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It's not illegal to own a small amount of thorium metal and it can be obtained in certain processed forms – it used to be in gas lantern mantles for example – but you will require a license if the amounts are large enough or if you plan to make anything out of it.
Can you legally buy thorium?
Thorium is merely the breeding material – you cannot create a reactor using thorium alone. Possession of Thorium is regulated in the US as a "source material." Here's from 10CFR part 40.
How much does a thorium cost?
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.
Can you hold 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.
Why are we not using thorium?
Thorium cannot in itself power a reactor; unlike natural uranium, it does not contain enough fissile material to initiate a nuclear chain reaction. As a result it must first be bombarded with neutrons to produce the highly radioactive isotope uranium-233 – 'so these are really U-233 reactors,' says Karamoskos.
Can you legally have uranium?
Yet, the truth is, you can buy uranium ore from places like Amazon or Ebay, and you won't have to produce any special authorization to get it. The purpose of buying Uranium-238, the most common isotope of the element, is purely for research.
Is thorium man made?
Thorium (chemical symbol Th) is a naturally occurring radioactive metal found at trace levels in soil, rocks, water, plants and animals. Thorium is solid under normal conditions. There are natural and man-made forms of thorium, all of which are radioactive.
Do thorium reactors exist?
There are at least seven types of reactors that can use thorium as a nuclear fuel, five of which have entered into operation at some point. Several were abandoned not for technical reasons but because of a lack of interest or research funding (blame the Cold War again).
What does thorium look like?
It is silvery white but turns gray or black on exposure to air. It is about half as abundant as lead and is three times more abundant than uranium in Earth's crust. Thorium is commercially recovered from the mineral monazite and occurs also in other minerals such as thorite and thorianite.
How do you get 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.
