Introduction
Uranium, because it can be easily processed into fissile material, has been the main choice of nuclear fuel since the 1940’s. Even though effective, Uranium has some major drawbacks. The first major drawback is that uranium is not naturally abundant. The World Nuclear Association (WNA), as seen in figure 1, predicts a dramatic increase of nuclear power plants throughout the world due to increasing energy demands. This will not only hasten the depletion of uranium stockpiles but also cause the price of uranium to rise possibly making the power it can generate not economically feasible. The second drawback is the amount of nuclear waste uranium produces. Currently, 3% of spent uranium fuel is unable to be recycled (WNA, 2013). The Nuclear Energy Institute estimates that an average nuclear power plant produces 20 tons of this high-level waste each year. The only current method of disposal is to store the high-level waste until it naturally becomes nonradioactive, which can take up to a thousand years. Paying for nuclear waste storage is very expensive and costs an average nuclear power plant about 10% of the revenue that is generated. (NEI, 2013)
Previous and current research has discovered an alternative nuclear fuel source known as thorium. Thorium was first studied for its potential use by the United States government for a nuclear fuel in the late 1940s; side by side with uranium. During those studies the U.S decided to shelve thorium research and pursued using uranium because it was extremely difficult to get weapon grade fissile material from thorium and the United States was in a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Research began again in force with thorium in the 1990’s by many countries, the U.S include...
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