Beyond Thorium: The Vital Need for Clean Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy will unquestionably be a cornerstone of humanity’s future energy arsenal. However, the form in which this energy is delivered matters profoundly. Currently, nuclear fission dominates, but its legacy is fraught with dreadful, persistent radiation hazards and toxic nuclear waste that defy mitigation, posing risks for millennia.

This grim reality shapes the contemporary nuclear landscape, yet it represents a technology that must ultimately be phased out. The transition to clean, hazardous waste-free nuclear power—such as the emerging realm of cold fusion and sono-fusion—offers humanity the opportunity to harness nuclear energy without the intractable dangerous radiation problems of fission. These emerging energy forms, explored extensively on my Atom-Ecology blog, represent an urgent pathway forward for sustainable nuclear power.

In this context, the recently renewed focus on thorium—while scientifically intriguing—deserves critical scrutiny. The thorium narrative, with its vast resource hype and the unresolved economic black hole of neutron transmutation, functions as a distraction from the urgent development of genuinely clean nuclear energy solutions. Reflecting openly on both the promise and pitfalls of thorium energy is essential to ensure that our collective efforts and investments prioritize technologies that truly align with a safe, sustainable future.

The Abundance of Thorium and Low-Cost Extraction

Thorium has long captured the imagination of those seeking a nuclear energy source that is both abundant and potentially inexhaustible. Its vast global reserves, estimated at around 14.6 million tons as of 2025, surpass uranium deposits and are found mainly in countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), India, Brazil, China, the United States, and others. What really sets thorium apart is not just its abundance but where and how it is found. Coastal monazite sands in India and Brazil contain extraordinarily high concentrations of thorium oxide—between 6% and 12%. There is nothing cheaper to mine than beach sand!

This contrasts sharply with uranium ores, which typically contain less than 0.1% uranium oxide. This difference translates into extraction costs for thorium sands that are more than an order of magnitude lower than for uranium ores. The ease of mining these surface sands with simple physical separation techniques has sustained continuous investment hype around thorium as a “gold mine” resource fueling endless speculative finance schemes ^{[3][6][8][9][10]}.

The Foundational Economic Challenge: Neutron Transmutation Costs

Despite these geological riches and low-cost production, the fundamental economic value proposition for thorium nuclear energy hinges on a critical and often overlooked point: the neutron capture transmutation process required to convert thorium-232 into fissile uranium-233 is costly—both in energy and money.Decades of research demonstrate that the energy and financial outlay needed to produce usable fuel through transmutation exceeds the energy value derived from that fuel.

The process involves:

• Complex reactor designs to produce neutrons for transmutation.
• Advanced, expensive fuel fabrication.
• Handling and reprocessing uranium-233 fuel, which is contaminated by gamma-emitting uranium-232, adding costly remote handling and safety burdens.

Currently, there is no evidence of significant breakthroughs that dramatically reduce these neutron transmutation fuel costs. Thus, the economic feasibility of thorium power remains unproven, and the high transmutation cost serves as a persistent barrier to commercialization ^[1][3][4][5].

The Investment Paradox

This creates a paradox where the abundance and low extraction cost of thorium promote continuous investment hype, while the technical and economic realities of the fuel cycle remain daunting. Speculative finance frequently floods thorium research and mining ventures with optimism that outpaces sober economic assessment.

A Call for Transparency and Caution

Investors and policymakers should therefore approach the thorium opportunity with a measured perspective. The remarkable geological resources alone do not guarantee economically viable nuclear power. The economic “black hole” posed by neutron transmutation costs must be openly acknowledged and transparently presented. Without this transparency, decades of funding risks being channeled into costly fruitless, protracted research with no hope for real economic returns.