In just a few short years China will completely phase out conventional combust engines in their manufacturing plants, by 2020-25?

And continue to ramp up an ramp up fully electric cars. Tesla recently commissioned a huge battery plant to make batteries for cars and household use.

Other vehicle manufacturers are following China's lead. Simply because to retain market share they have no other choice than compete with production numbers and price.

They can take some comfort that many firms tha originally relocated to China are now part of an exodus heading for places like Vietnam.

Which can now buy rare earth minerals and lithium outside China. Australia has considerable reserves of both. And virtual child's play to locate as large commercial deposits, using aerial surveys and side-looking radar. Which locates thorium, an indicator mineral for rare earth and lithium, previously separated, then dumped, by the numbskulls that clearly didn't realize they were dumping the most precious (bonanza) energy loaded, part of the mineralization strata.

More on thorium later.
Alan B.

Thorium is the most energy dense material in nature and so abundant we can never run out of it. It is fertile, not fissile and therefore cannot be compressed to create a thermonuclear explosion.

Consequently abandoned in the mid-seventies due to the extreme difficulty of weaponizing it! Not to say it ccouldn't be! But given the risks and huge detectable gamma output, detectable from virtually anywhere in the world!

Why would anyody in their right mind want to first build one then watch as the subsequent nuclear decay destroyed it as a weapon of mass distruction!

Except or the silly buggers at home who built it or store it. And exposed to much higher rad output than from the wastelands of Chernobyl!?

That said, if irradiated to then become U 233, thorium can be very safely used in a thermal reactor, namely walk away safe MSR, where the adjoining (chem) plant continually reprocess the material, then pumps it back again and again to the reactor, where in time some becomes (FREE) Bismuth 213.

An alpha particle isotope this reactor creates in absolute safety. Bismuth213 is a miracle cancer cure, which to my knowlege, has been successfully trialled against stage four ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, Myleod luekemia, and some very nasty brain cancers.

Brain cancer rates have remained stubbornly unchanged and consistant as a killer with a greater annual toll than the road toll!

And have remained thus for over thirty some years.

Even though the first trials of MSR thorium ( aprecusor of miracle cancer cure, bismuth213) took place over fifty years ago and trials using Bismuth 213 against death sentence ovarian cancer, were SUCCESSFULLY trialled in various european clinics as far back as 2006.

If it's so good why don't we have it!?

Good question and need to be addressed to those US politicians that either banned virtually all thorium R+D. Or those here who created the very rules and regulations that effectively prohibit nuclear energy and consequent power prices none other can compete with!
Alan B.

Alan, I am becoming frustrated in that I feel you know what your on about and have become very familiar with this MSR and technology you speak of with passion and persistence.
I truly feel for you and honestly wish I had some way of making your 'thing', a reality.
I would like to think you have already contacted those who you believe can make it a reality, but I can only speculate, the results have always been in the negative.
I am REALLY curious what the scum-bags had to say in rejecting your submissions.
If it's not too awkward, I would like to know their reasons for rejection.
Because to me it all sounds great, in fact, too good to be true, yet I believe you.

Altrav. Yes, it does sound too good to be true, yet it unequivocally is. And supported by NASA scientist and nuclear technologist Kirk Sorensen. And if you can spare 10 minutes, you can hear his 10-minute appraisal (Thorium ten minutes) on google tech talks, on Utube.

Or read Thorium, Super fuel, subtitled Green energy, by prize-winning, investigative Journalist and science writer, Richard Martin. Or read Professor Robert Hargraves book, Thorium, cheaper than coal.

Or just listen to Scandinavian engineer Jam Petersen, on Utube tech talks.

Thorium is the most energy dense material on the planet and so abundant we can never ever run out of it. Thorium delivers everything fusion promised but couldn't deliver.

Yes, the Oak Ridge reactor showed some signs of corrosion some years after an abrupt shutdown, shut down by (corrupt) Nixon, who wanted the extremely modest funds redirected to his home state and a crony if the tapes are to be believed?

The extremely premature shutdown of both the reactor and adjacent chemical reprocessing, responsible for the alleged corrosion some competing (technology) nuclear physicists allegedly found.

And easily remedied in operation by the addition of sufficient beryllium, a reductant.
Alan B.

@Alan B.

With all this tilting at Thorium windmills [1] can Captain Kirk really help?

[1] where such tilting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilting_at_windmills means:

Courses of Action Based on Misinterpreted or Misapplied Heroic, Romantic, or Idealistic Justifications.

Sound familiar!?

plantagenet, I don't understand sarcasm, so I'm not sure if you are for Alan and the MSR, or against him/it.
Personally I have always been excited at his promotion and explanation of this technology.
So I hope you are a protagonist, rather than the opposite.
It seems to me he has been studying this technology for many years, and if only based on his reporting of it's benefits and performance, it should be adopted forthwith.
I believe that it must be as efficient and cost effective as he says it is, because the govt is avoiding it and I believe, at their own peril.
The only other reason the govt does not act on something is because the scum can't see a way of fleecing/scamming money out of it.
Alan keep at it, and as I said before, if you can tell us the reason/s they have refused you in the past, I would really like to know.