Thorium is a primordial element which still naturally occurs in large quantities in the earth’s crust. It is found in minor quantity in soil and most rocks. It is a radioactive element, like uranium, but it is three times more abundant than uranium.
Is thorium the fuel of the future to revitalize nuclear?
Thorium-based nuclear energy is safer, cleaner, and more reliable than depending on oil and other carbon-based fuels. Thorium is not only the solution to our current energy problems but a pathway to the future.
Where can you find thorium at in nature?
- uraninite/pitchblende
- uranophane
- carnotite
- coffinite
- autunite
- tyuyamunite
- meta-tyuyamunite
How is thorium used in everyday life?
What are uses of thorium?
- As thorium is radioactive, its uses mainly lie in nuclear fuel applications.
- It is helpful in radiometric dating.
- Used as an alloying element in magnesium, to coat tungsten wire in electrical equipment.
- Used in manufacturing of lenses for cameras and scientific instruments.
Where is the world largest thorium deposits found?
Countries With Biggest Uranium Reserves
- Kazakhstan - 304,000 metric tons
- Canada - 275,000 metric tons
- South Africa - 168 metric tons
Where is thorium commonly found?
The main world resources of thorium are associated with monazite placer deposits in India, Brazil, Australia, the USA, Egypt, and Venezuela. The second most important thorium resources could be mined as by-product of REO from carbonatites (China, Greenland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden).
How was thorium found?
Thorium was discovered by Jöns Jacob Berzelius, a Swedish chemist, in 1828. He discovered it in a sample of a mineral that was given to him by the Reverend Has Morten Thrane Esmark, who suspected that it contained an unknown substance. Esmark's mineral is now known as thorite (ThSiO4).
Does thorium occur naturally on Earth?
Thorium is a naturally occurring radioactive metal that is found at low levels in soil, rocks, water, plants, and animals. Almost all naturally occurring thorium exists in the form of either radioactive isotope thorium-232, thorium-230, and thorium-228.
What is the main source of thorium?
The most common source of thorium is the rare earth phosphate mineral, monazite, which contains up to about 12% thorium phosphate, but 6-7% on average. Monazite is found in igneous and other rocks but the richest concentrations are in placer deposits, concentrated by wave and current action with other heavy minerals.
Where is thorium found in Africa?
South Africa possesses the world's richest thorium mine, Steenkampskraal in the Western Cape. It is approximately 350km north of Cape Town. The mine was discovered in the late 1940s and produces valuable Rare Earth materials, plus thorium.
How expensive is thorium?
The salts cost roughly $150/kg, and thorium costs about $30/kg. If thorium becomes popular, this cost will only decrease as thorium is widely available anywhere in the earth's crust. Thorium is found in a concentration over 500 times greater than fissile uranium-235.
Is thorium a rare element?
According to Periodic Table, thorium is the 41st most abundant element in Earth's crust.
Can you touch thorium?
Alpha particles do not penetrate the human skin and is therefore not dangerous. Thorium-232 is safe provided we are not stupid enough to eat it or ground it up into a fine powder and inhale it.
How much thorium is left in the world?
Thorianite is a rare mineral and may contain up to about 12% thorium oxide. Monazite contains 2.5% thorium, allanite has 0.1 to 2% thorium and zircon can have up to 0.4% thorium....Thorium resource estimates.CountryReservesSouth Africa35,000Brazil16,000Other Countries95,000World Total1,200,0005 more rows
Which state is largest producer of thorium?
The correct answer is Kerala. Kerala is the largest producer of Thorium in India. Thorium is a radioactive element found in Andra Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu.
What does thorium do to the human body?
Thorium is radioactive and can be stored in bones. Because of these facts it has the ability to cause bone cancer many years after the exposure has taken place. Breathing in massive amounts of thorium may be lethal. People will often die of metal poisoning when massive exposure take place.
Why was thorium named after Thor?
Thorium was discovered by the Swedish chemist Jons Jacob Berzelius. Sweden is part of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Thor was a Norse god whose story...
Where is thorium found?
Thorium is found in Earth's crust, water and soil. Since thorium is found in the soil and water, trace amounts are also found in living things. Tho...
What kind of element is thorium?
Thorium is a heavy radioactive metal. This means it has a large atomic radius since it has a large atomic number. Additionally, the element is unst...
What is thorium used for?
Thorium has a very high melting and boiling point so it has been used in portable lights, electronics , ceramics and laboratory tools like crucible...
What group and period is thorium in?
Thorium belongs to the actinide series which are usually located below the main periodic table. Since the behavior of the electron orbitals in thes...
Where is thorium found?
Monazite (chiefly phosphates of various rare-earth elements) is the most important commercial source of thorium because it occurs in large deposits worldwide, principally in India, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, and Malaysia. It contains around 2.5% thorium on average, although some deposits may contain up to 20%.
Where are thorium and rare earth metals placed?
In the periodic table published by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, thorium and the rare-earth elements were placed outside the main body of the table, at the end of each vertical period after the alkaline earth metals. This reflected the belief at that time that thorium and the rare-earth metals were divalent.
How many valence electrons does thorium have?
Chemistry. Main article: Compounds of thorium. A thorium atom has 90 electrons, of which four are valence electrons. Four atomic orbitals are theoretically available for the valence electrons to occupy: 5f, 6d, 7s, and 7p.
How many isomers does Thorium have?
Thorium has three known nuclear isomers (or metastable states), 216m1 Th, 216m2 Th, and 229m Th. 229m Th has the lowest known excitation energy of any isomer, measured to be 7.6 ± 0.5 eV. This is so low that when it undergoes isomeric transition, the emitted gamma radiation is in the ultraviolet range.
What is the temperature of thorium?
At room temperature, thorium metal has a face-centred cubic crystal structure; it has two other forms, one at high temperature (over 1360 °C; body-centred cubic) and one at high pressure (around 100 GPa; body-centred tetragonal ).
What is the atomic number of thorium?
face-centred cubic (fcc) Thorium is a weakly radioactive metallic chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90 . Thorium is silvery and tarnishes black when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft, malleable, and has a high melting point.
When was thorium first discovered?
Thorium was first observed to be radioactive in 1898, by the German chemist Gerhard Carl Schmidt and later that year, independently, by the Polish-French physicist Marie Curie. It was the second element that was found to be radioactive, after the 1896 discovery of radioactivity in uranium by French physicist Henri Becquerel. Starting from 1899, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford and the American electrical engineer Robert Bowie Owens studied the radiation from thorium; initial observations showed that it varied significantly. It was determined that these variations came from a short-lived gaseous daughter of thorium, which they found to be a new element. This element is now named radon, the only one of the rare radioelements to be discovered in nature as a daughter of thorium rather than uranium.
Thorium Element
There are over 100 different types of elements found on the periodic table today. Most people know the names of a few common ones like oxygen, helium, and hydrogen, but few would probably be familiar with the element thorium. What is Thorium? Thorium is an element that was discovered in 1828 by the Swedish chemist Jons Jacob Berzelius.
Thorium on the Periodic Table
Between the three different classes on the periodic table (metal, metalloid, and nonmetal), thorium is a metal. Thorium can be found on the periodic table with other inner transition metals in period 7. Depending on the periodic table, it may be listed in group 3 or not listed as a group.
Characteristics of Thorium
After studying thorium for almost two centuries, scientists have discovered many of its physical and chemical properties:
Where is Thorium Found?
Thorium, as well as many other heavy radioactive metals, is found in small quantities in the Earth's crust. The element is not found by itself, in a pure form, but bonded together with other elements and compounds in different minerals. Some of the minerals are listed below:
Overview
Thorium is a weakly radioactive metallic chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is silvery and tarnishes black when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft and malleable and has a high melting point. Thorium is an electropositive actinide whose chemistry is dominated by the +4 oxidation state; it is quite reactive and can ignite in air wh…
Bulk properties
Thorium is a moderately soft, paramagnetic, bright silvery radioactive actinide metal. In the periodic table, it lies to the right of actinium, to the left of protactinium, and below cerium. Pure thorium is very ductile and, as normal for metals, can be cold-rolled, swaged, and drawn. At room temperature, thorium metal has a face-centred cubic crystal structure; it has two other forms, one at high temperature (over 1360 °C; body-centred cubic) and one at high pressure (around 100 GPa; body …
Isotopes
All but two elements up to bismuth (element 83) have an isotope that is practically stable for all purposes ("classically stable"), with the exceptions being technetium and promethium (elements 43 and 61). All elements from polonium (element 84) onward are measurably radioactive. Th is one of the two nuclides beyond bismuth (the other being U) that have half-lives measured in billions of …
Chemistry
A thorium atom has 90 electrons, of which four are valence electrons. Four atomic orbitals are theoretically available for the valence electrons to occupy: 5f, 6d, 7s, and 7p. Despite thorium's position in the f-block of the periodic table, it has an anomalous [Rn]6d 7s electron configuration in the ground state, as the 5f and 6d subshells in the early actinides are very close in energy, even more so t…
Occurrence
Th is a primordial nuclide, having existed in its current form for over ten billion years; it was formed during the r-process, which probably occurs in supernovae and neutron star mergers. These violent events scattered it across the galaxy. The letter "r" stands for "rapid neutron capture", and occurs in core-collapse supernovae, where heavy seed nuclei such as Fe rapidly capture neutrons, runni…
History
In 1815, the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius analysed an unusual sample of gadolinite from a copper mine in Falun, central Sweden. He noted impregnated traces of a white mineral, which he cautiously assumed to be an earth (oxide in modern chemical nomenclature) of an unknown element. Berzelius had already discovered two elements, cerium and selenium, but he had made a public mista…
Production
The low demand makes working mines for extraction of thorium alone not profitable, and it is almost always extracted with the rare earths, which themselves may be by-products of production of other minerals. The current reliance on monazite for production is due to thorium being largely produced as a by-product; other sources such as thorite contain more thorium and could easily be used for production if demand rose. Present knowledge of the distribution of thorium resources …
Modern applications
Non-radioactivity-related uses of thorium have been in decline since the 1950s due to environmental concerns largely stemming from the radioactivity of thorium and its decay products.
Most thorium applications use its dioxide (sometimes called "thoria" in the industry), rather than the metal. This compound has a melting point of 3300 °…