Thorium: World’s greatest nuclear energy breakthrough?

If you are eager for a dependable and cheap energy source that doesn’t spew toxins and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere — and that doesn’t result in terrible, billion dollar accidents — there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. It could be from a common but relatively unknown metal called thorium.

In the right kind of nuclear reactor, they say, thorium could power the world forever — and without the problems that come with the nuclear energy we use today, from Fukushima-like meltdowns to the difficult by-products of plutonium that leave behind radioactive waste and weapons material.

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