The Energy Revolution We Abandoned

The key to humanity’s energy future isn’t more uranium.
It’s thorium — a safer, and nearly limitless fuel that we once had in our grasp and chose to ignore.

We Were Promised Abundance — Then We Chose Scarcity

Since the dawn of the nuclear age, we’ve known that splitting atoms can power civilization for millennia. One gram of uranium releases as much energy as three tons of coal.

Yet instead of expanding this miracle, we retreated. We let activists and politicians turn “nuclear” into a dirty word. Today, nuclear provides barely 10% of the world’s electricity — while nations burn more coal than ever.

The world doesn’t suffer from an energy shortage.
It suffers from a courage shortage.

We built an entire moral narrative that made energy abundance seem dangerous and guilt-worthy. We called it “green.”

The Element We Buried

Thorium — element 90 on the periodic table — is three times more common than uranium. It can’t easily be weaponized. It produces a fraction of the waste. Its reactors operate at atmospheric pressure, meaning they cannot melt down like Chernobyl or Fukushima.

It’s the element that could have powered a civilization free of oil wars, carbon hysteria, and energy poverty.

In the 1960s, U.S. scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory built and ran a thorium molten-salt reactor. It worked flawlessly. It was safe. It was shut down not because of failure — but because uranium fit the weapons program.

The Cold War decided our energy policy.

What Thorium Makes Possible

In a thorium reactor, thorium-232 absorbs a neutron and becomes uranium-233, a fissile material that releases vast amounts of energy. The process produces minimal plutonium, and its waste decays in centuries, not millennia.

Because the fuel is already molten, there’s no pressure to explode and no runaway chain reaction. If the system overheats, a simple freeze plug melts and drains the fuel into a containment tank — the reaction stops by itself.

No meltdown. No panic. No apocalypse.

AspectUranium ReactorsThorium ReactorsFuel Abundance~200 years of supplyThousands of yearsWaste ProfileHigh plutonium; long-livedMostly short-lived isotopesSafetyPressurized water; meltdown riskMolten salt; passive shutdownProliferation RiskHighVery lowThermal Efficiency~33%Up to 45%

China has already built one in the Gobi Desert — a two-megawatt experimental molten-salt reactor. India plans its own by 2030. In Europe, startups like Copenhagen Atomics are developing modular thorium systems for mass deployment.

Meanwhile, the U.S. debates how many solar panels to subsidize.

The Real Obstacle Isn’t Physics — It’s Politics

Every major problem blamed on “climate change” — from blackouts to high prices — is really a problem of refusing dense energy.

Wind and solar are diffuse, unreliable, and land-hungry. They depend on rare earth metals mined under brutal conditions and need fossil fuel backup when the wind dies or the sun sets.

Thorium doesn’t need backup. It doesn’t need rare metals. It doesn’t depend on weather.
It just works.

Yet governments pour hundreds of billions into renewables while giving nuclear a fraction of that support. We treat energy abundance as something dangerous — something that must be limited or apologized for.

Thorium sits in ordinary sand, waiting to be used.
We ignore it, not because it’s unproven, but because we’ve forgotten how to think like adults.

The Moral Case for Thorium

To lift billions of people out of poverty, we need reliable, affordable, continuous power. Thorium can provide it — safely and abundantly. It doesn’t threaten the planet; it protects it from stagnation.

The real environmental tragedy isn’t too much energy.
It’s not enough.

We didn’t stop building nuclear because it was dangerous.
We stopped because we lost faith in ourselves.

It’s time to take that faith back.

The Path Forward

The U.S. Department of Energy spends more than $30 billion a year. Less than 1% goes toward advanced nuclear research. Redirecting even a small share could restart a modern thorium program within five years.

China and India are already moving. The West has a choice: rediscover science, or import it from those who still believe in it.

Thorium isn’t a dream. It’s physics — proven, scalable, waiting.

We can keep pretending that wind farms and subsidies will power the future — or we can grow up.