The total electric power, it said, could illuminate the whole of the United States (roughly 20,000 cities and 115 million households) for about two years — or Washington, D.C., for 185 years.
I would have opted for shedding some light on D.C...buts thats just me...
But here is the unintended side result - there are now huge numbers of “spent” fuel rods with no place for their long-term storage, which continue to deteriorate their containment units, and present another hazard, if some solution is not found.
I know, it would have been a problem anyway, with or without the additional fissionable material obtained from the decommissioning of the Russian nuclear arsenal. But we have all this fissile element lying around,why not put it to good use?
I believe I have touched on the subject of molten-salt thorium nuclear reactors as a means to REPLACE the U-238 fueled nuclear reactors, with a twofold advantage, one of which is that the reaction cannot proceed to a “runaway” surge, causing something like a “China syndrome” (not actually possible with the existing design of any nuclear reactor), and secondly, as a much more efficient way to “burn-up” the existing stockpile of “spent” fuel rods now accumulating. Cut and paste, if necessary:
www.whatisnuclear.com/reactors/msr.html
This provides a good basic understanding of what is involved in getting a thorium-based nuclear atomic pile up and running.
As long as you give the DC Chapter time to evacuate :)