MW (megawatts), not mW (milliWatts), are a measure of power. Multiple power by time to compute energy. The wind turbine folk are very sloppy about that.Anyway, Mark H, I have read the answer.One kg of plutonium-239 (Pu-239), U-233, or U-235, produces about ten million kWh (a familiar unit in doestic electricity bills), i.e. ten thousand MWh, megawatt-hours, of energy.It makes hardly any difference to the quantity or even the immediate radioactivity of the waste, whether the fissile fuel is U-233 (the LFTR) or Pu-239 (the plutonium fast reactors) or U-235, as in the widespread PWR technology. The mass of fissile isotopes consumed is equal to the mass of the fission products. (Duh!). The reason that the thorium technology produces so little waste compare with the PWR, is that it doesn't throw away anything but the fission products. The same goes for the fast neutron plutonium designs. The seemingly huge amount of waste that our PWR reactors generate (actually, it's under 3000 tons a year) is because of the prohibition on reprocessing that the Carter/Gore administration imposed.I am sure that the "waste" could be separated into fission products, plutonium-uranium reactor fuel, and pure uranium that isn't radioactive enough to worry about. We would have therefore somewhat less than 100 tons a year of fission waste, for 20% of the nation's electricity, right now. Contrast this with the thousands of tons of poison gases (sulfur and nitrogen oxides) that burning coal or gas emits to the atmosphere, for the same amount of energy. Add in, as I would, the harm done by the millions of tons of CO2.
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