Thorium, converted into energy in a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR pronounced “Lifter”), has the potential to completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuel based electricity generation. All the while releasing orders of magnitude less radioactive material into the atmosphere than coal and natural gas! No greenhouse gasses are emitted. And operating costs are projected to easily compete with coal. LFTR has staggering implications beyond lowering the cost of electricity:Separating thorium from heavy rare earths gives us access to heavy rare Earth elements currently monopolized by China, essential for hi-tech manufacturing jobs. Normal LFTR operation produces medical isotopes (expected to be in short supply) for fighting leukemia, in an easy to partition form. LFTR produces fuel (which the world is completely out of) needed by NASA to power deep space probes. And the waste stream contains far, far less of “the bad stuff” we’ve all come to associate with today’s nuclear power: transuranics such as plutonium and curium. LFTR is smart nuclear power, without the drawbacks of traditional nuclear power. One critical advantage America has over any other nation developing this technology is our Uranium-233 stockpile. We have about 1 ton of pure Uranium-233, a rare isotope not found in nature. It was isolated at a taxpayer cost of $4. 5 billion in today’s dollars. No one else on the planet has such a resource. And we are spending $500 million to destroy it. Right now.
