The Thorium Dream

Something that has been in the news over the past few weeks is an alternative fuel called Thorium, so I thought I would discuss it.

For a long time now, nuclear power has been used to provide us with power, albeit to a much smaller extent than oil and gas. Whilst nuclear power brings many advantages with it, it also brings many disadvantages. However, it would appear that a simple change in fuel from uranium to thorium could be the solution to many of these disadvantages. Here is a list of ways that thorium may be a more better fuel source than uranium:

•  Nomenclature- it is named after the Norse god Thor
•  Abundancy- thorium is three times more abundant than uranium and all of it is able to be used as fuel, compared to the 0.7% of uranium that is able to be used (only isotopes uranium-235 and uranium-285 are used today).
•  No long-term waste- according to Prof Carlo Rubbia from Cern, thorium waste will dissipate within 400-500years.  I agree this does seem long term, but compared with uranium wastes’ 50,000 years it’s pretty good.
• Efficiency- a ball of thorium the size of a grape could provide enough energy for someone’s lifetime.
•  No meltdowns- meltdowns such as Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 were catastrophic for their surrounding environments, making them uninhabitable (by humans at least) for many years to come. Thorium reactors work in such a way that if a meltdown occurred, the only thing that would need to be shutdown is a small uranium feeder plant. This would allow the thorium reactor to halt itself.
• No bombs- the bi-products of thorium are much less easily made into bombs than those of traditional uranium. What better way to save the environment than by not turning it into a desolate wasteland.

It would therefore seem that thorium could solve many of the major problems that come with nuclear energy. Below is a link to a video from Vice’s Motherboard youtube channel I found interesting. It has more in depth information about the issue and I’d recommend watching it if you are interested. Thanks for reading and as usual, comments are welcome.