This is the most important topic in the world today involving politics, science and energy. For some reason no one in US government seems to be aware of it. Who is currently working on a thorium reactor? China, France, Czechs, Russia, India. The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor‎ LFTR was an incredible design devised by Alvin Weinberg and his team over 40 years ago. A design that safely turns off in an emergency, does not use high pressure cooling water that can blow off and does not create large amounts of radioactive waste. It ran at Oak Ridge National Lab for 5 years in the 1960s. Weinberg holds the patent on the current Light Water Reactor LWR we use today but thought of it as higher risk and a temporary step towards LFTR thorium reactor which he preferred. We could have been using the LFTR technology since the 1970s except it was defunded by Pres Nixon in favor of a Fast Breeder reactor which never worked out. What is Thorium? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw
Energy from Thorium is a form of nuclear energy. It is an important element that’s decay gives earth its hot molten core. It has 1 million times the energy density of petroleum and is present in amounts plentiful enough to solve humanity’s energy problems permanently or at least until we figure out a workable fusion reactor. This technology has been prototyped and proven. Thorium is nearly free since is a waste product that is produced during the mining of valuable rare earth elements. Bottom line…Thorium clean energy costs approximately $.03/kw vs coal at $.054/kw
How about an energy source that will last for 10,000 years and is plentiful domestically so we do not need to conduct foreign wars to control production?. Something that consumes spent uranium from existing nuclear reactors and produces only useful fission products needed by the medical industry and for space exploration. A resource that solves the major US economic problems that are caused by high energy prices. A source of energy that can be used to efficiently produce abundant fresh water by desalination and create liquid fuels for transportation by recapturing green house gasses. Welcome to http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/ join, make a difference!

Besides the well known tax breaks (deepwater incentives, depletion allowances, tertiary recovery tax breaks) and other government support (eminent domain used to secure mineral rights, and rights of way for pipelines and transmission lines, dredging of deepwater ports and waterways, leases on public land) there are other hidden government giveaways to the fossil fuel industries. Government research labs provide the basic research that these companies need (seismology, offshore surveys, deep drilling, enhanced gas recovery, super computing). The military protects the oil supply lines. The Coast Guard cleans up the spills. The taxpowers pay the costs of the pollution left behind, monetarily and with the loss of quality of life and health. The government gives them incentives to develop the resources, but they use that money for excessive lobbying efforts.

Are the benefits of nuclear power worth the risk? We've had three major warning calls so far: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukishima. Every machine designed by humans fails at some point. Financial interests will always try to keep something running past it's design lifetime. We still haven't solved the problem of how to deal safely with nuclear waste products or where to store them. Complex systems will always have unforseen problems and need constant maintenance that may be beyond the understanding of the people who work there. Nuclear material poses a security risk. The insurance industry won't touch it because of the huge unknown financial risk leaving the taxpayers liable for any accidents. Because of global warming there might not be enough freshwater available for cooling purposes. The costs of buidling them and deactivating them may be more than the income from the power generated over its lifetime. If everything works fine they might have the benefit of reducing carbon emissions from power plants, but does investing in them just delay investments in solar and wind and other clean energies that don't require massive financial and political backing and huge environmental studies?

Oil, coal and natural gas companies who advocate for increased domestic extraction of fossil fuels often use the argument that doing so will increase our energy security. But this could only be true if all of that newly extracted energy is refined and used here in the U.S. There is now nothing to keep such companies from selling this newly extracted fossil fuel on the world market to the highest bidder. But new federal laws with very stiff fines (e.g., fine equal to the fuel sale price + 10%) could dissuade such transactions, and indeed increase our energy security. If such a law had no teeth though, it would just end up being another profit-making opportunity for the fossil fuel companies (and more greenhouse gases).