	Currently, the United States generates 19.5 percent of its energy using nuclear reactors, totaling to about 797.2 billion kilowatt hours. In doing so, it has generated over 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. This waste remains stored in underground repositories throughout the country. Furthermore, nuclear material aggregated from the dismantlement of thousands of nuclear weapons in both the United States and Russia, since the Strategic Arms Reduction (SAR) treaties, is estimated at around 100 metric tons. This contributes to the ever growing accumulation of radioactive plutonium, which is increasing at a rate of 70 tons per year. Harmfully radioactive material, produced from these nuclear reactions and dispersed through the atmosphere, for example, caused an estimated 2.4 million fatal human cancers, in the United States, Australia, Kazakhstan, and Micronesia. They have also increased the spread of such pollutants as plutonium, cyanide, and arsenic among others through the soil and water surrounding nuclear power plants. These pollutants are incredibly hazardous and many may remain in the soil for thousands of years if no viable way of degrading them is devised. 
	To address this growing concern several researchers and engineers have been exploring new methods of nuclear waste disposal and reprocessing. One such process uses molten salts of nuclear waste from regular light water reactors. The waste would be mixed with a halide salts and coolants, such as graphite or metal hydrides, and then the nuclear fission reaction would run in relatively similar manner to light water reactors: by initiating a controlled nuclear reaction of nuclear fuel. The project is merely hypothetical at this point but plans to apply and construct this technology are well under way, according to Transatomic Power. The company, co-founded by one of the creators of the molten salt reactor project, Dr. Leslie Dewan, is making progress towards making this a viable option for nuclear waste reprocessing. Currently the company is in the midst of validating and testing its design in lab scale environments and hopes to move on to construction within the next five years. Once complete the molten salt reactor is expected to be 75 times more energy efficient per megawatt and produce as much as 96% less actinide waste than light water reactors.
	By perusing these estimates from Tansatomic Power and the aforementioned waste statistics, one can quantify the impact of this reprocessing method. If all nuclear plants utilize their waste for reprocessing, the rate of nuclear waste production would decrease from 70 tons per year to 2.6. This would be in addition to the treated waste from the preexisting more than 70,000 tons of waste, which would then be decreased to only 2,600 tons. This is a significant decrease and would be a much more manageable amount of waste to handle. Furthermore, we see that the energy generated is significantly higher, as the process can be estimated to generate an extra 59.8 trillion kilowatt hours across the United States. This would alone exceed the total energy currently generated in the country.  
