A Forgotten War Technology Could Safely Power Earth For Millions Of Years

• Humanity may face an energy crisis as the world's population rapidly grows.
• Nuclear power plants can generate bountiful, carbon-free electricity, but their solid fuel is problematic, and aging reactors are being shut down.
• A Cold War-era liquid-fueled reactor design could transform thorium — a radioactive waste from mining — into a practically limitless energy source.
• US engineers proved such a system works during the 1960s. However, the military canceled the project and it was nearly forgotten.
• Companies and governments are now trying to revive and evolve the design, but development costs, regulations, and nuclear-weapons concerns all pose hurdles.

The lifeblood of modern civilization is affordable, free-flowing energy.

It gives us the power to heat our homes. Grow and refrigerate food. Purify water. Manufacture products. Perform organ transplants. Drive a car. Go to work. Or procrastinate from work by reading a story about the future of energy.

Today's cheap, bountiful supplies make it hard to see humanity's looming energy crisis, but it's possibly coming within our lifetimes. Our numbers will grow from 7.36 billion people today to 9 billion in 2040, an increase of 22%. Rapidly developing nations, however, will supercharge global energy consumption at more than twice that rate.

Fossil fuels could quench the planet's deep thirst for energy, but they'd be a temporary fix at best. Known reserves may dry up within a century or two. And burning up that carbon-based fuel would accelerate climate change, which is already on track to disrupt and jeopardize countless lives.

Meanwhile, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, though key parts of a solution, are not silver bullets — especially if the world is to meet a 2050 deadline set by the Paris Agreement. Energy from fusion is promising, but it's not yet proved to work, let alone on a commercial and competitive scale.

Nuclear reactors, on the other hand, fit the bill: They're dense, reliable, emit no carbon, and — contrary to bitter popular sentiment — are among the safest energy sources on earth. Today, they supply about 20% of America's energy, though by the 2040s, this share may drop to 10% as companies shut down decades-old reactors, according to a July 2016 report released by Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

The good news is that a proven solution is at hand — if we want it badly enough.

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A Forgotten War Technology Could Safely Power Earth For Millions Of Years. Here's Why We Aren't Using It | IFLScience