Between 1964 to 1969 US had done major research and progressed fully on Thorium based nuclear reactors and recognized its huge potential ingenerating sufficient nuclear potential in order to meet world’s sufficient energy requirements. Due to cold war syndrome , US had to return to Uranium based reactors , in order to get the radio active nuclear waste and thus can built nuclear weapons in order to face growing Soviet challenge.
Twenty five percentages of Thorium reserves are located in India according to some estimation. India is the forefront country in engaging and developing Thorium fuel cycle to produce electricity. According to some estimates Thorium is present in the earth’s crust in such a huge quantity, that it is virtually inexhaustible source of energy.
The one more advantage of Thorium is that all most all the Thorium which is extracted can be used as fuel , no waste products and the lesser chance of making the nuclear weapons. On the contrary, only one percentage of fuel is from Uranium and rest of the percentages are for waste products and thus can be made huge amount of radioactive waste products and a huge amount of nuclear weapons can be generated.
So , in short Thorium is easier on environment and safer for peace loving man kind. The reverse can be said of Uranium fuel source of energy. With the Thorium we can get sufficient , in fact more than sufficient nuclear power generated electricity and other source of energy without the dangers of radioactive pollution and nuclear weapons proliferation. This is great for peace loving nations and great for earth.
The difficulties:
There are some difficulties and the prime is how these Thorium based fuels can be enclosed in a special containers , that are endured to fight and sustain the corrosive salts . If Thorium fuels can be sustained for long time , these fuels costs can be really cheap, as the Thorium fuels have the capacity to sustain its reaction for longer times. Such containers are yet to be tasted and it is in the process of research and it is in the labs that is in the beta stage.
One prime reason for the delay of environment friendly fuel Thorium reactors can be as majority of nuclear reactors run on Uranium based reactors , many large corporate giants could lose huge amount of money if Thorium based reactors becomes a reality and of course popular. It is an international trend and runs into hundreds of dollars. It would be unfortunate if these trends of promoting Uranium based reactors continues and Thorium reactors continues to be ignored.
Thorium can give us an unending source of green energy which mankind have ever imagined. With the help us Thorium nuclear plants can be unthreatening.
