Thorium Energy Alliance

Thorium Energy Alliance (TEA) is a non-governmental, non-profit 501(c)3, educational organization based in the United States, which seeks to promote energy security of the world through the use of thorium as a fuel source. The potential for the use of thorium was studied extensively during the 1950s and 60s, and now worldwide interest is being revived due to limitations and issues concerning safety, economics, use and issues in the availability of other energy sources. TEA advocates thorium based nuclear power in existing reactors and primarily in next generation reactors. TEA promotes many initiatives to educate scientists, engineers, government officials, policymakers and the general public. Energy crisis and the role of thorium TEA promotes the use of thorium using a different rationale. Increasing world population, depleting resources and global warming have put severe constraints on the choices of power generation available today. Traditional fossil fuel based energy generation faces two-fold challenges in terms of depleting resources and need to keep greenhouse gas emissions in control. While interim measures like natural gas and unconventional oil are proposed, these still have a carbon footprint and are not universally available. Hydropower use has reached a natural limit in many parts of the world, and the existing capacity is under stress due to climate change. Renewable energy is seen as an important component of future energy generation, but being essentially intermittent, can not be effectively managed by the current power distribution technologies. Hence, nuclear energy is seen as an important option for power generation in many countries. Present generation nuclear reactors are all uranium based, fueled with either freshly mined uranium or recycled plutonium and uranium as the fissile material. There are concerns about a continued supply of uranium, due to resource depletion, as well as various obstacles to mining uranium deposits. Moreover, the currently widely deployed nuclear reactors harness less than 3% of the energy content of uranium fuel. This technology, in turn, leaves large quantities of radioactive wastes to be disposed of safely. The issue of disposal of these wastes has not been addressed convincingly anywhere in the world.