Bernard Eastlund, a physicist and veteran of the American nuclear industry, has proposed an ingenious way to deal with these nuclear leftovers.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear waste

Even so, Dr Eastlund hopes that he will soon be able to hand on the torch to someone who can make real use of it.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear waste

According to Dr Eastlund, breaking nuclear waste up into its constituent elements using a fusion torch would have a number of advantages over the chemical approach.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear waste

But the wheels of government turn slowly, though Dr Eastlund says interest at the energy department increases whenever there is a nuclear incident elsewhere in the world.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear waste

Last year, following a request from the American Department of Energy, Dr Eastlund delivered a detailed proposal explaining how the fusion torch could help to dispose of this waste.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear waste

Dr Eastlund has also been able to draw on subsequent research on turning solids into plasmas. (This method is, in fact, used to apply coatings to the insides of tokamaks.) And the advent of supercomputers able to simulate tokamaks should also speed up the process of building a working prototype.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear waste