Word: thorium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
Childs also disclosed-"although it may have been no more than a coincidence"-that shipments of thorium to the U.S. from the state of Travancore, in southern India, had been stopped. Travancore, one of India's least backward states, used to supply three-fourths of the world's thorium (for gaslight mantles, radio tubes, carbon terminals, luminous watch dials...
...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...
...official witnesses at Bikini. It might be useful, Professor Alexandrov had suggested, to have a "balance sheet" which would show the amount of each nation's raw material and the efficiency of mining methods. It might also be useful to compare notes on how uranium and thorium deposits were classified. Russia, he said, had set up three categories: visible, probable and possible resources...