I just saw the following Google tech talk about Thorium based nuclear reactors. It looks like a quite interesting, almost limitless power solution yet it has failed to be commercialised because of the nuclear arms race in the 60s and 70s. There were two different forms of reactor that were being developed by the military in the 1950s and 60s – one which used Uranium 235 and would produce massive amounts of waste that could be reused in nuclear weapons (e.g. plutonium) and another, Thorium, which made it extremely difficult to make fissionable material from the waste products. Add to this the waste products are dangerous for ~500 years as opposed to millions if not processed correctly. We all know which technology for nuclear power won.
Human beings really have made some incredibly bad decisions – lets hope we manage to get through the next 25 years making some better ones and avoid destroying civilization (strange that this seems so melodramatic, and yet it’s probably true). Here is the video: The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor: What Fusion Wanted To Be.