Nuclear power is incredible. Despite what you might think, it is incredibly safe, statistically one of the safest forms of energy we have, whilst also having a lower carbon footprint than most renewable energy sources, but without any of the supply and demand issues. However, it isn’t perfect. There are legitimate worries about dealing with the vast amount of nuclear waste it produces, limiting nuclear weapon proliferation, and even the geopolitical issues surrounding nuclear fuel, such as the colonial-issue exploitation of resources and the West’s reliance on Russian nuclear fuel. But India may have just solved all of these problems with their genius Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), which has just received approval from the country’s atomic regulator to begin loading nuclear fuel.This reactor is utterly unique. It uses an entirely different fuel than regular nuclear reactors, known as plutonium, can even make its own nuclear fuel, and, as such, has a wholly different reactor design. To understand the benefits this gives it, we first need to understand how it works and to do that, we also need to quickly recap how a typical nuclear reactor works.A typical nuclear reactor uses a specific isotope of uranium, uranium 235 (U235), which makes up around 5% of the nuclear fuel in…