The environmentalists urging developing countries not to burn their fossil fuel reserves also implore them not to turn to nuclear power. If it was virgin uranium-fuelled nuclear power that was being considered they would be right. If it was thorium-fuelled nuclear power on the agenda, on the other hand, that would be another matter.

Thorium re-briefing
As reported in previous editions of Green Health Watch Magazine, thorium offers many benefits over uranium:

• One kilogram (kg) of thorium can produce as much energy as 250kg of uranium or 4,000 tons of coal or 13 barrels of oil
• Known global thorium reserves could meet the world’s energy needs for thousands of years
• Thorium reactors produce minimal radioactive waste. Furthermore, thorium waste loses its radioactivity in hundreds rather than tens of thousands of years
• The thorium energy-producing process can also burn uranium, plutonium or any other radioactive ‘actinide’ metal - a possible solution to the thorny problem of disposing of existing nuclear waste stocks. What's rmore, burning such waste would generate further useful energy
• Thorium reactors cannot trip into a melt-down chain reaction
• It is not possible to make weapons-grade materials from thorium
• Mining and refining thorium ore is simpler and cleaner than mining and refining uranium ore
• Thorium technology is already well-advanced in India, Canada, the US, the European union, Russia, Japan Norway, Sweden and Finland (at the last count)
• China and Canada are jointly and actively evaluating the potential of a network of thorium-fuelled power stations to reduce China’s dependence on fossil fuels
• India, the world’s fifth biggest emitter of greenhouse gases,** aims to increase its nuclear energy output a hundredfold by 2050, using thorium technology. India is a good example of ‘energy poverty’. Currently, 400 million citizens cannot light their homes. The country imports 70% of its oil

* the fifteen chemical elements that lie between and include actinium and lawrencium included on the Periodic Table, with atomic numbers 89 to 103

** after China, the USA, the European Union and Russia