Our current nuclear power technology is at least dirty, that is, it generates lots of dangerous waste. That is part of the attraction to the leaders of the United States since Truman. That waste includes weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. Yet, we have a need for large power-plants or — better — lots of smaller plants to produce electricity if we are to maintain a high standard of living.
The real problem with the waste is that there’s a need for facilities that need to be guarded and maintained for thousands of years and our political system isn’t capable of such long-range commitments. From a technological point of view, there are good ways to store the waste for those thousands of years, but our governments are the problem.
Suppose we could have nuclear power plants without so serious a problem with nuclear waste? It turns out that the nuclear scientists and engineers working for the U.S. government had built a different sort of reactor in the late 1940s, something called “liquid fluoride thorium reactor”, with an acronym of ‘LFTR’ often pronounced lifter. One of the nuclear physicists involved in that early effort, Alvin Weinberg, later headed up the Atomic Energy Commission and tried to restart the LFTR program but failed to obtain the support of American government leaders. I’ll not give details here but other military research projects also produced good results but were killed because it wasn’t a good technology for the use intended in that project.
What’s so good about this alternative nuclear power generation? First of all, it produces very small amounts of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, none at all if tricks are played that cost only a little bit of efficiency. It can also be used to burn up dangerous materials, including weapons-grade uranium or plutonium. A liquid fluoride thorium reactor can be designed so that the fuel drains out if electric power for auxiliary purposes is shut off or if the reactor overheats too much. There are many claimed advantages and there is a record of early prototypes which existed and worked as well as such things can be expected to work.
At this point, I’ll recommend that those interested in power production technology should check the site, EnergyFromThorium. There are a lot of links to good documentation including videos of very good presentations on the history and present and possible future of this type of technology. This looks to be truly promising and looks to be a technology which can be implemented on a fairly small-scale under local control. Spread the word even if you have some doubts.