So having low thorium levels is bad now...?
Nothing new really, but LYC gets a brief mention.
Ref: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/thorium-pushed-as-uranium-alternative-20111106-1n1z3.html
A SCIENTIFIC movement to promote thorium as a nuclear fuel, due to its abundance and improved safety, is developing around the world and Australia could lead the way.
The Sydney scientist Reza Hashemi-Nezhad has argued for more than a decade for the benefits of thorium when used in an accelerator-driven nuclear reactor that operates at subcritical conditions.
''You cannot have an accident similar to Chernobyl,'' Dr Hashemi-Nezhad, the director of the Institute of Nuclear Science at the University of Sydney, said. ''It does not produce weapon-grade materials. And the nuclear waste is much less toxic than from a standard reactor.''
With the world's largest reserves of the radioactive mineral, Australia could be a leader in developing and adopting the technology.
''It is completely proven and feasible,'' Dr Hashemi-Nezhad said. ''The only thing required here is government acceptance.''
Unlike uranium, thorium cannot undergo nuclear fission by itself, and must be bombarded with neutrons from a particle accelerator to start the nuclear chain reaction that produces energy.
An international organisation of scientific experts, the Thorium Energy Amplifier Association, has been established to champion this method for producing clean, carbon-free electricity.
The association's chairman, Bob Cywinski, of the University of Huddersfield, has predicted that recent advances in particle accelerators mean these safe, thorium-based reactors could be on stream within 15 years with appropriate investment.
In September, a not-for-profit group, the Weinberg Foundation, was launched in Britain to advocate for thorium nuclear energy.
The foundation backs the more rapid development of a different approach: liquid thorium fuel technology, which was pioneered by the American nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg in the 1960s.
Opportunities to capitalise on thorium are likely to exist for the ASX-listed Lynas Corporation and Iluka Resources.
Iluka is a mineral sands miner that ranks as the world's biggest producer of zircon and many industry pundits believe its tenements hold more thorium than any other Australian company.
Later this month, mining industry people will gather in Canberra to attend a conference entirely devoted to thorium. The opening speaker will be federal Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson.
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