Considering Thorium as an Alternative Fuel for Nuclear Energy

PARIS

The United States is estimated to have 400,000 tons of thorium, Turkey 344,000 tons and India 319,000 tons, according to a 2008 joint report by the Nuclear Energy Agency, a body linked to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

There are no commercial thorium reactors in operation. Instead, nuclear reactors use uranium-235 which must be enriched before it can be used as fuel. Uranium-235 accounts for 0.7 percent of the uranium now being mined.

Rajendran Raja, a physicist at Fermilab