Different kind of nuclear power solves worlds energy needs without pollution by rudy-sterfenel

The Thorium Molten Salt Reactor was proven to work and work well over twenty five years of research and development at Oak Ridge until it was put on the shelf during the Nixon Administration. It is a technology that is clean, safe, abundant and affordable, all day and all night and in any weather, words that do not accurately describe any form of energy generation in existence today or likely to come into existence in the foreseeable future. The Chinese are investing in the technology, with help from our Department of Energy. It appears to me, that when the Chinese set out to do something, it gets done. Why are we not pursuing this wonderful, history-changing technology? And why are we helping the Chinese? Write your members of Congress and ask those two question.

These reactors produce about one percent as much waste as conventional reactors, and the waste is back to the radioactivity of the original ore in about 300 years. That's pretty easy to deal with. The general idea is to melt it into a block of glass and bury it somewhere.

Actually Liquid Fueled - Molten Salt Reactors are the most efficient fuel cycle that you can get, they consume 99% of the fuel with an assumed 1% loss. Reprocessing is much easier than with solid fuels because you don't need to remove clad and dissolve the fuel. The first thing you do is strip the fissile material out of the coolant by passing the liquid fuel through a fluorine gas column and return the fuel to the reactor, so all there is no criticality concern with any further reprocessing. Since it is done in a molten salt there are no major issues with excessive decay heat. LF-MSR's are also the most fuel flexible reactor as they can use thorium, uranium, plutonium, and other transuranics. As far as hazardous fission products lasting 300 year, you have to compare that to solar panels whose panels and their manufacture produce orders of magnitude more volume of hazardous waste that will last until the earths crust grinds them to their individual constituents in millions of years. You can't even calculate the half-life of the toxic waste. Wind turbines are not much better for volume and long lived toxicity. Plus the old solar panels and wind turbines will be spread across the entire face of the earth to make enough energy, and they will likely be left there for ever. Compare that to a foot ball field worth 7 meters high of current nuclear waste with the once through LWR designs, then reduce that by a factor of 200 by removing the cladding, inter-tube air, and 97% reusable fuel. That is at least another factor of 200 reduction in volume. France stores all of their REAL waste under the Hague and made the facility into an art museum. Please don't make such terribly innaccurate statements about problems with nuclear waste compared to any other fuel.