Word: thorium
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...radioactive rock does not contain uranium. It may contain thorium (also radioactive), in which the AEC has only a faint interest. The booklet describes a rather complicated process by which the prospector can test his find with ultraviolet light...
...comes into use will depend largely on the supply of uranium. If uranium is cheap and plentiful, it will be used more or less in the natural state. If uranium proves scarce, the supply can be eked out by "breeding." A reactor will be surrounded by a blanket of thorium or the plentiful but nonfissionable uranium isotope, U-238. When these absorb excess neutrons from the reaction, they turn into fissionable plutonium...
First hint of the change in policy came last fortnight when a government official handed out copies of a Prospectors' Guide for Uranium and Thorium Minerals in Canada. It told everything about hunting uranium in Canada except where to look...
...Thorium is not itself a chain-reacting substance or "nuclear fuel" like plutonium or U-235, but when placed in a pile with U-235 it yields a third kind of fuel known as U-233. So far as is known, only theoretical work has been done on U-233. Last year, however, Canada announced that she would explore thorium's possibilities at the big Chalk River project in Ontario (TIME...
...stoppage of thorium shipments from Travancore to the U.S. a sign of British displeasure? Possibly. But the British pointed out that they could not give orders to Travancore's Maharaja, an independent ruler. The handsome, enlightened, 34-year-old Maharaja, who in 1937 established a university for technological research, has now said that he wants to build thorium refining plants, and perhaps even experiment with nuclear fission, in Travancore. That was a reminder that the great powers had no permanent monopoly on the atom...