilities could be used to "burn out" long-life radioactive waste, which is important from the environmental viewpoint, the report added.
The Chernobyl disaster tool place on April 26, 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Ukraine’s town of Pripyat. A late night safety tests led to uncontrolled reaction conditions, which resulted in a stream explosion destroying reactor number 4.
