The world of Thorium

Thorium is a misunderstood metal.

People stay away from Thorium because it’s radioactive, and naturally assume that it’s not useful for anything other than as nuclear fuel.

But in fact, Thorium is almost like aluminum in its physical properties.

It is soft and can be easily bent. It is machinable — meaning that a lathe could make parts from it without effort.

It can be rolled into sheets as thin as 0.1 mm. It can be welded, even with other metals.

Altogether, you could easily make a cola can from Thorium.

In addition, it can be mixed with many other metals to form hundreds of binary alloys. The most famous of these is Th-Cr: an alloy of 98 % Thorium and 2 % Chromium.

Th-Cr has incredible tensile strength — twice that of 316 stainless steel.

But unlike stainless steel, Th-Cr is softer, machinable, rollable, cold workable, and can withstand a greater temperature range.

So what about the radioactivity?

Thorium has a half-life of 14.05 BILLION years. Meaning that it decays very very slowly.

It’s dangerous only in large concentrations such as in mines and factories.

Large radiation doses from Thorium lead to lung, pancreatic, or bone cancer.

[Follow me for your daily dose of Science]