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I must respectively disagree.

Using breeder technology (which has been stymied in the US but not in France for example), fission fuel sources can last for thousands of years, if not more. There are a multitude of fuel cycles that can not only dramatically extend the U235 cycle but also present a logical way to burn waste materials.

Fusion reactors will produce radioactive waste too due to 14+ MeV neutron activation. Due to the activation schemes, the activation materials and half-lives will be different than fission reactors though.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against fusion reactor development or research, but from my early '70s nuclear engineering classes I've learned that fusion is still in the future while fission is something that we need to use for more energy production that we do today. 103 reactors is not enough and we're not planning on building any more. We and the world has a serious energy problem with the problems in the middle east (oil), China (all energy), the US growth, and the environment (I can tell you about my coal-fired plant methymercury induced problem if you want).

"103 reactors is not enough and we're not planning on building any more."

We certainly need to build more. We will have 1 more nuclear plant built here in Alabama in the next 10 years.

One.

That should be twenty-one...but instead, it's just 1.

5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

I certainly think that the U.S. should immediately undertake a radical effort to build fission reactors. Commercial fusion is decades away, and something must fill the gap until then. But everything I've read indicates that, while the U.S. has a "lot" of fissionable materials in the ground, it just isn't enough for the U.S. to achieve energy independence over the long term. (Likewise, the U.S. has a "lot" of oil reserves.) If you can point me to a credible source that says otherwise, do so.

It may be expensive to extract deuterium from seawater; the issue is that we won't have to buy the deuterium from another country. Oceans we got.

There is no technical reason why the U.S. must be energy-independent, and certainly the economic reasons are all against it. The politics of not being energy-independent, however, have become intolerable. The key to making peace in the Middle East is to make oil worthless. (Fusion, or fission for that matter, is only half of that battle, I might add.)