More documents

Comparison with Uranium?
According to a joint report by the OECD NEA and the IAEA published in 2010, the Uranium identified resources  consisting of reasonably assured resources (RAR) plus inferred resources recoverable at a cost range of below 130 USD/kg U amounts 5.4 Millions of tons.

The most important reserves are in Australia (1.3 Millions of tons), Kazakhstan (652.000 tons), Canada (485.000 tons),  Russia (480.000 tons).

Remember that the actual technology (2d generation) only uses U235, present at 0,72% in natural uranium (mostly U238)

Opulently available

Thorium is originated from stable regions, even from Western Europe countries like Norway. According to experts' estimations there are on earth 3 times more reserves of Thorium  than Uranium

an image

Thorium is a metal of the family of actinides, where one finds also Uranium and Plutonium. It is called a major actinide. It smelts at 1750 °C and becomes a gas at 4788 °C, which makes it the chemical element with the large temperature range in liquid phase. Thorium is present in a minerals like Monazite.

Experts estimates that Thorium is 3 to 4 times more abundant than uranium on earth. It is widely distributed in nature as an easily usable resource in many countries but has not been really exploited commercially so far.

Thorium was discovered in 1828, but it has not been used until 1885 and the invention of the incandescent gas mantle.

The IAEA's estimated in 2014 the world Thorium resources (RAR = recoverable Reasonably Assured Resources < USD 80/kg) at 829,000 tons : Asia: >319 000 (38.5%), America: 294 000 (35.6%), Europe: > 109 000 (13.1%), Australia: 75 600 (9.2%), Africa: > 18 000 (2.3%).

While writing that, the identified resources, without cost classes, were estimated between 6.7 and 7.6 million tons.

Link1 | Link2 | Link3

Henri Marenne - Consulting Engineer in Energy - 2018.