Home Power Magazine: Solar. The light of life. Thorium challenges nuclear establishment.
Midwest Supplies - - your complete supplier of home winemaking and beer brewing supplies and equipment. Active and passive solar projects for space heating. Energy from Thorium. China Takes Lead in Race for Clean Nuclear Power. China has officially announced it will launch a program to develop a thorium-fueled molten-salt nuclear reactor, taking a crucial step towards shifting to nuclear power as a primary energy source.
The project was unveiled at the annual Chinese Academy of Sciences conference in Shanghai last week, and reported in the Wen Hui Bao newspaper (Google English translation here). If the reactor works as planned, China may fulfill a long-delayed dream of clean nuclear energy. Thorium: A safer alternative for nuclear power generation? The world's growing need for energy, the limits of our supply of fossil fuels and concern about the effects of carbon emissions on the environment have all prompted interest in the increased use of nuclear power.
Yet the very word "nuclear" carries with it an association of fear. People are concerned about the waste produced by reactors, the possibility of catastrophic accidents as highlighted by recent events in Japan and the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Yet what if there existed a means of nuclear power generation with which these risks were drastically reduced?