Could Cornwall power Britain?
Forget wind, solar, fossil fuels and wave power, Cornwall’s abundance of granite could provide the key for Britain’s future energy policy.
The prospect is staggering and little known. While the world seeks ever more destructive means to obtain stuff to burn and turn into power, a little known mineral found widely in Cornwall could be the perfect solution.
Thorium is its name. Usually regarded as waste by the mining industries, there’s so much of it around it’s mostly thrown away.
Nobel prize winner, Carlo Rubbia, working at CERN in Switzerland, regards Thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to Uranium in nuclear reactors. A ton of the metal produces as much energy as 200 tons of Uranium, or 3,500,000 tons of coal. A small lump could light a major city for days. Thorium even destroys its own hazardous waste.
Kirk Sorensen, formerly of NASA, now a senior nuclear technologist, says: “It’s the Big One. Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on Thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with Uranium cartels.”
The story of Thorium has been one of inter-rivalry between power sources for decades, while the positive aspects of the silvery metal have been sidelined by vested interests, not least France’s large nuclear industry in Europe, and the Americans’ need to build nuclear weapons.
Has Thorium’s day arrived? Let’s hope so. There’s bags of the stuff in Cornwall.
Are you listening Coalition?
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