Thorium: Nuclear Energy's Clean Little Secret

It turns out that the key to a sustainable energy future is pitting the United States against emerging superpowers to launch an economic (and ideological) race toward energy independence.

In the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. scientists turned their backs on thorium, a cleaner alternative to uranium-fueled nuclear energy, because uranium produces plutonium as a byproduct. And plutonium is the key ingredient in nuclear bombs necessary to blast the Russians to smithereens.

With the help of uranium, we eventually won the arms race and prevailed over the Soviets. And half a century later, uranium is still used as the primary source of 100 percent of the world's nuclear reactors. But, as Richard Martin reports for Wired, the Cold War's unfortunate victim was our energy system, which could have avoided the dangers and headache of dirty nuclear with the "green" nuclear option, thorium.

Let's review some of the key benefits of thorium. It's abundant (because we've never used any of it); it doesn't require the costly and time-intensive refining process important for uranium, and the waste it produces becomes inert in one hundred years as opposed to hundreds of thousands of years. It's nearly impossible for terrorists to manipulate for weapons production. There's more: the annual fuel cost for a one gigawatt thorium reactor is approximately six hundred times lower than that of a uranium reactor, which requires 250 times more of the raw element.

But in the politically explosive 1960s, thorium's key drawback -- that it didn't help us make bombs -- led to its extinction. Before thorium cheerleaders knew it, the nuclear industry approved 41 uranium nuclear plants. And when a series of reactor fiascoes proved nuclear energy dangerous and forced a massive taxpayer bailout of the industry, power companies stopped submitting applications for new nuclear projects, whatever their fuel source. Before it was born, thorium was killed by the sins of uranium.

So if all it takes to get the U.S. serious about clean energy is international competition, thorium enthusiasts are in luck. India, the world's largest source of thorium, has announced plans to triple its nuclear energy output. In the next 10 years, China plans to build dozens of new reactors and has already reserved thorium from mineral refiners. France, which relies on nuclear energy for more than 75 percent of its electricity, has also expressed interest in thorium.

Fortunately, some U.S. lawmakers are starting to wise up to the benefits of thorium. While President Obama and congressional democrats continue to double down on traditional nuclear energy, Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Harry Reid (D-NV) co-sponsored a bill that would allocate $250 million (chump change) for thorium research.

But the United States need to expand its energy portfolio, and we need to do it fast. Democrats and Republicans alike are voicing full-throated support for dirty nuclear just because it's what we know, when thorium is clearly a better alternative. And the $250 million for research included in the Hatch-Reid bill won't cut it. "I don't know of anything more beneficial to the country, as far as environmentally sound power," says Hatch, "than nuclear energy powered by thorium."

Photo Credit: (M)factr