The prototype light-water reactor that North Korea is constructing at Yongbyon, and which requires enriched-uranium fuel, could add to the fissile material stockpile when it is completed, possibly by the end of the year.

BBC: Yongbyon restart: North Korea ramps up nuclear tension

Professor Egil Lillestol of Bergen University has been pushing thorium for some years now, and thinks that Norway should set the trend in building a prototype accelerator-driven reactor in which a massive particle accelerator converts thorium-232 to uranium-233 by irradiating it with slow (spallation) neutrons generated by the impact of a 1.6 GeV proton beam on a lead target.

FORBES: Thorium Nuclear Power -- A Lesson From Norway

Also on Wednesday, the watchdog decided to freeze further steps to bring the Monju prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor online, criticizing Japan Atomic its operator for a series of significant safety lapses.

WSJ: Panel: Active Fault Runs Beneath Japan Reactor

Also on Wednesday, the watchdog decided to freeze further steps to bring the Monju prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor online, criticizing the Japan Atomic Energy Agency its operator for a series of significant safety lapses.

WSJ: Panel: Active Fault Runs Beneath Japan Reactor

The Joint European Torus (JET) is located in Britain, which is the largest such facility in the world and may be regarded as a prototype for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) based in France.

FORBES: U.K. And U.S. Join Forces on Laser-Fusion Energy

The Sunshine to Petrol project is testing a prototype device called the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (called CR5 for short) which turns CO2 into carbon monoxide which could then form part of a liquid fuel.

CNN: Turning carbon dioxide into fuel

One of them, Rear Admiral Simon Lister, is in charge of this complex programme, and as he took me round the cramped corridors, past the nuclear reactor and down into the sweaty machine rooms, he acknowledged this was a prototype and there was always going to be some "teething" issues.

BBC: HMS Astute recovers from shaky start