Just on the thorium issue. I had some thoughts. Arafura...

Just on the thorium issue. I had some thoughts.


Arafura Resources (ARU) have a 38 plus year mine life for rare earth elements, the mine also contains a major Thorium resource (11.7% of the world Thorium resource, in one spot!), that they are not able to use, because they have no government approval for the sale of the Thorium as a by product.

1) Thorium can be used as an alternative fuel for nuclear fission reactors to Uranium. 2) With climate change and the consequences of severe heat waves and drought affecting the Northern Hemisphere last summer, means that traditional uranium based nuclear fission reactors in Europe had to be partially shut down or completely shut down, due to water shortages, causing electricity production problems over there in Europe.
3)China and India are now both building Thorium based nuclear fission reactors, with the latest experimental one, just completed by China in the Gobi Desert.

4) Thorium based nuclear reactors have several advantages, in that they cannot melt down like uranium based nuclear reactors, causing disasters like what happened at Fukushima.

5) They can be situated in desert areas, because they are cooled by molten salt. Thus, we do not require massive amounts of water to cool them down and they can be located almost anywhere, like a desert.

6) It is quite difficult for Thorium nuclear reactors to produce the byproduct of plutonium!

7) Any radioactive waste that is produced, is minimal and only a storage problem for hundreds of years, versus thousands of years for the waste produced by uranium based fuel.
Therefore, why is it that Australia is not promoting THORIUM, as an alternative GREEN NUCLEAR energy source for both our own country (like having one located in the Simpson Desert for example), as well as the rest of the world.

In fact, we may be able to fill the budgetary void created by the gradual cessation of coal mining in this country, due to global cataclysmic climate change, through the gradual ramping up of the export of Thorium to China and India ect.