Can It Be Said Enough? Thorium! Thorium! THORIUM!

Thorium?  Thorium.  This metal will supply cheap, clean, safe, plentiful nuclear power to the world for the next 1,000 years.

If we use it.

Thorium, a silvery-white metal named for the Norse god Thor, is a mildly radioactive element (with an atomic weight of 90) that is as abundant as lead.  Monazite, a rare earth and thorium phosphate mineral, is the primary source of the world's thorium. 

The naturally occurring isotopes of thorium are readily refined from mineral to metal.  Industry uses thorium to make high-grade glass, high-temperature ceramics, and high-performance alloys of magnesium.

Thorium is inherently safe.  Radiation from even pure thorium is too weak to penetrate human skin.  Only long term negligent exposure or massive over-exposure is medically dangerous.  Short of a career of mining without basic safety procedures or chewing it daily, thorium presents no medical dangers.

Thorium reactors are inherently safe.  Thorium  cannot sustain a chain reaction on its own; there must be an initiator.  Basically, disaster or attack would simply shut down the reaction.

Thorium reactors are inherently clean.  Unlike other reactors, thorium reactors produce waste that decays to the same level of radioactivity as coal ashes after 500 years.  In fact, thorium reactors can be used to safely 'burn out' waste materials from uranium reactors.

Thorium is three to four times more plentiful than uranium.  By weight, thorium produces 200 times more energy than uranium.  The USA, India, Turkey, and Australia all possess large reserves of thorium, accounting for over 50% of the Earth's known reserves.

Experts estimate that at present energy use and reactor technology, thorium could power America for the next 1,000 years with just known reserves.

Sound too good to be true?  There are some small challenges, but honestly, we went from no space program to landing on the Moon in less than a decade.  We need thorium reactors supplying American electricity much more than we needed astronauts on the Moon.

Thanks to American and Russian choices during the Cold War, too little research has gone into thorium reactor design.  A few thorium reactors are coming online now, but there is a good deal of argument about what will be most efficient, cheapest, and safest.  New reactor designs need testing and approval.

Thorium startup is expensive; and the thorium fuel itself needs to be 'activated' by irradiation.  Once the first reactor is up and running, though, it can be used to activate the next batch of fuel.  As more reactors come online, fuel activation is cheap and easy.

American coal, uranium, and oil interests don't want to face competition from thorium; the first time in history they have all agreed on anything.  They don't care what's good for America, just what's good for the Company.

Thorium reactors are hugely safer and simpler than present uranium/plutonium reactors.  They could entirely replace the burning of fossil fuels on Earth for the next ten centuries.  They would change everything.

Drought?  With enough cheap electricity, desalinated sea water could be pumped to suffering areas; droughts would be history.  Poverty?  Plentiful electricity could bring jobs and industry to the poorest places on Earth.  Global warming?  Gone.  Pollution from coal and oil?  Gone. 

Call it optimism, call it hope, but make sure you remember the mighty THORIUM!
 
For more information -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium