Reddit reviews Plentiful Energy: The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor: The complex history of a simple reactor technology, with emphasis on its scientific bases for non-specialists
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It's not true of conventional reactors, but is true of fast reactors. Russia has several in production right now and is building more. The U.S. spent 30 years developing an advanced design called the Integral Fast Reactor, which was canceled by the Clinton administration just prior to completion. GE-Hitachi has a production-ready design based on the IFR, which they're attempting to sell to the U.K. and China.
About 99% of our nuclear waste, and essentially all the long-lived waste, is unfissioned uranium, plutonium, and other transuranics. Fast reactors burn all that up. All they leave is the fission products, which go back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple hundred years.
Sources are abundant, it's well-known nuclear physics. Here's a sampling:
Energy For Future Presidents (a book by a Berkeley physics professor)
BraveNewClimate
Wikipedia here and here
World Nuclear
Plentiful Energy (a book by lead engineers on the IFR project)
The IFR also does a good job with safety and proliferation issues. Liquid thorium reactors would have similar advantages but aren't as far along.
why do you think the Clinton administration cancelled the fast breeder research at Argonne National Labs. I read this book and it didn't say: http://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Energy-technology-scientific-non-specialists/dp/1466384603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348456204&sr=8-1&keywords=plentiful+energy
And, do you think politically we can get fast breeders to happen in the US?