6. Outlook

While fast reactors are unlikely to be implemented on an industrial scale in the decades immediately ahead, they are unavoidable in the long term... unless we renounce the use of uranium fission energy.

Concepts such as Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) do not involve any major technological modifications to the fission energy source: the core, even if sub-critical, is designed in the same way as the equivalent critical reactor. There are no specific requirements for the design and manufacture of fuel for such assemblies.

More generally, there is a proliferation of concepts for nuclear power generation systems combining reactors and the fuel cycle (including waste management). It would be unreasonable to predict which of these will actually be implemented on an industrial scale; we can only assume that there will be no exclusivity of one...