As we look to the future to provide us with new sources of energy to combat our growing energy habits, our best bet might come from research done in the past 50 years on an element called thorium.
Thorium is a slightly radioactive element originally considered fuel for the first induced nuclear reactions. Although the U.S. government passed on thorium in favor of uranium, new research is showing the metal’s amazing potential.
There are three main problems with nuclear power: it uses a finite resource as fuel, it produces radioactive waste as well as plutonium and, in an absolute worst case scenario, nuclear reactors can meltdown and cause disasters like in Chernobyl, Russia. While thorium is not a perfect fuel, it is superior to uranium in all of these areas.
Thorium is about three times more abundant than uranium and roughly 200 times as energy efficient in a nuclear reactor. To put those numbers in perspective, a pound of thorium produces roughly 3 million times the energy of a pound of coal. So even though thorium is a non-renewable resource, existing reserves could easily power the whole country for thousands of years.
Waste is also less of a problem with thorium because less fuel is required for the reaction, so less radioactive waste is produced. Thorium also has the ability to reabsorb some of the harmful radiation produced during the chain reaction; this both cuts down on waste and increases the lifetime of the fuel.
Modern nuclear power plants are already quite safe. There are 104 nuclear power plants across the country and the only major meltdown in our history occurred in Three Mile Island, Pa., in 1979. Modern safeguards have prevented any similar accidents for the past 30 years, but nuclear power still suffers from the reputation of being dangerous.
President Barack Obama has stated his support for increasing our country’s reliance on nuclear power, but government spending is unlikely to focus on unproven thorium power and instead reinforce the existing uranium-focused infrastructure.
A conventional, uranium-fueled nuclear reactor works by firing a neutron at a uranium-235 (a uranium isotope) nucleus. The collision splits the uranium nucleus into two smaller molecules, a few neutrons and some energy in the form of heat. As the new neutrons fly away from the split nucleus, they encounter more uranium atoms and the process begins again. The thermal energy from this chain reaction is used to turn water into steam, which turns a turbine and produces electricity.
Existing nuclear reactors can be modified to use a combination of thorium and uranium, which would increase efficiency and have no effect on safety. Even more promising is that completely new liquid thorium fluoride-based reactors could be constructed, making a meltdown basically impossible.
So if thorium is so great, why aren’t we using it today?
Although thorium has been studied as a viable nuclear reactor fuel since the ’50s, the U.S. government chose to back uranium-based reactors because they produce more plutonium, and it needed plutonium for bombs during the Cold War.
Unfortunately, converting these existing power plants can be expensive, and developing the technology for and building totally new thorium reactors is incredibly expensive.
Thorium proponents face a long road ahead, but with the right brains and the right funding, this common metal could one day power the world.
Andrew Shockey is a 19-year-old biological engineering sophomore from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
 
 
 
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Contact Andrew Shockey at [email protected]