Fast reactors will require complex active controls which adds cost and makes licensing very difficult in the US, perhaps nigh on impossible with the current regulatory framework...

Some people are promoting fast reactors to eat the spent fuel up, and then use the excess neutrons to breed more uranium fuel from thorium.

This does lead to virtually no long term waste. What is your opinion on using such thorium schemes.

Good point, those complex control systems would need extensive R & D and testing in a safe area in case there's an accident. It would probably take 10 or 20 years to do that at normal nuclear industry speed. On the other hand, the Manhattan project was very fast.

Of course huge risks were taken in that program. No one really knew how close Germany or Japan was to developing the A-bomb, maybe those risks were worth it? We have a huge waste and contamination legacey to clean up now, that first nuclear program cultivated secrey and disregard for safety and oversight.

I am not interested in making extra fuel, we have enough in the used fuel rods to dispose of already. And that disposal will involve fast neutron reactions that can neutralize the rest of the waste.

It would be nice if one could wave a magic wand and the waste would dissapear (and nuclear power along with it), but that isn't going to happen.

By the time the waste treatment reactor design is developed and tested renewable distributed smart grid transmission, generation, and storage will make nuclear power obsolete and many times the cost of renewables.

But the waste problem will still need to be dealt with. The waste reactors will be an extra cost, but the renewable grid will help defer those costs, and a booming green economy freed up from oil wars and recessions due to imported energy price spikes, will be able to finance the cleanup.

I see nukes as an expensive, necessary cleanup that also generates power that will shut down coal plants a bit faster, so let's run them safely as long as it takes to clean up. No more new sites! Put the new reactor design inside existing plant containments.

I think nukes and large scale wind will be phased out in 40 to 50 years. Room temp nano-tech superconduction and near 100% efficient solar cogeneration, storage, and transmission will power the world from our rooftops by then.

The old behemoth wind machines will have been a transitional technology, they will be recycled using renewable energy, most likely solar furnace powrered steel mills. Forget thorium, we don't need to call that techno-genie out of the bottle. The fusion reactor 93 nillion miles away will provide plenty of power for eveything by the time nuclear power is safely put to sleep for good.