The mineral miracle

  Nuclear power has garnered a bad reputation, particularly after the Fukushima disaster in 2011 devastated Japan. Meltdowns at the Three Mile Island power plant in the United States in 1979, and at Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986, among others, helped tinge talk of uranium-based power generation with the hint of impending catastrophe.     But what if there was a safer, more efficient alternative? At the TEDxBeirut conference in November, which consisted of a series of innovative and thought-provoking presentations, Salim Zwein argued that there is and its name is thorium.  “Thorium is an element that you find virtually everywhere. In every cubic meter of soil you have one gram of thorium,” said the Lebanese quality-control consultant and engineer in his presentation. He added that the metal is so energy-concentrated that it would only take 6,600 tons to meet global energy needs annually. The World Nuclear Association estimates that there