Both India and China are actively developing new thorium reactors (note that there are different types of thorium-using reactors with
different characteristics).

Recent NPR program on Thorium: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/152026805/is-thorium-a-magic-bullet-for-our-energy-problems

As long as it's cleaner than Uranium nukes and coal, and not much more than coal when done on a massive scale.

Uranium nukes are a political non-started and those Nuke Engineers who think otherwise will soon be facing extinction.

when it comes to producing garbage we don't know what to do with. However, it produces this garbage more slowly and produces far less of what the military wants and that's why the technology was discarded in the 1950s in favor of uranium reactors.

If energy push comes to shove, then they might be a viable temporary option while research into harvesting renewable energy continues.

Uranium reactors should be shut down and made as inert as possible before they kill us all.

Research into thorium reactor technology is going forward in China and India. They will likely perfect it soon. The US is still wedded to uranium reactors because of the military.

No offense, but you need to read up on thorium technology some more. Like the original article said, it consumes the long-term radioactive garbage as fuel and produces relatively low level radioactive garbage that has a relatively very short half life.

Uranium reactors are not tied so closely to the military anymore. The military is focused on non-nuke weapons and has been for some time. The prejudice against thorium reactors is coming largely from a lazy industry that's used to sucking from the government teet's and rehashing old tech that they're comfortable with. Thorium reactors are vastly different, and the American Nuke society is too lazy and has it too good to embrace it. The old standby's who were fed the military anti-thorium dogma back in the 50-70's are now the decision makers and still have yet to face the music.

there is never any contaminated equipment and none of them is ever vulnerable to natural disaster no matter where they put them.

I suggest the need for reading is on your side.

I can see it as a transitional technology, nothing more.

This is not merely a theoretical topic. A Molten Salt Reactor of the LFTR type was run for 5 years at Oak Ridge National Labs. It worked and has much more tractable contamination than fossil fuels with $1 million times the energy density. We have enough Thorium in the US to run inexpensive & energy independent for 1,000 years. Many countries (China, Russia, France Japan, India) are working from our design and will "own" it before we figure out that our current path is unsafe and unsustainable. Here are some metrics to help compare these sources of energy. As you know China brings a new coal fired power plant on line each week. Thorium provides the Third World a feasible strategy to provide their citizenry a decent productive lifestyle in our lifetime. This is a practical solution for reducing poverty without making the world a toxic waste dump.
To generate electricity for a city of 1 million people for 1 year:
1) Mine 3,200,000 tonnes of coal - emit 8,500,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and particulates - landfill 900,000 cubic metres of toxic/radioactive fly-ash.
2) Mine 50,000 tonnes of uranium ore - emit no greenhouse gases - produce 24 tonnes of radiotoxic 'waste'.
3) Mine 50 tonnes of equivalent thorium ore - emit no greenhouse gases - produce 0.8 tonnes of short lived radiotoxic 'waste'.

Whatever the secret is there lets use it to produce our electricity. Problem solved

The military has always had ALL the reactors they have wanted / needed for nuclear weapons. Those reactors are to be found at Hanford in Washington, and Savannah River in South Carolina.

You are just flat out WRONG that thorium was discarded by the commercial industry because there wasn't anything for the military.

ABSOLUTELY NONE of the fissile nuclear material in the military programs and in our nuclear weapons came from the commercial power industry.

In fact, until 1995, the USA had a legal ban on using commercial reactors for military purposes. That ban goes back to the Atomic Energy Act of 1947.

In 1995, at the behest of President Clinton, a restriction was lifted so that the US Government owned TVA-owned reactor at Watts Bar could be used to irradiate targets to produce tritium for nuclear weapons. ( President Clinton had to decide whether to use a power reactor, or spend the money to build a new military production reactor. ) But that is about the extent of the commercial / military connection.

The anti-nuke organizations like to say there's a link in order to tap into opposition to nuclear weapons.

PamW

The Huffington Post article is unclear, mixing facts and hype, mixing facts about Light Water Reactors (LWR, most reactors in the world) and Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) and solid fueled thorium reactors. People commenting on that article think because they know "nuclear reactors" or heard some about solid-fueled thorium reactors they understand about liquid-fueled thorium reactors. Surely you can understand they are very different technologies, right? (Some writers there are deliberately confusing things, the LWR industry makes a lot of money making nuclear waste and storing nuclear waste).

Almost all safety issues with LWR are from using water as the coolant. High pressure is needed to keep water from boiling away, needing complex engineered systems and huge containment buildings. Steam is what would carry radioactivity into the atmosphere; high pressure or hydrogen from water are what can explode.

LWR has nuclear waste problems, from using solid fuel. Less than 2% of the fuel can be used, since the fission byproducts (think of it like the "exhaust in your car&quot are trapped in the fuel rod, stopping the nuclear reaction.

The Atomic Energy Commission report to the President and Congress recommended switching to other types of nuclear reactors, for better safety and less nuclear waste. 50 years later we still have not. Most people now think "nuclear reactor" means LWR. Maybe it's time to reconsider whether LWR is a reactor to continue using, and maybe LFTR, or another molten salt reactor, makes more sense?

LWR is a "solid fueled, water cooled uranium reactor". Some countries (especially India) are attempting a "solid fueled, water cooled thorium-to-uranium reactor"; it will run much like a LWR (since it is solid fueled, water cooled).

LFTR is a specific type of "molten fueled, salt cooled, thorium-to-uranium reactor". With molten fuel, the fission byproduct "exhaust" can be easily removed and properly stored; the fuel can therefore be thoroughly used. With salt coolant, there are no "loss of coolant accidents possible", since the salt won't evaporate; there are no high pressure explosions possible, since there is no high pressure; there can't be hydrogen explosions, since there is no hydrogen present.

People calling a reactor "a thorium reactor" or "a uranium reactor" are misunderstanding. It isn't "yea thorium we won't use uranium". Thorium converts to uranium inside the reactor. The type of uranium produced from thorium (U233) makes less waste than the type of uranium used in LWR (U235, rare, 0.7% of natural uranium) or the uranium-converted-to-plutonium used in other reactors. Plus thorium is almost 4 times as abundant as uranium, and it doesn't need to be enriched (U235 needs to be more concentrated to be useful; all thorium can be used).

To produce 1 gigawatt electricity for a year, in a LFTR, takes 800kg of thorium or uranium/plutonium waste. 83% of the fission byproducts are safe in 10 years, 17% (135 kg, 300 lbs) within 350 years, no uranium or plutonium left as waste. After that, radiation is below background radiation levels. (Compare to 250,000kg uranium to make 35,000kg enriched uranium for a LWR, all needing storage for 100,000+ years. The fission byproducts for LWR are comparable, ~ 800kg, but trapped in the fuel rods with all that unused uranium.)

Instead of Storing uranium, LFTR uses it as fuel, like a nuclear reactor should.
Instead of having to keep water from evaporating, LFTR uses a coolant that won't evaporate.
Instead of avoiding nuclear meltdown, LFTR is designed to use molten fuel.
Instead of trapping fission byproducts in the fuel, LFTR separates and stores them until they are safe and valuable chemicals.

For much more detail, clearly presented, how it works, how it can be so much safer, what is needed to build it, how it should survive natural disasters or accidents or terrorists, see What is a LFTR and How Can a Reactor Be So Safe?

I think they are indeed very promising, and we should definitely pursue the development of a LFTR.