What will be the future energy source?

                                                As Humans we need some kind of power to regulate our civilization. Electricity is the main form if it in nowadays. But it doesn’t produce itself. We have to produce it from other fuel sources. The most common fuel source is fossil fuel. 80% of power requirement is fulfilled by burning coal and natural gases. This has leads our world in to a huge ecological catastrophe. When burning Fossil fuel , it emits greenhouse gases that directly contributes to global warming. So scientists are searching for alternative energy sources. Even we can renewable energy sources like solar energy, wind power and tidal energy ETC, there haven’t been enough generation of power to fulfill our energy requirement.

                        So we have to find much cleaner energy source. Nuclear power is much cleaner that burning fossil fuels. But they are not much safer. We have past experiences of Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters. And also we are familiar with nuclear weapons that can destroy the world. But there is a ways we can get rid of those down falls and take advantages of clean nuclear energy. Uranium 235 is highly radioactive element most commonly uses in nuclear reactors. Instead of Uranium we can use Thorium reactors. Actually scientists think Thorium could be the future of power generation.

                                                                  Chernobyl disaster.

                                                                        Fukushima disaster.

                                There are lots of advantages in Thorium than Uranium. Thorium is much concentrated element so we can extract more Thorium than Uranium from same amount of cost and effort. And extraction of Uranium is very dangerous because radon gas could emit in process of extraction and it could be a fatal incident. But Thorium is a weak radioactive metal so it is very easy to extract and store.  There is 3 times much Thorium than Uranium in the earth crust. The most important thing with Thorium is, 1 ton of it can produce energy equivalent of 35 tons of Uranium and energy equivalent of 4 million tons of coal.   

        

                                                        Uranium Mining Process.

                                There for Thorium is much cleaner and efficient. But it also produces nuclear waste. Even it is radioactive it’s less toxic than nuclear waste of Uranium. The half-life of Uranium waste product is 100,000 years nut Thorium waste product has only 3000 years half-life. The main problem with nuclear energy is it is less safe than other methods. But scientists had come up with much safer design for Thorium power reactors that both coolant and fuel are in liquid form, so it can regulate temperature itself. That means those power plants are incapable of melt down.

                                                        Molten Salt Thorium Reactor

                                                                  Countries like United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil and India are currently working on Liquid Florid Thorium Reactors (LFTR), and also Canada has their own project called CANDU reactors. We have to conduct more and more researches regarding this potential power source that can revolutionize the future and to save the planet from global warming.