INDIA SUMMARIZED

Thorium, if India’s nuclear scientific community is to be believed, holds the key to our nuclear programme being freed from the dependance on uranium imports to power our nuclear plants and allowing us to develop limitless amounts of fuel since it could be extracted from sand on beaches. But according to a report in the Statesman, the government has failed to control the export of monazite, the raw material from which thorium can be extracted, and has allowed 2.1 million tonnes of it to be extracted. The report estimates that if the thorium extracted from the monazite is estimated at $100 per tonne, then the loss to the exchequer is approximately Rs 48 lakh crore, in addition to the incalculable loss to the nuclear fuel programme. So what is monazite? Sand, rather sand from particular beaches in states like Kerala, Orissa and Tamil Nadu which yields about 8 to 10 percent thorium, according to the BARC. Thorium is converted into an isotope of uranium which is used to feed nuc...