Thorium: Does Crustal Abundance Lead to Economic Availability?

Brett W. Jordan (), Roderick Eggert, Brent Dixon and Brett Carlsen
Additional contact information
Brett W. Jordan: Division of Economics and Business, Colorado School of Mines
Brent Dixon: Idaho National Laboratory
Brett Carlsen: Idaho National Laboratory
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Brett J Watson

No 2014-07, Working Papers from Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business

Abstract: Recently, interest in thorium's potential use in a nuclear fuel cycle has been renewed. Thorium is more abundant, at least on average, than uranium in the earth's crust and, therefore, could theoretically extend the use of nuclear energy technology beyond the economic limits of uranium resources. This paper provides an economic assessment of thorium availability by creating cumulative-availability and potential mining-industry cost curves, based on known thorium resources. These tools provide two perspectives on the economic availability of thorium. In the long term, physical quantities of thorium likely will not be a constraint on the development of a thorium fuel cycle. In the medium term, however, thorium supply may be limited by constraints associated with its production as a by-product of rare earth elements and heavy mineral sands. Environmental concerns, social issues, regulation, and technology also present issues for the medium and long term supply of thorium.

Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://econbus-papers.mines.edu/working-papers/wp201407.pdf First version, 2014 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mns:wpaper:wp201407

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jared Carbone ().