Thorium is a real solution too. Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran a molten salt Thorium breeder reactor for about 7years at full capacity. I think it was a worthwhile experiment. Opinions do differ however and the inherently unsafe high pressure water cooled Uranium reactors won the bid because those types of reactors have the peculiar benefit of producing weapons grade plutonium.
That's a pretty sad historical fact and the main reason you don't hear too much about it. But it's true. A safer, cheaper, more abundant source of nuclear power with practically no waste was passed up to make way for a more expensive and complicated and dangerous technology for the sole reason that it must be tightly controlled by our military of course, because of the simple fact that it produces weapons grade plutonium as a byproduct and a thorium fueled reactor can't.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Had this technology been developed further America would be a super duper power with oil reserves to spare. But no! They didn't want safe abundant energy! They wanted mutually assured destruction! MAD, and at our expense physically and financially.
LOOK IT UP! Oak Ridge ran this thing full bore. It worked! It should have been the eureka moment like when Edison threw the switch! But it was all wrong because there was another burgeoning big business on the horizon which solved the difficult question of how to mass produce unobtainium, and they did it right under our noses, and they made us feel so insecure by scaring us and convincing us that it's SO unsafe that nobody else but them can possibly control it.
Well the facts differ materially from what we were told. It's apples and oranges as far as safety is concerned, first of all when you compare these two technologies. It's apples and oranges as far as nuclear waste as well. Thorium reactors have the amazing ability to use up the waste that's just sitting there. Not just the weapons, but the other stuff as well.
It's shame, shame, shame and you know who's to blame.