John H. Kutsch never planned to be the world’s number one proponent of nuclear energy from thorium. The cause found him. “A company hired us to study a large number of materials from all across the ...

This is because radioactive waste is highly dangerous to human health and our planet and ecosystems if not handled correctly. As a result, nuclear power plants are very expensive to build, since ...

97% of world market supplies of rare earth elements (REEs) come from China and look to become insecure in regard to meeting "green" energy targets, since exports of REEs are scheduled to be retained ...

From the early 1950s to the mid-1970s, an active R&D program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tenn. came up with a promising way to use thorium for making large amounts of energy cleanly and safely ...

In 1980, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) observed that protactinium, a chemical element generated in thorium reactors, could be separated and allowed to decay to isotopically pure ...

WELL begun; half done. That proverb—or, rather, its obverse—encapsulates the problems which have dogged civil nuclear power since its inception. Atomic energy is seen by many, and with reason, as the ...

Thorium is a relatively abundant element on Earth, about as common as lead. Naturally mildly radioactive, it’s been investigated as a nuclear fuel before, but lost out to uranium when the choices were ...

However, there are several economic and technical obstacles making the deployment of thorium challenging. Despite its abundance, the metal is currently expensive to extract. “The mineral monazite, ...