Nuclear? No, thank you.

Nuclear? Hell yes! fear of nuclear power is ignorant sillyness, grow up. Its green, its safe, its ready to go. Im NOT talking about old school huge plants, tear them down. But the new kind could fill the gap untill fusion reactors become practical in lets hope 20-30 years.

One of the more interesting reactors I think is the quantum nucleonic reactor. You bombard hafnium with xrays and it stimulates more energy. These can be so small it could be fitted into light airplanes. The material is fairly benign as radioactive metals go.
And to the naysayers of nuclear.....with 7 billion on the planet, we need to utilize EVERY means of power production until someone figures out a better solution.

One thing you didn\'t mention about Flibe\'s molten salt reactor is that it runs at atmospheric pressure (basically). That is a huge improvement in safety. Also, there is no hydrogen buildup possible or any other combustibles so explosions leading to the dispersion of radioactive particles is eliminated.
Since the fuel is in a molten salt, if the core did rupture, the salt would leak out and solidify (possibly even plugging the hole and stopping the leak).
@ Joaquim, nuclear is the only form of energy that can provide reliable baseload power without emitting CO2. It really is our only choice if we want to decrease CO2 and keep abundant, cheap energy available to our society.

Can\'t happen soon enough - there\'s NO alternative.

Nuclear? Faster please would be my response.
But then, most likely unlike Joaquim, I design the Instrumentation, Controls & Electrical for power plants. Normally they are Combined Cycle Gas Turbines.
Hence, I realize the difference in the 1960 design and controls of a reactor compared to the current design. And even then, the controls and related for any of these \'Small\' reactors is multiple orders of magnitude better then anything that Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima ever had. The best example would be a car:
Take a car that was designed in 1960. Better yet, take a car design in 1910, because two of those plants were first generation \'lightbulb\' designs (Three Mile/Fukushima) and Chernobyl was the oldest commercial reactor design, RBMK. So, pre-model-T.
Now, controls on a reactor built in 1960 (I also have done refinery work) is mostly pneumatic. As in, a chunk of SS tubing run from a level switch to a valve. When the tank gets full, the valve opens. When the tank fills past the point a little further up, another level switch gets tripped, and in this case, in most applications, a signal goes out and turns on a light. That is 1960s design, allot like a 1960\'s car, with emissions tubing, a carburetor, poor tolerances, smoke out the tailpipe, bad gas mileage, and lots of NOX, SOX, CO.
A modern car, even the friggen Ford Raptor, an obnoxious off-road truck, the emissions are cleaner then the air going into the truck. Cleaner! And it has allot more power output, is multitudes cleaner and safer in an accident then a car from the 1960\'s, and three times as efficient.
The difference in reactor and plant design between the versions that had problems, shoot every plant in operation from the 1970\'s, and what could be built now (like the AP1000 units) is so amazingly different that all anybody who has any experience working with modern plant design, the redundant controls, the DCS systems, the SIL ratings, the SIS ratings - Wow. Far more then our advances in car design. Since, short of the two new AP1000\'s, we haven\'t put into place a design that wasn\'t nearly 50 years old!
I can make a 200MW Gas Turbine plant that is walk away safe, remote controlled to turn on, run, and if there is any problem shut itself off, and make it be controlled by a friggen smart phone. These SNR plants are that way also, in some cases (Thorium and Breeded) there isn\'t any nuclear waste that last more then 100 years. And it eats all of our old waste.
Thing Prius, Volt, Karma, Leaf when you see these new reactors. Stop thinking 1965 442. This is a huge improvement on anything people have any way of relating to.

I really hope these type of power plants are approved and used as soon as possible. This is a great answer to the worlds energy needs. I am all for it. This could even be a way of producing \"green\" hydrogen for use in fuel cells?
@ Joaquim, did you even read the whole article? If so then what do you suggest we do instead, keep burning more coal?

Excellent article, well written.

India plans \'safer\' nuclear plant powered by thorium
Use of relatively low-carbon, low-radioactivity thorium instead of uranium may be breakthrough in energy generation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/01/india-thorium-nuclear-plant
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/01/what-is-thorium-nuclear-power

as with all other good ideas,they don\'t want us to take advantage and make good use of them,because tory administrations like to repress and politicise everything,wrap it so tight in red tape that it strangles itself before it can come to fruition.as such,i don\'t hold out much hope for any good idea when governments choose to use these things for political points scoring,think of all the potential jobs!oh.....there i go again....dreaming.