Well considering that if you assign half of our defense budget to protecting energy supplies our current per-barrel oil price for imported barrels is $200 each.......

(That's not an unrealistic figure either; in fact, it might be low.)

The thorium reactor plants produce electricity; we get several benefits:

1. No more imported petroleum of any sort.
2. No more need to defend the world for this purpose.
3. Between 3-5x our current electrical output
4. Little or NO growth in coal consumption from our current path.
5. A decrease in CO2 output approximately equal to that produced by the coal (it's still emitted, but the oil it replaces is not burned. The thorium use to produce the heat and electricity, of course, emits no CO2.)

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