advantages over conventional nuclear fission reactors: Subcritical design means that the reaction could not run away — if anything went wrong, the reaction would stop and the reactor would cool down. A meltdown could however occur if the ability to cool the core was lost. Thorium is an abundant element — much more so than uranium — reducing strategic and political supply issues and eliminating costly and energy-intensive isotope separation. There is enough thorium to generate energy for at least several thousand years at current consumption rates. The energy amplifier would produce very little plutonium, so the design is believed to be more proliferation-resistant than conventional nuclear power (although the question of uranium-233 as nuclear weapon material must be assessed carefully). The possibility exists of using the reactor to consume plutonium, reducing the world stockpile of the very-long-lived element. Less long-lived radioactive waste is produced — the waste material would decay after 500 years to the radioactive level of coal ash. No new science is required; the technologies to build the energy amplifier have all been demonstrated. Building an energy amplifier requires only engineering effort, not fundamental research (unlike nuclear fusion proposals). Power generation might be economical compared to current nuclear reactor designs if the total fuel cycle and decommissioning costs are considered. The design could work on a relatively small scale, and has the potential to load-follow by modulating the proton beam, making it more suitable for countries without a well-developed power grid system. Inherent safety and safe fuel transport could make the technology more suitable for developing countries as well as in densely populated areas. Desired nuclear transmutation could be employed deliberately (rather than as an unavoidable consequence of nuclear fission and neutron irradiation) either to transmutate high level waste (such as long-lived fission products or minor actinides) into less harmful substances, for producing radionuclides for use in nuclear medicine or to produce precious metals from low-priced feedstocks. The lower fraction of delayed neutrons in the fission of compared to , which hampers the use of plutonium-containing fuels in critical reactors (which need to operate in the narrow band of neutron flux between prompt critical and delayed critical), is of no concern as no criticality of any kind is achieved or needed While nuclear reprocessing runs into the problem that MOX-fuel can not be further recycled for use in current Light Water Reactors as the reactor grade plutonium