Nuclear Power, No Cold War Flavor

Thorium – will this be the future or nuclear energy?

I admit, I had never heard about the stuff until I saw this article in Wired recently, but the idea of thorium-based reactors has been kicking around for decades. In fact, back in the 1950s, when nuclear energy was just getting off the ground, thorium was a leading candidate to become the basic fuel of reactors around the world. In the end, uranium won out (you’ll see why shortly), but some researchers are taking another look at thorium

Here’s what’s cool about it. First, it’s really abundant. There’s lots of it out there. Uranium, by contrast, is less common, especially the U-235 isotope that’s used in reactors.

Also, thorium leaves behind very little waste material. We all know that nuclear waste is a pretty major issue with current reactors. And, the byproducts of thorium reactors are only dangerous for a few hundred years, compared with uranium’s leftovers, that are harmful for thousands of years.

And here’s the kicker: when thorium breaks down, none of the resulting materials can be used to produce nuclear weapons. Uranium, of course, begets plutonium, the key ingredient to bombs.

Obviously, this was seen as a perk during the Cold War – hey, we get electricity and explosives! That’s a win-win.

But our priorities have changed now, and maybe that means the world is ready for a nuclear power plant that doesn’t have much to offer the Pentagon.