But technological breakthroughs can transform a sluggish sector into a futuristic game-changer. Case in point: GE Hitachi’s Advanced Recycling Center, (ARC). The ARC technology is basically the anti-nuke: it actually burns nuclear waste (even weapons-grade plutonium), and emits exactly zero CO2.

Here’s the secret: The system uses a liquid metal — sodium — to control the nuclear reaction, instead of high-pressure water. The sodium-cooling allows the reactor to “burn” the leftover energy in its used fuel — nuclear waste that, in traditional water-cooled reactors, would be taken and stored for thousands of years. In fact, when used fuel is removed from a traditional water-cooled reactor, 95 percent of its potential energy is still untapped.

Here’s a breakdown of ARC’s benefits:

Burns more of its own raw radioactive fuel
Burns other reactors’ spent fuel
Shuts down automatically if there’s a problem
Is built in small modules than can be expanded
The waste it does generate needs to be stored for just a few hundred years.