Transcript

FIONA BRUCE

Do we need a new kind of nuclear fuel? Some of the world's top physicists are gathered in Geneva to discuss the merits of the radioactive element thorium. Although it's lagging way behind the standard fuel uranium in its development, potentially it has some major advantages. Thorium is three times more plentiful than uranium. It's estimated to produce 10 times less waste than uranium.

And unlike uranium, its byproducts can't be made into a nuclear bomb. Our environment analyst Roger Harrabin reports from a thorium test site in southern Norway, partially funded by the UK government.

ROGER HARRABIN

The gentle hills of southern Norway, forged 600 million years ago from the fire and ash of a supervolcano. It left a hidden bounty for mankind.

GUIDE

Here's the opening to the mine.

ROGER HARRABIN

Centuries of iron have been hewn from this rock, but a guide with a Geiger counter shows that the walls inside are also peppered with a radioactive element.

GUIDE

Thorium. High levels of thorium in this rock, as you can see here.

ROGER HARRABIN

So if it's radioactive, could thorium be used as a nuclear fuel, instead of its volatile cousin uranium? Scientists are trying to find out. Tests are going on under this hill. There's a nuclear reactor in the belly of the mountain. It's like a Bond movie. A private firm's being helped by the British government to trial thorium here.

I'm standing now right on top of the reactor itself. If I look down the hole, I can see the top of the reactor down there below me. It's turned off now for maintenance, so I'm safe. Down there is where the thorium has been tested, and the firms say so far the experiments are going well. Similar tests are being carried out in India, China, and Japan, as several nations assess the potential of thorium.

OYSTEIN APSHJELL

There's lots of thorium in the world. Very well distributed all over the globe. In operations, in a reactor, it has some chemical and physical properties that make it really superior over uranium as well. On the waste side, we don't generate new long-lived waste.

ROGER HARRABIN

There's a potential safety benefit, too. When the tsunami hit the uranium-fueled Fukushima nuclear plant two years ago, the reaction spun out of control. Scientists in Norway say that wouldn't have happened with thorium. But critics say developing thorium will be expensive, and won't produce clean energy for decades.

DR. NILS BOHMER

The advantage of thorium is purely theoretical. The technology's development is decades in the future. Instead, I think we should focus on developing renewable technology - for example, offshore wind technology, which I think there's a huge potential to develop.