Uranium market watchers and proponents of nuclear power have undoubtedly encountered thorium, the unicorn in the room when it comes to clean energy. As the world nuclear energy consumption increases and future supply of uranium remains uncertain (this in not true), thorium is being looked into as a possible alternative to uranium to provide safe and abundant nuclear power at a reasonable cost. But what is thorium and how can it play into the global energy future? Thorium, a slightly radioactive metal that occurs in rocks and sands. It is more abundant in nature than uranium and is fertile rather than fissile. When placed into nuclear applications, thorium can be used in conjunction with a fissile material like recycled plutonium. The use of thorium as a primary source of energy is still in the works. As World Nuclear Association (WNA) notes, extracting the latent energy value of thorium in a cost-effective manner is still challenging. This means that before the the energy sector can turn to thorium as a viable option, there is still a lot of research and development that needs to go into refining the technology, now for many years. The question of whether thorium works for energy production was answered in 2013, when privately owned Norwegian company Thor Energy began to produce power at its Halden test reactor in Norway using thorium. It is the fundamental first step in the thorium evolution, Thor Energy CEO, Oystein Asphjell, told Reuters at the time. Nuclear giant Westinghouse, a unit of Toshiba, is part of an international consortium that Thor Energy established to fund and manage the experiments. An established player in nuclear energy, Westinghouse provides viewpoints on the research. Thor Energy is not the only company engaged in researching whether or not thorium is a viable alternative to uranium in nuclear energy. In fact, firms from the U.S., Australia, China, India, and the Czech Republic have also been working on thorium reactor designs. Read on.
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