[Urbane Guerrilla]

Hmm... really time to do Thorium, and/or pebble-beds and Candus.

To light off thorium-232, you need a source of thermal neutrons -- or something that spits a lot of alphas, like a plutonium "spark plug" in the fuel rod. Transmutation yields U-233, which delivers the useful heat in its very rapid decay. This very hot isotope is awfully hard to handle and so cannot be very useful in nuclear proliferation -- its gamma output can fry electronic bomb triggers so things get, well, erratic -- but its heat will drive a steam turbine if you just friggin' leave it in the fuel rod.

Thorium's common, four times as common as uranium, and pretty much just comes in one isotope -- you don't need an Oak Ridge to make fuel of it. And at worst, you've got Plutonium For Peace into the bargain. Using it up, that is; IIRC you eventually have lead. Thorium's radioactivity is not especially frightening, either: alpha emitter, and a slow-ticking half life slightly longer than the age of the Universe, which accounts for being four times as abundant in the crust as uranium is. Probably supplied at less than one quarter of uranium's price.

Wonder what's developed since I first read of this in 2013? We've got six threads including searchterm "thorium" since that year and a couple more from earlier onsite.