Mr fusion?
We have nuclear technology that can be put to use RIGHT NOW to take care of the needs of “green” electric power generation.
Uranium-fueled Light-Water reactors are coming to the end of their useful lifetimes, and there is great resistance to beginning construction. But while they were running, they emitted NO carbon dioxide, and they could run flat-out full output 24/7/365 for years at a time until needing refueling. Of course, one of the great disadvantages is that when they WERE refueled, the “spent” uranium fuel rods were still highly radioactive, and would remain so for perhaps centuries. So there was the problem of storage of this radioactive “waste”, and who were going to be the custodians at it “cooled out”.
Enter Thorium-fueled Molten Salt reactors. For one thing, the element needed for fuel is some four times as abundant in the earth’s crust as uranium, but its radioactivity could only be activated in the presence of a small amount of the vast quantity of “spent” uranium fuel rods. More than 90% of its potential energy still remains in the “waste” fuel, which is used for “kindling” to get the thorium reaction going. So over time, the “spent” uranium fuel rods get used up, and the amount of radioactivity in the spent thorium reactor fuel is very small in comparison, and compromised of relatively short half-life isotopes.
But like the Light Water reactors, the Molten Salt reactors can be run 24/7/365 for years, and have the advantage of being able to be incrementally refueled “on the go”, so to speak. The real problem comes with the breakdown of the container and the components of the reactor, which tend to become brittle. But even if the mechanism should burst, the reaction stops almost immediately, as the molten salt cools, and there is no radioactivity release. Inherently much safer than Light Water reactors.
The reason that the decision was made to go with uranium as fuel, and not thorium, was that the uranium fuel broke down into bomb-grade plutonium, and thorium does not.