Green Chemistry: An Enabler for Using Thorium as Green Energy Fuel

The current trends of life styles, growth, consumption and production put greater emphasis on the importance and urgency of producing massive quantities of energy. The depleting nature and the accelerated demand of commercial energy force planners and policy makers to look for alternative sources. Therefore, clean energy, environmentally benign and economical sources are being sought. Because environmental problems stem from the use of fossil fuels and the renewable energy sources are not sufficient with respect to their energy contents and intrinsic nature, nuclear energy is considered as a possible source of energy in the world. In this respect, Thorium attracts much attention as it is the Nuclear Energy fuel with the least negative consequences such as radioactivity and nuclear proliferation. However, the strict regulations and the lack of an eco-friendly monitoring and analysis method besides the doubts about the greenness of Thorium stands as important obstacles on its way to become a widely used Nuclear Energy fuel. In this review paper, we aimed to give information about thorium as an effective and efficient green energy source according to the principles of green chemistry perspective.