... We just need to go nuclear and call it a day. Then we could deal with Canada and Australia, instead of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Yes, we need to Go Nuclear, but with thorium, not uranium, as both China and India* are. There is three or four times more thorium than uranium and all of it can be used for power. Less than 1% of uranium is U235 which is what uranium reactors require.**
Thorium is a by product of refining rare earths. There are 3200 tons of it stored in Nevada from when MolyCorp's mine was producing rare earths. That is enough to meet all US electrical needs for many decades, and of course when the MolyCorp mine reopens, the separated Thorium from it alone should supply at least 100 years more of US electrical requirements. Unlike expensive uranium, producers of thorium will pay you to take it away!
Thorium is much safer than uranium reactor as it is a liquid salt in the core, not a solid, which is roughly spherical in shape (Or perhaps a hemisphere). Other shapes, such as a flat slab, lose too many neutrons to sustain a chain reaction.
Thus there is a metal plug at the bottom of the reactor vessel, which melts if the reactor temperature should climb significantly above the operational design temperature. Then the liquid thorium salt core drains out into a large flat pan and the chain reaction stops. I.e. only gravity is required for a safe automatic shut down, no control rods, no working pumps supplying cooling water, no electricity needed, no electronic control system, etc. - just gravity.
The US would not need to import any thorium from Canada, etc. as it has enough for several millenniums. In fact if we keep mining rare earths, there is radioactive hazard, produced and the thorium reactor is one way to reduce it. MolyCorp's mine was closed years ago because they did not properly contain the radioactive thorium separated from the rare earths.
Oak Ridge ran a small thorium reactor for four years during WWII, but shut it down as efforts focused on making an atomic bomb. You can not make an A-bomb with thorium. Thus at end of WWII, there was lots of experience and technology with uranium so that was the type of power reactor the AEC developed. - Wrong choice.
For more details and two external links for even more, see:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2739409&postcount=1826
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*There is lots of thorium but very little uranium in India. They should have the first of five thorium reactors on line in about 3 to 4 years. It is much simpler, safer, and more economical reactor, with less dangerous waste to dispose of.
** When the "spent" fuel rod is removed from a uranium reactor 95% of the U235 in it is still "un-burnt" and just stored in water pools, except in France, where fuel rods are reprocessed to recover part of the 95% of the fuel that was not used. Re-processing is complex and only France does it.
