Kirk Sorensen, NASA-trained engineer, is a man on a mission to open minds to the tremendous promise that thorium, a near-valueless element in today's marketplace, may offer in meeting future world energy demand.
Compared to Uranium-238-based nuclear reactors currently in use today, a liquid flouride thorium reactor (LTFR) would be:

Much safer - no risk of environmental radiation contamination or plant explosion (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three-Mile Island)
Much more efficient at producing energy - over 90% of the input fuel would be tapped for energy; vs <1% in today's reactors
Less waste-generating - most of the radioactive by-products would take days/weeks to degrade to safe levels, vs centuries
Much cheaper - reactor footprints and infrastructure would be much smaller, and could be constructed in modular fashion
More plentiful - LFTR reactors do not need to be located next to large water supplies, as current plants do
Less controversial - the byproducts of the thorium reaction are pretty useless for weaponization
Longer-lived - thorium is much more plentiful than uranium and treated as valueless today. There is virtually no danger of running out of it given LFTR plant efficiency

Most of the know-how and technology to build and maintain LFTR reactors exists today. If made a priority, the US could have its first fully-operational LFTR plant running at commercial scale in under a decade.
But no such LFTR plants are in development. In fact, the US shut down its work on thorium-based energy production decades ago. And has not invested materially in related research since.
Staring at the looming energy cliff ahead created by Peak Oil, it begs the question - why not?

Not to come to the defense of uranium, but this reeks of cold fusion to my admittedly ignorant eye. I leave it to better men to consider, and I advocate that it gets a fair shot if it hasn't already.

For those interested in how this sort of thing tends to play out, I recommend Sharon Weinberger's excellent book, Imaginary Weapons.

Amazon Link

It's worth trying.

Of course, in a time where NIMBY and BANANA dominate, even in cases where "safe, natural" alternatives were being promoted, I have a hard time seeing this getting a fair trial.

Ooh, new acronym! I'm familiar with NIMBY, but what's BANANA?

Not to come to the defense of uranium, but this reeks of cold fusion to my admittedly ignorant eye.

Thing is it doesn't solve the major problem of nuclear power: nuclear waste. It's still there, just a wee bit less of it.

For the longer term, a breeder reactor economy may become desirable if a proliferation-resistant fuel cycle can be implemented. Pyroprocessing, with co-located facilities, here offers the most promise. Its successful development would limit proliferation dangers and change the “long-term” waste problem into a 500-year problem, because without the actinides relatively little activity remains after 500 years. It would also make uranium resources quasi-infinite, by increasing one-hundredfold the energy extracted from a given uranium deposit and at least another hundredfold by making dilute uranium sources, such as seawater, affordable. Just such a solution is contemplated in some DOE planning, using yet-to-be-built new reactors---the so-called Generation IV reactors.