Runs a million miles on eight grams of thorium

StumbleUpon has an article about an unusual fuel:

In breaking news on the energy and technology front, Laser Power Systems, an American company based in Connecticut, is developing a method of automotive propulsion using thorium to produce electricity. The results far surpass anything currently powering automobiles. To put it in perspective, eight grams of thorium produces enough power for a car to drive a million miles.
Thorium is similar in structure to the element uranium. Because it is an incredibly dense material, it has the potential to produce tremendous heat, and thus energy.
Charles Stevens, the CEO of Laser Power Systems, explains that just one gram of thorium yields more energy than thirty thousand liters of gasoline. Just eight grams of thorium, Stevens explains, would produce more energy than the vehicle could use in its entire life, without the need for refueling, ever.
Stevens explained, in an interview with Ward’s Auto, that small pieces of thorium have been used to generate heat, being positioned to create a thorium laser in the vehicle. The laser heats water which produces steam, which, in turn, powers a series of “mini-turbines.” The entire engine weighs only about five hundred pounds, and is light and compact enough to fit under the hood of any conventional vehicle.
Stevens and his forty employees are now trying to answer the question: “How do you take the laser and put these things together efficiently?”
The question is not, however, if they can get it to work, but when they get it efficiently produced. When they do, they will have a vehicle that “will wear out before the engine. There is no oil, no emissions, nothing.”
Far from conceptual, this has worked in the thorium-powered Cadillac World Thorium Fuel Concept, presented in 2009 by Loren Kulesus. Aside from adjusting this innovative model’s two-dozen tires every five years, Kulesus explained that nothing else would need to be added to the vehicle, including fuel, for more than a century of use. 

Rico says that, like all 'hey, what a great idea' ideas, this one's got some problems; there's that thorium, to start with... (And won't the Saudis, along with Alaska, be pissed...)