Letters: Those thorium sands again

The United States and Russia had their weapons and power programmes intricately linked

Apropos the lead editorial, “Nuclear doubts” (May 24), one has been hearing of the potential bonanza that awaits India through its vast deposits of thorium sands for ever so long. No less a personage than prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru made frequent references in the 1950s to the Kerala sands as possible tickets to India’s rapid advancement. Yet nearly 70 years on, there is no thorium-based nuclear plant in sight, despite some encouraging noises emanating frequently from the atomic energy establishment.

There could be two principal reasons for this. First, the two major nuclear weapons states, the United States and Russia, had