Thorium as a nuclear fuel

Thorium, as well as uranium and plutonium, can be used as fuel in a nuclear reactor. A thorium fuel cycle offers several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle including much greater abundance on Earth, superior physical and nuclear properties of the fuel, enhanced proliferation resistance, and reduced nuclear waste production.^[14] Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), has worked on developing the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors. Rubbia states that a tonne of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal.^[15][16] One of the early pioneers of the technology was U.S. physicist Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, who helped develop a working nuclear plant using liquid fuel in the 1960s.

In 1997 the U.S. Energy Department underwrote research into thorium fuel, and research was also begun in 1996 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to study the use of thorium reactors. Nuclear scientist, Alvin Radkowsky, of Tel Aviv University in Israel, founded a consortium to develop thorium reactors, which included other companies: Raytheon Nuclear Inc., Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow.^[17] Radkowsky was chief scientist in the U.S. nuclear submarine program directed by Admiral Hyman Rickover and later headed the design team which built the world's first civilian nuclear power plant at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, which was a scaled-up version of the first naval reactor.^[17]

Some countries, including India, are now investing in research to build thorium-based nuclear reactors. Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, said in 2009 that his country has a "long-term objective goal of becoming energy-independent based on its vast thorium resources."^[18][19] In May 2010, researchers from Ben-Gurion University in Israel and Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, received a grant to develop a thorium-based, self-sustaining light water reactor^[20] that will produce and consume about the same amounts of fuel.^[20] In the U.S., NASA scientist and thorium expert Kirk Sorensen calls it the "next giant leap" in energy technology, noting that the "potential energy in thorium is staggering," explaining how just 8 tablespoons of thorium could provide the energy used by an American during his or her lifetime.^[21][22]

^{View the following video to learn  about Thorium usage as an abundant energy of the future:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw&feature=player_embedded}