Named for the Norse god of thunder, thorium is a silvery, lustrous and radioactive element with potential as an alternative to uranium in fueling nuclear reactors.
Just the facts HistoryIn 1815, Jöns Jakob Berzelius, a Swedish chemist, first thought he had discovered a new Earth element, which he named thorium after Thor, the Norse god of war, according to Peter van der Krogt, a Dutch historian. In 1824, however, it was determined that the mineral was in fact yttrium phosphate.;
Berzelius isolated thorium by first mixing thorium oxide found in the mineral with carbon to create thorium chloride, which was then reacted with potassium to yield thorium and potassium chloride, according to Chemicool. Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealand physicist, and Frederick Soddy, an English chemist, discovered that thorium decays at a fixed rate into other elements, also known as the half-life of an element, according to Los Alamos National Laboratory. This work was critical in furthering the understanding of other radioactive elements.
Who knew? Current researchA great deal of research is going into using thorium as a nuclear fuel. According to an article from the Royal Society of Chemistry, thorium used in nuclear reactors provide many benefits over using uranium:
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