mhaze, Alan B- I must admit I favour small modular reactors over thorium- at least in Australia- but I suppose it depends on the context- if nuclear is going to be a temporary solution to world energy in the next 10 to 20 years- until we get Dyson Sphere's ;).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

"Advocates believe thorium is key to developing a new generation of cleaner, safer nuclear power.[8] In 2011, a group of scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology assessed thorium-based power as "a 1000+ year solution or a quality low-carbon bridge to truly sustainable energy sources solving a huge portion of mankind's negative environmental impact.""

"After World War II, uranium-based nuclear reactors were built to produce electricity. These were similar to the reactor designs that produced material for nuclear weapons. During that period, the government of the United States also built an experimental prototype molten salt reactor (MSR) using U-233 fuel, the fissile material created by bombarding thorium with neutrons. The MSRE reactor, built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, operated critical for roughly 15,000 hours from 1965 to 1969. In 1968, Nobel laureate and discoverer of plutonium, Glenn Seaborg, publicly announced to the Atomic Energy Commission, of which he was chairman, that the thorium-based reactor had been successfully developed and tested."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Perhaps we should be investing in Astro-Chicken technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrochicken

This is interesting..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

"Dyson disagreed with the scientific consensus on climate change. He believed that some of the effects of increased CO2 levels are favourable and not taken into account by climate scientists, such as increased agricultural yield, and further that the positive benefits of CO2 likely outweigh the negative effects.[11][12][13] He was skeptical about the simulation models used to predict climate change, arguing that political efforts to reduce causes of climate change distract from other global problems that should take priority."

"Politically, Dyson said he was "brought up as a socialist".[17]"