Thorium - can it save the world?

[peter]

I've just read a very interesting article about the hugely abundant and naturally occuring silvery metal known as 'thorium', that is apparently causing exitement and speculation in the energy generating industry as a result of it's potential for replacing uranium-238 as the fuel of choice for meeting the energy needs of the world for generations to come.

The metalic element has significant advantages over Uranium-238 in that [the article reads] it does not require enrichment prior to use [it is siply bombarded with neutrons, upon which it breaks down to form uranium-233, 'a first rate nuclear fuel'. You feed the nuclear reactor with this and it keeps burning for years but produces only a fraction of the toxic waste associated with uranium-238. Nobel physics laureate Carlo Rubbia of EONR estimates one ton of thorium will produce the equivalent amount of energy as 200 ton's of uranium or 3.5 million tons of coal with no carbon emmissions. Additional advantages are that thorium generators do not produce any enriched by-products which can be used to make nuclear weaponsand thus holds far less risk of being abused by despots and terrorists. The much higher melting point of thorium over uranium means that the risks of a nuclear 'meltdown event' ala Chernobyl or Fukushima are much reduced.

So why is thorium not being used as we speak to provide for our current energy generation. The answer is apparently no more or less than historical mistiming. In the early days of the industry a decision had to be made whether to go down the thorium or unanium route - and uranium won. In those early days nobody thought in terms of accidents or terrorism and the production of weapons grade plutonium as a by product of energy generation was even seen as an advantage. Despite this the 'molten-salt' experimental reactor designed and run by Alan Weinberg ran sucesfully for four years at the US governments Oak Ridge National Laboratories untill it was closed down in 1969. Now only India [as a result of limited uranium deposits] currently has a thorium investigation up and running, but no lesser lights than Hans Blix and Ambassador Tom Graham Jnr. [leader of the US negotiation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] think it is time for a re-think.

Current thinking is that it might be entierly possible to convert existing uranium using nuclear power generators for thorium use almost in the manner of switching a car from leaded to unleaded petrol. Alas Big Industry and the Nulear Generation industry itself are the most disinterested parties around the table at present. The global minning and processing industry who would have most to loose were a switch to thorium advocated will do all in it's power to covince governments that the advantages of thorium are overstated - and the nulear industry is famousely conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies, so in short we shall have to see.

One more thing; one of the leading promotors of Thorium [he wrote a paper advocating the building of an underground generator in the 1990's] was a highly gifted young hungarian Jew who arrived in the USA in the 1930's fleeing the Nazi regime. He wnt on to become a leading physicist and passionate advocate of all things nuclear. His name was Edward Teller - perhabs better known to you and me as the inspiration for Stanley Kubric's immortal creation Dr Strangelove.