Of course sensational headlines like this are the stuff that perpetual motion machines are made of, but Thorium nuclear reactors should be one of the most promising sources of energy of all the available options.

Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium - Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comme...orium.html Wrote:There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power.
Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor’s day or Thursday - produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.

Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. "It’s the Big One," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering.

A process by which known supplies of Plutonium go missing may not be what the world needs, but with appropriate observation and verification, it can be a very good thing.

At least someone is talking about nuclear energy again.