Towards Sustainable, Secure, and Safe Energy Future: Leveraging Opportunities with Thorium
The growing economic empowerment of an increasing part of the world's population and small amount of carbon space available, necessitates a quick shift to non fossil energy sources that are large enough to meet future energy requirements. Apart from electricity, energy in fluid form, derived through non fossil means is also needed. It is, thus, important to progressively replace fossil fuels and increase the share of nuclear and solar power in the overall energy mix. For expansion of nuclear capacity, it is important to squarely address various fears associated with nuclear energy by eliminating the possibility of any adverse impact in the public domain. Since time is running out, we need to explore how to achieve this objective through reconfiguration of available technologies even as we develop new technologies specifically for the purpose. This paper argues that the use of thorium, together with innovative reactor designs such as that of the advanced heavy water reactor (AHWR) under development in India can, by and large, eliminate many of the perceived risks associated with nuclear energy. In the long run, a mix of advanced technologies such as molten salt reactors, accelerator driven systems, and fast reactors will be necessary to sustain nuclear energy.