[en] Current generation commercial nuclear energy harnessing systems predominantly utilise uranium based nuclear fuel cycles. In most of the industrialised nuclear power producing countries, the nuclear fuel cycle employed currently is of the once-through type, leading to wastage of precious energy resources. While a beginning has been made to exploit the larger energy potential in uranium through recycle of nuclear fuel by adopting MOX (U-Pu) system, very little attention has been paid worldwide towards commercial utilisation of nuclear fuel cycles based on thorium. However, in the future, increasing energy demands and decreasing fuel resources may strongly, dictate the use of thorium, a fertile material, since thorium is more abundant in earth's crust than uranium. The Indian uranium resources amount to only 78,000 te as against 5,18,000 te of thorium resources. Since naturally occurring thorium does not contain any fissile isotope as is the case with uranium, the use of thorium needs to start when there are sufficiently large uranium resources available. In the Indian context, therefore, to achieve long-term energy security, the use of thorium for large-scale commercial electricity generation, should begin much earlier than in most other countries. This paper presents a review of the various avenues of deployment for thorium as a fuel resource during the next several decades for large-scale power generation