Peer-reviewed article arguing that molten salt reactors and sodium-cooled fast reactors, despite industry claims of reducing spent fuel volume and radiotoxicity, will actually worsen waste management challenges due to the unusual and highly reactive chemistry of their fuels (uranium tetrafluoride, sodium-bonded metallic uranium).
Explains that geologic repository safety depends more on long-lived fission products, spent fuel chemistry, and site geology than on actinide content or waste volume — so "waste-burning" claims from advanced reactor developers (TerraPower, Transatomic, GE-Hitachi, ThorCon, etc.) are largely a marketing framing rather than a genuine solution.
Calls on policymakers to require updated environmental review for non-oxide fuels before licensing new reactor designs, and flags proliferation risk from the reprocessing/pyroprocessing needed to prepare these fuels for disposal.
