Nuclear enthusiasts have been singing the praises of nuclear reactors that use thorium as their fuel instead of uranium. Jan Beránek analyses the claims - and finds that thorium is a mere distraction ...

Climate change is a challenging topic for the green movement. Environmentalists can take the credit for being amongst the first to sound the alarm when the rest of the world chose to ignore the gloomy ...

Thorium – the theory is sound and potentially game changing – we need to see it put into practice, argues Labour peer and former Friends of the Earth campaigner Bryony Worthington Climate change is a ...

Thorium reactors, based on technology abandoned around the time of the Cold War, could provide an alternative to large nuclear reactors fuelled by solid uranium. They have many potential advantages, ...

In a world increasingly aware of and affected by global warming, the news that 2010 was a record year for greenhouse gases levels was something of a blow. With the world's population due to hit nine ...

Why aren’t we using thorium in nuclear reactors, given the possibility of a meltdown is nearly zero and the waste cannot be used to make bombs? — Dennis Dorando, Concord, Calif. In a word: precedent.

Thorium reactors are rather interesting things. Firstly, they consume thorium instead of uranium. Secondly, they can be switched off instantly instead of having to be slowly shut down – or so I read ...

Workers install a fuel pin into a test reactor in Halden, Norway. Two years after the Fukushima disaster rocked the nuclear industry, the jury is still out in many countries on the role of atomic ...

Thorium could prove to be safer in reactors than uranium Nuclear scientists are being urged by the former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix to develop thorium as a new fuel. Mr Blix says that the ...

Thorium can be used in solid nuclear fuels, as an oxide or in a mixture of oxides (MOX), and this has been demonstrated in the past in several reactors around the world, such as the Dragon reactor at ...

Nuclear scientists are being urged by the former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix to develop thorium as a new fuel. Mr Blix says that the radioactive element may prove much safer in reactors than ...