Thorium reserves - potential for power generation, exploration and mining

The estimated resources as on 31-03-2015 of natural uranium in India is about 1,86,000 tons compared to more than 9,60,000 tons of thorium oxide deposit. India has the world's largest deposits of thorium. The three stage Atomic Energy Program adopted by India for harnessing the nuclear energy is based on utilization of the scarcely available uranium in the country along with abundant availability of thorium, so that plutonium generated from utilization of natural uranium in power reactors using heavy water as moderator can be successfully used to breed fissile materials from thorium in most efficient manner in breeder reactors which are also capable to producing energy. Utilization of vast resources of available thorium by the breeder route will be a potential source of nuclear power for sustaining the growing energy requirement of India in long term. Thanks to the problems of greenhouse gas emissions and the depleting limited hydro-carbon resources of the country, nuclear power is likely to play a significant role in the energy production sector. The subject matter of the talk focuses on prospects and challenges in developing the process technologies of various value added products from monazite and myriad of applications in the above mentioned industry sectors which are ever evolving with time