While the idea of building small, thorium-based nuclear reactors \u2013 thought to be dramatically safer, cheaper, cleaner and terror-proof than our current catalog of reactors \u2013 can be shooed away as fringe by some, the germ of the idea began in the U.S. government\u2019s major atomic lab, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the 1960s, only to be left by the wayside as the American nuclear industry plowed ahead with its development of the light water reactors and the uranium fuel cycle.<\/p>\n