Radiation safety in the Russian atomic power industry

Of all the radioactive wastes known in nuclear power industry and engineering, long-lived actinides and fission products from spent nuclear fuel are the most hazardous. One way to reduce their radiation hazard is to resort to nuclear transmutation, which can be performed either in reactors of various types or in accelerator-driven subcritical systems, whose nuclear safety is superior to that of conventional reactors. Fundamentally resolving the problem of the destruction of long-lived radioactive wastes is likely to stimulate progress in the development of the nuclear power industry.