Alternate Energies

In keeping with both its environmental intent and its objective of finding energy resources, Tobie Mining & Energy is actively researching and developing the nuclear energy project based on located high potential deposits and future global power usage trends. Although many other nuclear energy mineral resource companies have focused entirely on Uranium exploration, Tobie Mining & Energy has gone beyond searching solely for Uranium and will include potential deposits of high grade-high concentration Thorium as well.

The Thorium mineral has been used only as a potential indicator mineral for hidden Uranium deposits. However, although until now its use has been limited to industrial lighting uses, certain scientific advances have demonstrated that Thorium could become the “clean” alternative source for nuclear energy. With the right reactor configuration, Thorium may become either the absorption ‘blanket’ for stray ‘dirty’ radiation from Uranium cores, or could even become the principal element for energy production. Although very few of the standard older nuclear reactors can incorporate Thorium as a fuel, there is a huge motivation to do so at many levels of government and industry. The use of Thorium alone or in tandem with Uranium cores may be able to significantly reduce contaminating radiation during fission and most importantly reduce radiation from post fission nuclear waste. This could significantly reduce the waste disposal budget burdening the nuclear energy industry today. Simply looking at the political and economic costs for disposal sites like Yucca Mountain in Nevada is a testament to this huge need for a solution.

Thorium could have another even greater benefit. The use of Thorium as the ‘afterburner’ of a Uranium reactor’s escaping neutrons can essentially make Thorium the catalyst for the Uranium core. In this way, the Thorium and the Uranium more efficiently “consume themselves”, and produce far more energy output.

The use of Thorium minimizes the production of dangerous plutonium, the element that can easily be converted into a WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) grade compound. This is a serious problem that plagues the common reactors in use today, producing a significant cost to safely monitoring and disposing of the by product. The CBRN & HazMat community is increasingly interested in this by product benefit of Thorium.

Tobie Mining & Energy has located some potentially high grade Thorium deposits for this inevitable demand. We applaud the efforts of the Novastar Resources research team in helping to promote the use of this cleaner nuclear fuel and we hope that advances in more modern reactors like the Canadian CANDU ones around the world begin to take effect in the more than 100 licensed reactors in the United States.

Tobie Mining & Energy Inc. is pursuing potentially new sources of thorium. The mineral is a far cleaner source for nuclear energy. Thorium doesn't produce plutonium, making it a far safer alternative to uranium.

Thorium Links

http://www.treehugger.com/

http://news.independent.co.uk

http://in.rediff.com/news/

http://www.wired.com/news/technology

http://www.innovations-report.de/html