Increasing world population,[9] depleting resources[10] and global warming have put severe constraints on the choices of power generation available today.
[11] Traditional fossil fuel based energy generation faces two-fold challenges in terms of depleting resources and need to keep greenhouse gas emissions in control.
[13] Hydropower use has reached a natural limit in many parts of the world, and the existing capacity is under stress due to climate change.
Thorium has been proposed as a clean, safe, proliferation resistant and sustainable source of energy which additionally is free from most of the issues associated with uranium.
[22] Despite all the favorable factors, and use in commercial reactors in the past,[23][24] interest in thorium diminished in the late 1980s due to various reasons.
TEA through its activities reaches out to scientists, engineers, government official, policymakers, and lawmakers to sensitize about the advantages of using thorium as a fuel.
TEA has emphasized the research and development done in the USA during the 1950s to 1970s period on thorium based reactor designs and fuel cycle options.
Of particular interest was the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) carried out at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the United States during 1964–1969.
TEA is particularly interested in restarting the homogeneous fuels research program and the commercialization of molten salt reactor[32] and the supply chain infrastructure to support it.
In this direction TEA generates a large quantity of its own media including, webcasts, podcasts, videos, pamphlets,[36] books and articles.
Thorium Energy Alliance has supported a dozen research projects at the Nanotechnology Lab at University of Missouri St Louis (UMSL), which is located in an Economic Opportunity Zone.
Thorium Energy Alliance has worked with Rare Earth organizations and the critical minerals institute (CMI) to solve the critical materials issues in the United States and the Western world by providing thorium policy guidance with the goal to allow a new domestic Rare Earth Metals industry to start.
[38] TEA organizes regular annual conferences since 2009, where scientific sessions and cross-cutting energy and fuel management discussions bring together a cross-section of interested domain experts.