Each year America’s 104 LWR reactors produce 2000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. The energy value left in 2000 tons of spent fuel rods after they are removed from LWRs is approximately 7.0 x 10^12 KW-hours of energy if all the fertile and fissile fuel is burned. The value of the electricity that would result from fully burning all of the 2000 tons of spent nuclear fuel is $685 billion dollars a year given a 2009 average cost of electricity of 9.79 cents per KW-hour. Alternate reactor technology capable of extracting close to 100% of the energy value in spent nuclear fuel has been invented at Oak Ridge National Laboratory but this technology has not been commercialized and has been slide-lined for decades. Conventional Light Water Reactors used in USA to generate commercial electricity only burn at maximum about 3% of the Uranium contained in fuel rods. Why not use ORNL's Fast Neutron Spectrum Molten Salt Reactors to burn a significantly higher percentage of the Uranium and Plutonium in spent nuclear fuel? If you burn in excess of 98% of the energy value in fuel you reduce the amount of fuel you have to mine and the volume of waste you have to eventually dispose of. Robert Steinhaus - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Retired) Thorium Molten Salt Reactors are not “crank” science. Dr. Edward Teller, the founding director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote his final paper a month before his death on the subject of the advantages of Thorium Molten Salt Reactors and the contribution this style of less polluting nuclear energy could provide to achieving energy independence while reducing the need to generate green house gases. This paper can be downloaded from the following URL: http://www.geocities.com/rmoir2003/moir_teller.pdf