As a Nuclear Machinist's Mate on board a nuclear powered submarine, when I read Nuclear Ship Propulsion by Holmes Crouch I was naturally fascinated from the very first page. Nuclear power and Naval nuclear propulsion have been my life for the last 5 years, and since the U.S. Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program was founded by PWR guru Hyman Rickover, using any fuel other than Uranium seemed absolutely foreign to me when I first started researching thorium.
It wasn't until I accidentally stumbled upon a Google Tech Talks lecture by Kirk Sorensen on thorium that I actually started thinking about alternative fuels to uranium. Since that lecture, I've been hooked. Reading as much as I could about thorium (you can check out Energy from Thorium's large PDF collection of MSR research here), I managed to learn about the important need for thorium to play a more prominent role in electrical power generation than it currently is today.
Here is an excellent presentation by Dr. Sorensen on thorium power.
Another video I'd recommend is a TED presentation by Kirk Sorensen titled "Can Thorium Energy End Our Energy Crisis?"
After just finishing reading Richard Martin's newest book Super Fuel, I have to ask the question that many other thorium supporters have been asking for decades, Why has the nuclear industry been so late to the thorium power switch?
Kirk Sorensen, thorium supporter and founder of Flibe Energy, answers that question at a Google Tech Talk last year.
For more information on all things thorium, check out the fantastic blog Energy From Thorium.
