A civil super-Apollo project in nuclear research for a safer and prosperous world

Humankind is confronted with a “nuclear stewardship curse”, facing the prospect of needing to manage nuclear products over long time scales in the face of the short-time scales of human polities. I propose a super Apollo-type effort to rejuvenate the nuclear energy industry to overcome the current dead-end in which it finds itself, and by force, humankind has trapped itself in. I propose a paradigm shift from a low probability of incidents/accidents to a zero-accident technology and a genuine detoxification of the wastes. A 1% GDP investment over a decade in the main nuclear countries could boost economic growth with a focus on the real world, epitomised by nuclear physics/chemistry/engineering/economics with well defined targets. By investing vigorously to obtain scientific and technological breakthroughs, we can create the spring of a world economic rebound based on new ways of exploiting nuclear energy, both more safely and more durably.