Abstract
Thorium occurs naturally. It is named for the Norse god of thunder and identified almost two centuries ago. Thorium exists in nature almost entirely as the stable Th-232 isotope and cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction itself. Thorium is a lustrous silvery-white metal. It is a dense and only slightly radioactive actinide (i.e., less radiotoxic). Thorium is a fertile material; it can accept a neutron and transmute into fissile U-233 and decays to stable Pb-208. Thorium is usually a by-product of the rare-earth element (REEs) containing monazite or bastnasite minerals.
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Kaya, M. (2016). A Global and a Turkish Perspective of Thorium Fuel for Nuclear Energy. In: Revol, JP., Bourquin, M., Kadi, Y., Lillestol, E., de Mestral, JC., Samec, K. (eds) Thorium Energy for the World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26542-1_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26542-1_18
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