Seeing as how Thorium is now of concern lets discuss it in its own forum.
Firstly let me say I am not an expert in this area.
The thorium like the uranium is contained withing the rare earth material.
The rare earths are 'cracked' using hot sulfuric acid in a multi-stage process to separate the thorium and uranium.(Perhaps a chemical engineer could tell us if this is done within the same process plant that GGG are proposing building to seperate the uranium but I believe it to be the case.)
There is abundant info on Thorium
Information from Geoscience Australia
(http://www.ga.gov.au/minerals/research/national/thorium/index.jsp)
'Thorium is an alternative to conventional nuclear fuels, such as uranium and plutonium and offers the following advantages:
* Almost all natural thorium is usable in a reactor compared with 0.7% of natural uranium;
* the residue material from thorium-fuelled reactors is difficult to reprocess into weapons-grade material; and
* unlike uranium, thorium requires a source of neutrons to start and maintain a nuclear fission reaction, which is the process of splitting atoms to release large amounts of energy.
While there is considerable development work required before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialised, there is renewed interest in thorium fuel because less radioactive residue is produced and there is potential to re-use some of the radioactive by-products generated...'
and another good website to visit is
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html
'Thorium is a naturally-occurring, slightly radioactive metal discovered in 1828...'
From what I can see it doesn't seem that bad and if it can be separated from the rare earth whilst seperating the uranium then its a positive.
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