Nuke safety

The standard one gig nuclear power plant will have over 100 tons of fuel in its reactor at any given time. With a small modular reactor, the fuel is added as needed and therein lies the basic, walk away safety feature. The small reactor cannot melt down because if the power is lost the addition of fuel is interrupted and the core cools. The new small nuclear reactors use pellets of uranium for fuel. This has been enriched to 3.5%. These pellets are coated with materials that seal in much of the unwanted waste and are easy to store on site. Urenco USA in New Mexico is the sole operating commercial centrifuge enrichment facility in the US. When thorium is used as fuel it does not have to be enriched and can eliminate this step.