THORIUM

 

 

LPS, LLC Thorium Report

Outlook

Thorium use in the United States has decreased substantially during the past decade. Domestic demand is expected to remain at recent depressed levels unless low-cost technology is developed to dispose of residues or its use as a non-proliferative nuclear fuel gains widespread commercialization. In the long term, high-disposal costs, increasingly stringent regulations, and public concerns related to thorium’s natural radioactivity are expected to continue to depress its use in none-energy applications, especially in the United States.

Worldwide demand for thorium is small. There was no domestic production of thorium in 2004. Domestic imports for consumption of refined thorium products increased by 29% in 2004 according to data collected by the U.S. International Trade Commission. The value of thorium metal and compounds used by the domestic industry in 2004 was estimated to be about $170,000, an increase from $149,000 in 2003. Only minor amounts of thorium are used annually (less than 10 metric tons per year). However, large fluctuations in demand are caused by intermittent use, especially for catalytic applications that do not require annual replenishment.

Thorium and its compounds were produced primarily from the mineral monazite, which was recovered as a byproduct of processing heavy-mineral sands for tin, titanium, or zirconium minerals. Monazite was recovered primarily for its rare-earth content, and only a small portion of the byproduct thorium produced was consumed. Monazite-producing countries were Brazil, India, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. In 2004, all thorium compounds, metal, and alloys used by the domestic industry were derived from imports, company stocks, or material previously acquired from the U.S. Government stockpile.

Problems associated with thorium’s natural radioactivity represented a significant cost to those companies involved in its mining, processing, manufacture, and use. The costs to comply with environmental regulations and potential legal liabilities and the excessive costs to purchase storage and waste disposal space were the principal deterrents to its commercial use. Health concerns associated with thorium’s natural radioactivity have not been a significant factor in switching to alternative nonradioactive materials (Ed Loughlin, Grace-Davison division of W.R. Grace & Co., oral commun., 1997; Don Whitesell, The Coleman Company, Inc., oral commun., 2002).

Limited demand for thorium, relative to the rare earths, continued to create a worldwide oversupply of thorium compounds and residues. Most major rare-earth processors have switched feed materials to thorium-free intermediate compounds, such as rare-earth chlorides, hydroxides, or nitrates. Excess thorium not designated for commercial use was either disposed of as a radioactive waste or stored for potential use as a nuclear fuel or other application. Principal nonenergy uses have shifted from refractory applications to chemical catalysts, lighting, and welding electrodes.

 

World Review

Thorium demand remained depressed because industrial consumers expressed concerns with the potential liabilities, the cost of complying with environmental monitoring and regulations, and the costs of disposal at approved waste burial sites.

 

Production

Domestic mine production data for thorium-bearing minerals were developed by the U.S. Geological Survey from a voluntary canvass of U.S. thorium operations. The one mine to which a canvass form was sent responded. Although thorium was not produced in the United States in 2004, the mine that had previously produced thorium-bearing monazite continued to maintain capacity on standby. Monazite was last produced in the United States in 1994.

Spectrulite Consortium, Inc. of Madison, IL, which filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in January 2003, was in the process of having its assets liquidated during 2004

The company previously produced high-strength lightweight thorium-magnesium alloys for aerospace applications.

 

Consumption

Statistics on domestic thorium consumption were developed by surveying various processors and manufacturers, evaluating import-export data, and analyzing Government stockpile shipments. Domestic thorium producers and processors that were surveyed in 2004 reported no consumption of thorium oxide equivalent in 2004. Additional information on domestic consumption was not available.

 

Stocks

Government stocks of thorium nitrate in the NDS were 3,218,697 kg (7,096,012 pounds) on December 31, 2004. At yearend 2004, all stocks of thorium nitrate in the NDS were uncommitted (not previously sold) and authorized for disposal. NDS stocks were scheduled for shipment to the NTS.

 

Prices

Thorium oxide prices in 2004, quoted by Rhodia Electronics and Catalysis, Inc., were unchanged from the previous year (table 1). At yearend, thorium oxide prices delivered duty paid were $82.50 per kilogram for 99.9% purity and $107.25 per kilogram for 99.99% purity. Thorium nitrate prices from Rhodia were $27.00 per kilogram for mantle-grade material.

 

Thorium: An Alternative to Uranium, 2007 Update

DETROIT (ResourceInvestor.com) -- The component of the global warming agenda that is purely political is the driving force behind the contemporary uranium “boom.” Doomsayers and scaremongers are shouting, not whispering, that we must stop using the sources of heat, which have been discovered, chosen and used universally to power our industrial civilization during the last two centuries, and choose, overnight, something else, which is now in limited use (nuclear power) or is basically just emerging from the laboratory (solar power) or is understudied but dramatic in appearance (wind, tide and geothermal).

Rather than trying to catch the uranium roller coaster on a down loop investors who think about the long-term need to take a serious look at the naturally occurring radioactive metal, thorium, which but for the exigencies of the last truly global war and the need for some nations to defend themselves from other nations that would conquer them in the name of the latest and greatest social movement, or that old time religion, would have been the metal of choice for the development of nuclear powered electric generating stations.

Is it time for thorium to make its re-entry on the global stage? The answer is yes, and therein lays an opportunity.

Just about one year ago I wrote an article for Resource Investor entitled “Thorium: An Alternative to Uranium.” A lot has happened since then with regard to both uranium and thorium, but only the run up in the price of uranium has been covered by the financial press. Even that run up has been covered by short sighted analysts as if an increasing demand for uranium is a given. I want to bring the readers of RI up to date on the very significant events that have occurred in thorium power technology and the re-assessing of America’s thorium reserves since then.

There is no serious fundamental immediate or near-term basis of supply shortage to account for the tripling of the price of uranium in the last year. There are no more uranium fuelled nuclear power plants today than there were a year ago, and no new plants have been ordered in the United States. It is in fact not at all clear just who or what is buying uranium to increase the demand so substantially in such a short time. Uranium mining stocks are being traded in a frenzy that masks the discussion of whether or not there is any need for such an investment in uranium production. It is therefore absolutely necessary for investors to keep in mind the distinction drawn by television investment evangelist, “Mad Money Jim Cramer,” that short-term ownership of a stock is a trade as opposed to a long term hold, which is an investment.

There are lots of hazy stories around to justify the uranium frenzy. I have been told, for example, that uranium fuelled nuclear power plants scheduled to be decommissioned will now be kept in service, but this does not require any new supply! I have also read that China will build 20 new pebble-bed (i.e., cheap to construct) reactors to produce electricity in remote regions without the need for coal or oil in the next 20 years. But even Chinese long-term thinking wouldn’t justify buying so much nuclear fuel in advance, would it?

What has happened is that investors and mining companies are speculating on a nuclear power boom that they think will shortly begin due to the widespread concern, even fear, generated by the study of global warming, which holds that:

1.       It has been proven scientifically that the earth’s climate is entering a period of rapidly escalating global warming;

2.       It has been accepted that if this global warming has been caused by anthropogenic (i.e., man made) activity, and the IPPC is 90% certain that this is scientifically proven, then the primary bad actor is the carbon dioxide naturally formed by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to produce electric power and vehicular propulsion, and;

3.       If the burning of coal, oil and natural gas for these purposes is not eliminated, or, at least, substantially curtailed (or, if it is held at present levels and all the carbon dioxide generated by stationary power plants is somehow “sequestered,” i.e. stored) then the global economy will suffer irreparable damage as the climate shifts permanently causing massive changes in the habitability and agricultural usefulness of the earth’s surface, and therefore coal, oil and natural gas must be replaced as sources of heat as soon as possible.

The only well understood, well-known and developed technology that can possibly, in a relatively short time frame, substitute for the generation of heat by the external combustion of carbon-based fuels is based on nuclear reactors, the heat from which can (and, indeed, now does) produce superheated steam to turn turbines to produce electricity. By locating nuclear power plants on shore lines, the electricity they produce could be used not only directly for commercial, municipal and residential power, but also to electrolyze water (including sea water) to produce hydrogen as a clean burning fuel for vehicular propulsion. The burning of hydrogen by internal combustion engines produces only water as a waste product, and the principle, and only draw back to the mass production of hydrogen powered internal combustion engines is the lack of a fuel production and distribution infrastructure.

Speaking of hydrogen for a moment, I think that investors should, perhaps, now be looking at Hydrogen Engine Center, Inc. (HEC), a company founded by an engineer who was with the Ford Motor Company when that company actually had a plan to maintain a leading place in the development of alternatively fuelled power plants. Ford discontinued the program, but the engineer did not. HEC is making and selling hydrogen fuelled internal combustion engines (ICE) right now, and its website has some good discussions of sources for hydrogen, other than the electrolysis of water, which I think are worth looking at. I am “warming” up to the idea of hydrogen powered internal combustion engines for mobile (vehicular) power plants both as direct motive power and as on-board sources of electricity generation either for direct application to the motive wheels or for recharging batteries as needed.

When I read the website of this company, and I read news articles about BMW, a first class automotive engineering company, putting hydrogen powered big engine (V-12!) cars on the test road, I am tempted to reassess my original scepticism about hydrogen as a direct fuel for ICEs in cars. What I haven’t changed my mind about is the mistake that the Ford Motor Company made in choosing development intensive paths instead of this one, hydrogen powered ICEs, for immediate consideration.

Now back to the main discussion. There are sufficient global uranium reserves to supply the needs of all the nuclear power plants that our global industrial civilization could build even if it is decided politically, because economically it is nonsense, to replace 100% of carbon burning plant currently generating electricity. There is also sufficient uranium to fuel all of these plants for centuries. Clearly the price of developing all of the known uranium reserves and looking for more will not be an issue if governments decide that this emergency is upon us.

The speculation that nuclear reactors will produce electricity so that, even if carbon burning power plants are phased out, there will be no reduction in available electric power is also driving into high gear (excuse the pun) research into the critical components for vehicles that can no longer use carbon-based fuels such as high capacity, long service life, rechargeable lithium-ion battery technology for plug-in hybrid electric ground vehicles (cars, trucks and trains) using storage batteries and a small internal combustion engine to generate electricity.

These are already seen to be themselves only an intermediate technology awaiting the arrival of a hydrogen distribution system in the next generation that will allow internal combustion engines burning hydrogen to either generate electricity directly to drive ground vehicles or be used to charge higher capacity batteries than we now have for propulsion systems.

Mobile hydrogen burning fuel cells may replace the projected substantial size battery packs and even on board hydrogen burning internal combustion engines for charging them if a fuel cell catalyst system can be found that doesn’t involve the need for huge amounts of platinum group metals that simply do not exist in the quantities required for global use even if hydrogen burning internal combustion engines completely replace hydrocarbon (gasoline and kerosene) and oxygenate (ethanol) burning ones thus eliminating completely the need for catalytic converters, which today are the principle demand drivers for platinum group metals.

In 1939, it was publicly announced that the fission of some of the isotopes of a few heavy elements had been induced by a man made experiment, which was in fact designed to build heavier elements not break apart the ones being targeted. It was immediately obvious to a few specialized scientists that if a system could be constructed in which the newly named “nuclear fission” were produced and controlled, i.e., it could be started and stopped, then a new source of, essentially, limitless power (heat) could be constructed that would not need to burn carbon-based fuels.

At the same time it was theorized that if sufficient quantities of the rare isotopes of uranium or thorium that exhibited the property of being fissile could be concentrated then it should be possible to, by known engineering, produce a special minimum quantity of them, a critical mass, in which once fission had been triggered by an outside source the fission would generate additional fission, through a chain reaction, so rapidly that a large quantity of the potential energy. Perhaps as much as a few percent would be released in a fraction of a second.

This theory so impressed the world’s then best known scientist, Albert Einstein, that he signed a letter to then president Franklin D. Roosevelt that stated that he agreed that if such a bomb were constructed it might be possible, for example, to contain it in a seagoing vessel, which, if brought into a port and detonated, would destroy the port. World War II had already begun in Europe and Asia when Roosevelt’s scientific advisors concluded that Einstein’s conjecture was not only possible but that research into constructing such a weapon was probably already under way in both Germany and Japan.

Thorium although it had a relatively abundant fissile isotopes was immediately relegated to a back seat, because its properties dictated that although it could be used to manufacture a nuclear reactor it could not be used to or be useful in the construction of a fission weapon!

Thorium powered reactors were designed and built during and just after World War II to test power an ocean going vessel and to create the first civilian use only nuclear power plant at Shippingport, Pennsylvania.

Early proponents of civilian nuclear power did not want to manufacture devices from which weapons grade materials (i.e., highly enriched uranium or the new synthetically produced and highly fissile plutonium) could be easily extracted, because at the beginning of the “atomic age” it was believed that only a massively expensive and sophisticated industrial nation could afford to build the enormously costly and limited use base to produce weapons grade materials.

So, the development of thorium-based nuclear reactors was continued for a while in parallel with those using uranium and/or plutonium-based technologies. Then a series of intelligence underestimates and political errors combined to terminate government support and funding of what parallel development there was and to propel uranium to the first and only place in the race.

First, the devastated, and by American standards, primitive Russian industrial base produced and detonated a test atomic bomb in 1949. Then Great Britain whose scientists had contributed to the bomb’s development way out of proportion to their numbers, but whose industrial base was considered to have been shattered by the war, followed the Russians shortly after with a successful test of their own even though Britain had been cut off from research and development information almost as soon as the war ended.

The atomic arms race was on, and it became the obsession of the world’s politicians that the future must belong to the leader in numbers of atomic weapons. Thorium reactors were quickly forgotten for the same reason as they had once appealed. They could not be used, in any easy way, to make weapons grade material. Uranium and its daughter element, plutonium, were crowned the undisputed queens of nuclear power.

The governments of the nuclear powers went on a 50 year binge of hypocrisy. They talked about clean cheap safe civilian nuclear power but they skewed the nuclear power industry through subsidies towards uranium. This kept the weapons grade uranium and plutonium pipeline with a backup system and kept the nuclear fuel reprocessing industry in business economically. Most insidiously the public was trained to view safety as the prevention of detonations (not possible) or leaks (less likely than at carbon-based power plants) rather then the prevention of any possibility at all, of producing weapons grade material. Thus thorium was relegated to the back of the funding line.

The United States and the Russian Federation today have many times the number of nuclear weapons either one would need to destroy civilization. In addition Great Britain, France, China, Israel, Pakistan, India and bankrupt and starving North Korea have nuclear weapons and delivery systems for them. All it seems to take today to build a nuclear weapon is a uranium-based reactor, time and a knowledge base. The world does not need any more nuclear reactors based on uranium and/or plutonium!

The speed with which it is claimed that global warming is advancing dictates that we need immediately to begin to switch over to nuclear reactors to produce the heat upon which the generation of electricity is based.

It is too dangerous to build or allow remaining in operation nuclear reactors that can produce weapons grade material. The answer is thorium-based nuclear reactors.

An American company, Thorium Power, Ltd., [OTCBB:THPW], is at the forefront of thorium power technology. The principals of the company in fact give it a continuity and breadth of expertise in engineering, government, law and the military that is outstanding and unbroken from the very dawn of the idea of safe civilian nuclear power. The company’s website makes fascinating, and I think, today, compulsory reading for any investor who wants to participate for the long run in the continuation and maintenance of a society and polity, the United States of America, that can improve and expand the quality of life for the earth’s billions without the need for depriving its own citizens of anything or of controlling the lives of others.

Although thorium power is today a common topic among the punditocracy - just “Google” the term “thorium” to see what I mean - it is not at all clear how to invest in the mining and production of thorium.

Look at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) documentation on thorium, but, be aware, that it is out of date. The current USGS material shows the U.S. with less than 200,000 tonnes of thorium reserves. In fact a new company, so far private, Thorium Energy, Inc. told me that the unpublished results of a new study commissioned by it from the USGS that show that TE’s Lemhi Pass property in Idaho has 600,000 tonnes of thorium reserves by itself. This if proved out would give the U.S. the largest reserves of thorium in the world, and would in fact be more than 1/3 of the world’s known thorium.

The Lemhi Pass deposit is said to be primarily thorium, and this is rather unusual historically. Most of the world’s known thorium reserves are byproducts of rare earth minerals such as monazite, which, coincidentally, is also found in a property called the Mountain Pass site in southern California, which environmentalists shut down because of the radioactivity from the thorium in the tailings - the thorium was not concentrated and removed because it had little or no commercial value.

The mine was ironically discovered by prospectors using Geiger counters looking for uranium in the first, post World War II, uranium boom! Molycorp moved away from the original discovery because of the radioactivity and developed another, relatively non-radioactive, ore body on the property and then fruitlessly tried for decades to create a market for the rare earths produced. I don’t know who owns this property now, but keep an eye open for it. Mountain Pass could come roaring back.

The main source of rare earths today, globally, is China, and the principal producer of rare earth metals there is a unit of the parent company, Baotou, of China’s third largest steel maker, Baosteel. The products of Baotou’s rare earth production unit are marketed in North America by a Canadian subsidiary named HEFA. It is intriguing that the website for HEFA, which names all of the rare earth products available from the company does not mention thorium. Does this mean that the Chinese do not know the thorium is there, or does it mean that they do know but have no wish to sell material outside of China that can be used in place of uranium?

The American company, W.R. Grace [NYSE:GRA] has been in business since 1854 and has processed rare earth ores for decades. It was even doing so when the ores were produced in the United States. It certainly has the technology, at least historically, to produce thorium metal and its alloys if required as it did during World War II when the company was called upon to produce uranium chemicals, metals and alloys for the Manhattan Project.

Thorium Power, Inc. has told me that they already have the technology to “switch over” from uranium to thorium more than 60% of the reactors in use today in the world.

They said that a switched over or built from the ground up thorium powered reactor has for the “blanket” a total of three times the life of a uranium powered reactor. This would mean that the savings during the first fuel cycles will pay for the changeover in the case of a “retrofit.” The core can be used to burn fissionable grade plutonium to non weapons grade material while the blanket will be made from thorium and uranium-233, not 238, so that no weapons grade plutonium-239 can be produced in the reactor.

In the last analysis of what keeps the uranium reactors running is unsurprisingly your tax dollars. The U.S. Federal Government subsidizes the storage of “spent” fuel from nuclear power plants. It (with our taxes) pays “private” utilities to store dangerous-because weapons grade material can e extracted from it and it is intensely radioactive to boot-spent fuel rods while awaiting that far off day when there will be a national repository for such waste. It has become a lawyer’s trick to sue the Federal Government on behalf of a utility that needs more storage space or operating funds claiming a breech of the contract implied by the government’s promise to maintain a safe operation and to defend the country.

If this subsidy were to be phased out or reduce ed it would immediately point the utilities towards the longer and thus cheaper fuel cycle of thorium power, which produces less waste, as well as towards reducing the security aspect of the cost of storing and transporting materials from which weapons grade materials can be extracted.

The public is generally unaware of the history of thorium as an alternative to uranium for the production of electricity by nuclear reactors. Those that are aware believe that thorium technology was a dead end path undertaken and finished many years ago. Long term investors might want to gamble that global warming will shortly reveal that the public needs a re-education with regard to the utility and future of thorium power.

I knew that question was coming. None at this time. The line between thorium use and enriched uranium is blurred considerably. First of all there are already several uranium using reactors (fast breeder, light water, modular pebble bed and the heavy water old Russian style plus the Candus etc etc) The future will see thorium in not only uranium rectors but also thorium only rectors like the ones that the Indians have been trying to develop since NPT denied them uranium tech over the years. Now the problem is that by the stuff that I could understand, their thorium reactors are not quite proven OR (more likely even if it was proven, they are extremely unlikely and unmotivated to share that with the rest of the world). Is that fair, that is arguable especially since over the years they were denied nuclear tech for them not being part of NPT. So now, as it stands in the rest of the world just when uranium reactors (especially the GE-Hitachi ESWBR and the Areva-Siemens look like they are going to be the standard) have reached a point in their evolution where they are starting to be considered fail proof it seems unlikely that any thorium reactors are going to be pursued (at least outside of India). Also, the South African (or German) pebble bed modular type (which I thought was the best idea going forward since it has distinct advantages of being cheaper and safer by a magnitude over the GE or Siemens rectors) is a strong argument for not pursuing thorium only reactors. The icing on the cake is this, eventually with technologies such as the ones from Thorium Power (THW on the NASDQ) capable of transforming uranium reactors to thorium use (eventually, but not today) the future remains inconclusive at best as there are several technologies available. Bottom, it's always about cost. It always was and always will be. Therefore even though thorium may have a future it remains a idea at this time. Why is no one exploring for thorium right, because the world's reactors need uranium today. When will this change, who knows....when a thorium reactor of the Gen III or IV is built to the standards one the above mentioned three uranium types. It is an excellent technology, very nascent. So as far as I know, THPW is the only thorium company I know of. And it is not a miner but a tech company that develops thorium reactor technology. This is a very small market and compared to the uranium market is like David and Goliath story at this time. Maybe 15years from now things will be different and we may be looking at thorium companies to invest in. Hope that helps. Anyone, If I am off or incorrect please help me out.

 

 

· New age nuclear

· Uranium enrichment: how to make an atomic bomb

· Green fallout from nuclear report

· Danger passes for Sweden's nuclear reactors

· Nuclear energy becoming less sustainable

SYDNEY: Safer, cleaner nuclear power is a step closer to reality after Norway's state-owned energy company, Statkraft, this week announced plans to investigate building a thorium-fuelled nuclear reactor.

Statkraft (which translates to "state power") announced an alliance with regional power providers Vattenfall in Sweden, and Fortum in Finland, along with Norwegian energy investment company, Scatec AS, in a bid to produce the thorium-fuelled plant.

Thorium (Th-232), has been hailed as a 'greener' alternative to traditional nuclear fuels, such as uranium and plutonium, because thorium is incapable of producing the runaway chain reaction which in a uranium-fuelled reactor can cause a catastrophic meltdown. Thorium reactors also produce only a tiny fraction of the hazardous waste created by uranium-fuelled reactors (see 'New age nuclear', Cosmos, issue 8).

Statkraft, which is already Europe's second largest producer of renewable energy - mainly thanks to Norway's abundant hydroelectric resources - has recently made thorium-fuelled nuclear power a point of serious consideration. "It would be a sin of omission not to consider it," said Bård Mikkelsen, CEO of Statkraft, in an interview with the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet.

To date, thorium has seen only limited application, such as by U.S. company, Thorium Power, which produces mixed uranium-thorium fuel for use in conventional nuclear reactors. However a reactor fuelled entirely by thorium would have significant advantages over conventional uranium or mixed-fuel reactors.

Besides their inability to go critical and their low generation of waste, thorium-fuelled reactors don't suffer from the same proliferation risks as uranium reactors. This is because the thorium by-products cannot be re-processed into weapons-grade material.

Thorium also doesn't require enrichment before use as a nuclear fuel, and thorium is an abundant natural resource, with vast deposits in Australia, the United States, India and Norway.

Another advantage of thorium-powered reactors is they can be used to 'burn' highly radioactive waste by-products from conventional uranium-fuelled power plants.

Over the past eight months, there has been a substantial rise in public support for thorium reactors in Norway. In June 2006, polls showed 80 per cent of the population were completely opposed to any form of nuclear technology. Then in February 2007, the same percentage were in favour of investigating thorium reactors as a potential energy source.

"It is an absolutely incredible surprise that it has been possible to turn around the population in a country, just by quietly campaigning and explaining the benefits of the technology," said Egil Lillestøl, a nuclear physicist at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Lillestøl is a keen supporter of the ADS (Accelerated Driven System) technology used in thorium-fuelled reactors. Because thorium is incapable of achieving a self-sustaining chain reaction – unlike uranium or plutonium – it needs energy to be injected into the reactor to keep it running. This energy comes in the form of neutrons from a particle accelerator. For this reason, a thorium-fuelled reactor is also sometimes called a sub-critical reactor.

Statkraft is the third Norwegian company to express interest in thorium reactors this year; Thor Energi and Bergen Energi, have both applied for government licenses to build plants.

The announcement by Statkraft coincides with the first meeting of the Thorium Report Committee – an initiative commissioned by Norway's Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, in association with the Norwegian Research Council, to investigate the benefits and risks of thorium reactors.

The committee will submit its report at the end of 2007. Norwegian legislation currently bans the use of nuclear power, so the report is critical for gaining Government consent to build thorium plants in Norway.

"Norway has taken the lead on this. We are an energy nation; we have large supplies of thorium – not as much as Australia of course – but we have a very advanced energy industry, and we have a responsibility to the world," said Lillestøl. "Without nuclear energy we will destroy the world, we will spend all the coal, oil and gas, and we will be left with an energy desert."

Reza Hashemi-Nezad, a nuclear scientist at the University of Sydney in Australia agrees that thorium is a promising alternative energy source. However, while the European Union, India, the US, Japan and Russia are all working on thorium technologies, Australia is lagging behind.

"Australian industry is very interested in investing in this type of clean, safe and cheap nuclear energy," says Hashemi-Nezhad. "But I am afraid that if Australian scientists and industry do not get adequate support from the government and research institutes in Australia, they may move offshore.