Future Technology

Thorium is a substance that is three times more plentiful on Earth than uranium and does not need to be enriched like uranium-235. Thorium also generates less nuclear waste, and the radioactivity is predicted to diminish to safe levels in a few hundred years, as opposed to uranium which produces waste that stays radioactive for thousands of years. Thorium is a fertile material and not fissile like uranium. This means that they do not undergo fission reactions on their own, but upon irradiation in nuclear reactors, they can be converted into fissile material. This is safer because they can be turned off by simply turning off the neutron source.

A second substance that is even more sustainable than uranium is helium-3. This is a non-radioactive material that, as opposed to uranium which requires fission, helium-3 uses fusion. It consists of fusing helium-3 with deuterium to produce energy with the advantage of not producing neutrons.

Although helium-3 is the more sustainable solution, this material is not found on a reachable area of Earth. Deposits of helium-3 in our planet are deep underground, and they were formed when our planet was still in its infancy and did not have much atmosphere. Helium-3 can be found in large quantities on the Moon where the Sun’s radiation reaches the surface, facilitating its production.

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