The problem is with the reactors we've been using to produce it. If the reactors at Fukushima had been Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs) they wouldn't have had a disaster on their hands.

Liquid-fuel reactor technology was successfully developed at Oak Ridge National Labs in the 1960s. Although the test reactor worked flawlessly, the project was shelved, a victim of Cold War strategy. But LFTRs have been gathering a lot of attention lately, particularly since the events in Japan.

A LFTR is a completely different type of reactor. For one thing, it can't melt down. It's physically impossible. And since it's air-cooled, it doesn't have to be located near the shore. It can even be placed in an underground vault. A tsunami would roll right over it, like a truck over a manhole cover.

LFTRs consume fuel so efficiently that they can even use the spent fuel from other reactors, while producing a miniscule amount of waste themselves. In fact, the waste from a LFTR is virtually harmless in just 300 years. (No, that's not a typo.) Yucca Mountain is obsolete. So are Uranium reactors.

LFTR technology has been sitting on the shelf at Oak Ridge for over forty years. But now the manuals are dusted off, and a dedicated group of nuclear industry outsiders is ready to build another test reactor and give it a go.

Will it work? If it doesn't, we'll have one more reactor to retire. But if it does work and there is every reason to believe that it will the LFTR will launch a new American paradigm of clean, cheap, safe and abundant energy.

Let's build one and see.

Submitted on Monday, Apr 11, 2011 at 1:42:55 AM