title: Dennis Miller

text: In 2003, he made a guest appearance on the Cartoon Network Adult Swim show "Space Ghost Coast to Coast".


title: Dennis Miller

text: In May 2017, Miller hosted a month-long series of monster movies on Turner Classic Movies. He appeared in wraparounds on the channel, discussing such films as "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "The Deadly Mantis".


title: Dennis Miller

text: He has appeared in various television commercials, serving as a spokesman for M&M's candies, 10-10-220 long-distance service, Miller beer, and the Internet service provider NetZero. About these activities he has remarked: "Everybody has to sell out at some point to make a living. I'm a family man. I sold out to make an M&M commercial. They offer incredible amounts of money, and I say, 'What can I do to sell one more piece of candy for you? Do you want me to hug the M&M?'" Miller also did a short B2B commercial for Blockbuster/IBM partnership company, New Leaf Entertainment. On February 27, 2012, Miller guest starred on "Hawaii 5-0" in the episode "Lekio," alongside guest star James Caan.


title: Dennis Miller

text: On September 21, 2006, Miller returned to Fox News with a two-and-a-half-minute commentary on illegal immigration during his "Real Free Speech" segment on "Hannity & Colmes". He appeared on 13 of the 17 aired episodes of the comedy show "The 1/2 Hour News Hour". He had a weekly segment called "Miller Time" on "The O'Reilly Factor", and has also appeared on "Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld" under the pseudonym "Mansquito," a name Miller has pledged to use on future appearances on the network.


title: Dennis Miller

text: For one month, Miller hosted "Amne$ia" for NBC. The show was a replacement program commissioned during the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike and was canceled once the strike was resolved and scripted programming returned to the network.


title: Dennis Miller

text: In November 2007, Versus tapped Miller to host "Sports Unfiltered", a weekly one-hour sports talk show. It was canceled after eight episodes.


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller hosted "Dennis Miller + One", on RT America, a channel funded by the Russian government, from March 9, 2020, until early 2022. The half-hour program was produced by Ora TV and aired twice weekly, featuring interviews with sports and entertainment celebrities. In line with the name of the show, Miller interviewed a single guest for the entire half hour. The show replaced "Larry King Now", on which Miller had been a frequent guest host until King's death in February 2021. In February 2022, Miller quit the show due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, shortly before RT withdrew from the American market in March.


title: Dennis Miller

text: In January 2007, Miller signed a deal with Westwood One (later acquired by Dial Global, which rebranded itself as Westwood One) to launch "The Dennis Miller Show", a weekday three-hour talk radio program. The program debuted on March 26, 2007, and ran through February 27, 2015. The show's website provided a live stream of the broadcast. The site also made archives of all shows available in MP3 format. The live feed was free, but a subscription to the Dennis Miller Zone (DMZ) was required in order to access archived broadcasts. The show aired on 250+ stations, airing on tape delay on some of those stations between 6–9 pm ET and 9 pm-12 am ET. Salem stations also aired a "best of" Miller show on Saturdays. His on-air sidekick "Salman" (David S. Weiss) also wrote for "Dennis Miller Live". His producer Christian Bladt previously appeared on-camera as dozens of different characters during the "Daily Rorschach" segment on his CNBC television show.


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller's program included serious discussions about American culture, current events, politics, and their place in the global context. The show was infused with Miller's sarcasm, which is often characterized by obscure pop culture references. For example, each hour of the show opened with an arcane reference. The first hour's opening phrase was a combination of dialogue from the film "Thank You for Smoking" and a U.S. space program slogan coined by Alan Shepard: "What's up, Hiroshi? Let's light this candle!" Miller's other opening phrases for his second and third hours respectively were "Come to me my babies, let me quell your pain", (Powers Boothe as Jim Jones in "") and "ABC – Always be closing if you want the knife set" (from "Glengarry Glen Ross").


title: Dennis Miller

text: Most shows featured three guests (one per hour), mostly from the world of politics and entertainment, as well as calls from listeners. Guests included fellow comedians and "SNL" alumni (such as Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz), pundits and authors such as Ann Coulter, Aaron Klein and Mark Steyn (while the show's guest list leaned right of center, there were several liberals who appeared on the show, such as Dennis Kucinich and Alan Dershowitz), Presidential candidates, several sports commentators, and some "regulars" like columnists and conservatives Debra Saunders, Charles Krauthammer, Victor Davis Hanson, John Bolton, Bill Kristol, and Jerome Corsi along with entertainers such as singer Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits and actor Orson Bean. Miller generally took calls every hour, and in addition to comments about culture and politics, Miller encouraged humorous callers and often commented on their comedic delivery. A segment on Fridays was set aside for "Dennis Ex Machina", his term for a segment without a guest, where he allowed phone calls on any topic.


title: Dennis Miller

text: In a 2007 interview Miller said he felt that his radio show of all his work best represented his actual unvarnished views, saying "This time, if I'm fired, they will be firing the real Dennis Miller."


title: Dennis Miller

text: According to "Talkers Magazine", as of spring 2011, Miller's show had an estimated 2,250,000 weekly listeners. Miller and Dial Global signed an agreement in early 2012 to continue his show for three years. Miller ended the radio show after his contract expired on March 27, 2015.


title: Dennis Miller

text: Eventually Dennis joined the podcasting world with "The Dennis Miller Option" which was a sort of continuation of his old radio show, albeit only for an hour weekly. It featured interviews with some of the same guests from the radio days, emails from listeners, and the usual Miller rants. He decided to retire from the show after the Elections in 2020 as he felt that the political climate had become too divisive.


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller periodically performs stand-up at the Orleans Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. In recent appearances, he has done a mix of his old and new material, with some political jokes as well.


title: Dennis Miller

text: He has authored four books based on his stand-up comedy and television monologues: "The Rants" (1996), "Ranting Again" (1999), "I Rant, Therefore I Am" (2000), and "The Rant Zone" (2001).


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller has appeared in several films, in both comedic and non-comedic roles. His movie credits include "Madhouse", "Disclosure", "The Net", "Never Talk to Strangers", "Bordello of Blood", "What Happens in Vegas" and "Murder at 1600". He played the Howard Stern-like talk-radio host Zander Kelly in "Joe Dirt" (2001) and appeared as himself in "Thank You for Smoking" (2006).


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller has a laid-back style (for example, calling people "babe" or "cat") and an acerbic, brooding sense of humor. His specialty is the rant, which typically begin with "Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but..." and end with "...of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong."


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller listed his comedic influences for "The New York Times" as including "Jonathan Miller, Richard Pryor, Richard Belzer and Mr. [Jay] Leno." When the "Times" asked him about the comedians Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, to whom he is often compared, Miller stated that he had been impressed with transcripts of Sahl's early work but that as Sahl's career continued he became too tied to the Kennedy family and became a "savage name-dropper," which diminished him in Miller's eyes, and served as an example for him to avoid. Miller had no respect for Bruce, telling the "Times", "Lenny was a heroin addict, and I couldn't care less about heroin addicts. Once I hear a guy is a heroin addict, and they tell me he's a genius, I think, 'Really?' I'm not trying to be judgmental. But anybody whose last vision is of a tile pattern on a bathroom floor, I don't know what kind of genius they are."


title: Dennis Miller

text: Describing his career Miller stated, "It's all been built on arcane references, precision of language, and a reasonably imperturbable nature on TV. The basics are there, but I've been getting paid, making a living and having fun with it for next to 25 years, and you know that blows my mind that I've stuck with it. That's my favorite part of showbiz, hangin' in, knowing that something good is coming along. ... When I was starting, I thought I'd have to have a sword-in-the-stone moment of inspiration where I'd have to lay around for it to be visited on me. "SNL" was just a machine, and if you screwed two or three 'Updates' up, guess what, they have someone new and ready to go. So I learned how to pick up any newspaper and have five usable jokes in five minutes. "I don't ever wanna get self-important. I'm a comedian, and I want everyone in my life to know it. The stream-of-consciousness style is my monkey trick. I sit there, I watch stuff, and cultural references bump into my head. I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid."


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller has referred to his casual stage-style as "quasi-Dean Martin insouciance." When asked if he has accepted others' title of him as "the 'intelligent' comedian," he replied, "The smartest thing I ever did was not buying into the fact that people thought I was smart. I was telling jokes about where I named the robot maid for The Jetsons. It's just a joke. I just did jokes. I never had my head up my ass that I mattered. I'm trying to get laughs. ... I'm OK [intelligence-wise]. I remember I had a writer once who told me—and we disagreed about everything, so I know he didn't think I was smart—but he said, 'I'll give you this. You have a deep drawer and a nice retrieval system.' I always thought that was a good appraisal of whatever limited comedy gift I had. I have a pretty good memory for pop arcana and a pretty quick retrieval system."


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller married Carolyn "Ali" Espley, a former model from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on April 24, 1988. Espley is best known as the girl in Kajagoogoo's 1983 "Too Shy" music video. The couple live in Santa Barbara, California, and have two sons, born 1990 and 1993.


title: Dennis Miller

text: Although in his early years of fame he was perceived to be a staunch liberal and an outspoken critic of Republicans, in recent years, Miller has become known for his neoconservative political opinions.


title: Dennis Miller

text: He was a regular political commentator on Fox News's "The O'Reilly Factor" in a segment called "Miller Time", and previously appeared on the network's "Hannity & Colmes" in a segment called "Real Free Speech."


title: Dennis Miller

text: When asked if his political outlook was a result of early influence by his parents, Miller told a reporter "I didn't know my dad—he moved out early. And my mom's politics were kind of hardscrabble. She didn't think about Democrats or Republicans. She thought about who made sense. I've been both in my life. Somebody can say they don't understand why somebody drifts. But I've always found people who drift interesting, 'cause it shows me the game's not stagnant in their own head. They're thinking."


title: Dennis Miller

text: During the late 1980s and continuing through the 1990s, Miller was generally perceived as a cynic on the left, eager to bash conservative Republicans.


title: Dennis Miller

text: The perception that Miller was a member of the political left did not change much, even when Miller told "USA Today" in 1995: "I might be profane and opinionated, but underneath all that are some pretty conservative feelings. On most issues, between Clinton and Newt Gingrich, I'd choose Newt in a second, even though he is a bit too exclusionary." Miller also declared himself a "conservative libertarian" in a 1996 "Playboy" interview.


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller later told "American Enterprise" that one of the reasons he became more conservative was due to liberal critiques of Mayor Rudy Giuliani's approach to fighting crime in New York City, which began around 1994. "When I kept hearing liberals equating Giuliani with Hitler—that's when I really left the reservation. Even before 9/11, I'd travel to New York and say, 'Wow, this city certainly seems to be running better. Giuliani is the kind of leader I admire. When it's five below zero and you arrest somebody to get him inside off the street—that's not something Hitler would do. It made me realize that I was with the wrong group if that's what Hitler looked like to them."


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller's ideology changed significantly in the years following the September 11, 2001, attacks. He called the attack "the biggest tragedy in the history of this country," and that it not only temporarily halted his comedy but made it difficult to talk. "I couldn't put together a sentence for two weeks, much less something pithy."


title: Dennis Miller

text: His convictions led him to become one of the few Hollywood celebrities backing George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Miller has said that one of the defining moments, in addition to 9/11, for his move from the Democratic to the Republican Party was watching a 2004 primary debate between the nine Democrats then contending for their party's nomination. "I haven't seen a starting nine like that since the '62 Mets," he remarked.


title: Dennis Miller

text: In a 2007 interview with Bill O'Reilly, Miller spoke on the subject of his political outlook. "Well, listen. I must say that I never considered myself a secular progressive. ... I didn't consider myself that then, and I don't consider myself to be Curtis LeMay now. I have always thought of myself as a pragmatist. And I began to see a degree of certitude on the left that I found unsettling. I don't like lockstep, even if it's lockstep about being open-minded. And after 9/11, I remember thinking we might have to get into some preemptive measures here. And that seemed to put me—I don't know—off to the kids' table." He said that his more open conservatism may have cost him some passing acquaintances, but it has not affected "my dear friends. I certainly hope our friendship runs deeper than that. I still have some ultra-liberal friends."


title: Dennis Miller

text: "Slate" commentator Dennis Cass describes Miller as having changed from a "left-leaning, Dada-ist wisenheimer" to a "tell-it-like-it-is, right-wing blowhard." The perceived change did not surprise former "Saturday Night Live" colleague and former Democratic Party Senator Al Franken: "People have said to me, 'What happened to Dennis?' Nothing happened to Dennis. He's the same Dennis. He's always had a conservative streak on certain issues." In a different interview Franken stated, "Dennis was always sort of conservative on certain kinds of issues. I am not quite sure why he decided to become a comedian with a dog in the fight, but as a comedian with a dog in the fight I sympathize with him."


title: Dennis Miller

text: While not at all shy about expressing his conservative views on topics such as taxes and foreign policy, Miller is quick to point out that he is still quite liberal on many social issues, including abortion and gay marriage. During a 2004 interview, Miller said "I've always been a pragmatist. If two gay guys want to get married, it's none of my business. I could care less [sic]. More power to them. I'm happy when people fall in love. But if some idiot foreign terrorist wants to blow up their wedding to make a political statement, I would rather kill him before he can do it, or have my country kill him before he can do it, instead of having him do it and punishing him after the fact. If that makes me a right-wing fanatic, I will bask in that assignation. ... I think abortion's wrong, but it's none of my business to tell somebody what's wrong. So I'm pro-choice. I want to keep my nose out of other people's personal business. I guess I fall into conservative when it comes to protecting the United States in a world where a lot of people hate the United States. ... [After 9/11] everybody should be in the protection business now. I can't imagine anybody not saying that. Well, I guess on the farthest end of the left they'd say, 'That's our fault.' And on the middle end they'd say, 'Well, there's another way to deal with it other than flat-out protecting ourselves.' I just don't believe that. People say we're the ones who make them hate us because of what we do. That's garbage to me. I think they're nuts. And you've got to protect yourself from nuts."


title: Dennis Miller

text: Along these same lines, Miller is open about his religious views, saying "I'm not a Christian, but I believe in God. Whether or not someone is pro-choice is none of my business. That's God's business. It's in His job description, not mine."


title: Dennis Miller

text: During an interview on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", he said that he did not believe in global warming.


title: Dennis Miller

text: In a radio interview with Penn Jillette on September 22, 2006, Miller explained his libertarianism, saying, "...[a libertarian is] what I am, I'll be honest with you. I'm for gay marriage. I don't believe in abortion but I'm pro-choice 'cause it's none of my business. Pretty much anything goes with me if you're not infringing yourself on other people, but I'll tell ya, 9/11 changed me... You gotta go around and explain it to people and they think you're a turncoat."


title: Dennis Miller

text: In a 2012 interview, Miller showed no concern over whether his political stance had made him less popular or robbed him of the credit of popularizing comedic rants, saying, "I'm a 58-year-old man and I'm happy where I'm at. I don't think about any of that. I go on "O'Reilly" once a week, I do my radio show and I go on the road about 20 dates a year. I've winnowed my crowd down to a select few who can support me. If you're 58 and you're still worrying about whether you're popular, what are you, in eighth grade? I must have started in earnest when I was 25 so I'm working on a quarter century here. I still talk and they give me green rectangles."


title: Dennis Miller

text: An indication of Miller's political change can be seen in his view of President George W. Bush. Miller had previously joked about George W. Bush's intelligence in a July 31, 2000 interview about joining "Monday Night Football", a "Los Angeles Times" reporter noted, "He shifted from Jim Brown to George W. Bush: 'God, the man thinks Croatia is the show that's on after "Moesha".'" In another incident he joked, "Bush can't walk and fart at the same time." In January 2001 on his HBO series, Miller joked, "Condoleezza Rice has often been described as W's 'foreign policy tutor.' Oh, yeah, I love the sound of that. It's nice to know we're signing our nuclear arsenal over to a man who needs after-school help."


title: Dennis Miller

text: After 9/11, Miller's opinion had altered dramatically. In 2003 Miller told an interviewer that he was impressed by Bush for pursuing "the liquidation of terrorism," even though "that's not gonna be finished in his lifetime... But to take the first step? Ballsy." He felt it was likely that "the secular state of Iraq and Islamic fundamentalists cohabitate," as "they both think we're Satan." He concluded with, "I will say this, I feel more politically engaged than I've ever felt in my life because I do think we live in dangerous times, and anybody who looks at the world and says this is the time to be a wuss—I can't buy that anymore." Miller showed his commitment to Bush by speaking at the President's fund-raisers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. During this time, he jokingly referred to himself as "a Rat Pack of one for the president in Hollywood.""Los Angeles Times" noted that he was "raising his political profile" at this time, and that he "spoke out passionately in favor of the war in Iraq. He has made frequent appearances on conservative talk radio; he does weekly political commentary for "Hannity & Colmes", a Fox News Channel talk show."


title: Dennis Miller

text: In 2003, "The Weekly Standard" called Miller "the loudest pro-Bush/pro-war voice in Hollywood", and quoted his comment on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" from February of that year. Miller advocated invading Iraq, and vented his displeasure at France's lack of support for the idea, saying, "I say we invade Iraq and then invade Chirac. You run a pipe—you run a pipe from the oil field right over this Eiffel Tower, shoot it up and have the world's biggest oil derrick. ... Listen, I would call the French scum bags, but that, of course, would be a disservice to bags filled with scum." That same year, "The National Review" wrote, "Conservatives ... have welcomed and even cheered the comedian's unabashed patriotism and endorsement of President Bush's foreign—and, in certain cases, domestic—policy." They noted that "During appearances on "The Tonight Show", he has also advocated profiling at airports and oil-drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."


title: Dennis Miller

text: On March 23, 2003 Michael Moore delivered an antiwar speech at the Academy Awards while accepting an Oscar for "Bowling for Columbine". The speech in part accused the Bush administration of misleading the public in order to go into war, criticized the government's claims that Americans could secure their homes from biological, chemical or radiological attack by use of plastic sheeting and duct tape, and held the color alerts of the Homeland Security Advisory System as suspect. Moore stated, "We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you." In response, Miller stated that when "we say that we love it [the USA] ... he's going to tell us what naive sheep we are and that he's the true patriot because he hates it and he sees all the problems in it. Michael Moore simultaneously represents everything I detest in a human being and everything I feel obligated to defend in an American. Quite simply, it is that stupid moron's right to be that utterly, completely wrong."


title: Dennis Miller

text: In May 2003, Miller was invited by "The Wall Street Journal" to write an opinion piece in response to Norman Mailer's anti-war commentary in the London "Times" that had appeared earlier in the month, and which had claimed, "With their dominance in sport, at work and at home eroded, Bush thought white American men needed to know they were still good at something. That's where Iraq came in..." Miller responded, "You know something, the only 'race' that really occurred to me during the war was our Army's sprint to Baghdad. ... And as Mr. Mailer's prostate gradually supplants his ego as the largest gland in his body, he's going to have to realize, as is the case with all young lions who inevitably morph into Bert Lahr, that his alleged profundities are now being perceived as the early predictors of dementia."


title: Dennis Miller

text: On Friday, June 27, 2003, President Bush made a 30-minute appearance at a $2,000-a-plate fundraiser luncheon for his re-election campaign at Burlingame, California, netting $1.6 million. Miller made an appearance, and was invited to ride in the Presidential limousine and fly on Air Force One so he could host the President's second fundraiser that day, a dinner at Los Angeles, where he appeared with Johnny Mathis and Kelsey Grammer. He mocked Democratic Governor of Vermont Howard Dean, who opposed the Iraq War and had entered the race days before, saying, "He can roll up his sleeves all he wants at public events, but as long as we see that heart tattoo with Neville Chamberlain's name on his right forearm, he's never going anywhere." Bush made a 35-minute speech at the LA fundraiser before leaving for Crawford, Texas, and the campaign made an additional $3.5 million. That night Miller made a (videotaped) debut appearance on Fox New's "Hannity & Colmes".


title: Dennis Miller

text: In October 2003, Miller's interview with "The American Enterprise" was published where he praised Bush, saying, "He's much smarter than his enemies think he is. I think he's a genius. People whine about him getting into Yale—the way I see it, if your old man buys a building you should get into Yale! But I think he could have gotten into Yale on his own; he's a very smart man. ... The fact that midway through his life he realized he was drinking too much and screwing up and stopped it—that's more impressive than what college he attended. What he did is a fine accomplishment, and I think it's putting him in touch with his God. ... In this messed up world, I like seeing my President pray. I don't think a person can get answers out of books anymore. This is an infinitely complex world, and at some point one has to have faith in one's religion. I find it endearing that President Bush prays to God and that he's not an agnostic or an atheist. I'm glad there's someone higher that he has to answer to."


title: Dennis Miller

text: In the AE interview, Miller was asked about the outrage and public destruction of their music CDs that occurred as a response to the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines , when she said, "We're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas." Miller stated, "The Dixie Chicks got exactly what they deserved. In a time of war, to go on foreign soil [London, England] and decry your President should probably cause a hue and cry. When it first happened, I thought, "I'm never going to buy another one of their albums." And then I thought, "You know what, I've never bought one of their albums—I don't like their music."


title: Dennis Miller

text: In 2004, while Miller prepared to host his CNBC program, he told The Associate Press that his show was not going to do any jokes about George W. Bush, explaining, "I like him. I'm going to give him a pass. I take care of my friends." Miller explained further in a 2008 interview: "I thought it was so integral that he got re-elected that I laid off him for awhile. There's something to be said for standing up in front of a roomful of press and saying I'm not going to do Bush jokes. At least it was honest, and I could see they were gobsmacked. There's jokes I get presented with everyday that I'll take out because they're ripping on people I know. Guess what, if they're my friend, I pull it out. I'm not interested in hurting people, and it's not just because of 9/11."


title: Dennis Miller

text: Reflecting on his thoughts near the end of Bush's second term in 2007, Miller still had good words for Bush. "After 9/11 it was a different world. One where crazies strap a bomb to their kids in the name of religion. Bush and Giuliani were fearless leaders during the national crisis. Thank God Bush chose to stay on the offense."


title: Dennis Miller

text: In 2003, Rob Stutzman and other members of the leadership for the Californian Republican party, after seeing the political success of Arnold Schwarzenegger, approached Miller in an effort to draft him to challenge Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer. Miller had supported Schwarzenegger's candidacy, even acting as its post-debate spokesperson after the Sacramento gubernatorial debate on September 24, 2003. He went on to speak at a Schwarzenegger rally that same night. It was there that he confirmed his now famous love of eggs and stated, "Let the world know, I am mad about eggs!"


title: Dennis Miller

text: When asked about the possibility of facing a Miller candidacy, Boxer spokesman Roy Behr dismissed his odds: "The Republican Party has gone through a desperate search to find someone who is remotely credible—they've looked at everybody and everything, and they couldn't find anybody, so they're looking at bringing in the circus. I think the public has always registered how they feel about Dennis Miller. And that's why he got booted off "Monday Night Football"."


title: Dennis Miller

text: "The Weekly Standard"'s Bill Whalen saw that, with the ascent of Schwarzenegger, other celebrities were considering political careers (such as Republican Kelsey Grammer). Examining Miller's chances for the Senate seat the "Standard" pointed out that it was "hard to imagine a candidate quicker on the draw or more withering in a debate." But the piece went on to note that other Republican celebrities made the transition to elected politician (Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono), because they "embodied optimism." Miller, the "Standard" proclaimed, was seen in contrast as "both terribly erudite... and decidedly yuppie (the comedian endorses DirecTV and Amstel Light...) Not to mention a little too edgy for some Republicans." The "Standard" noted that he had been booed by some in the Republican audience during his Los Angeles fund-raiser for President Bush when he said Democratic "West Virginia senator Robert Byrd 'must be burning the cross at both ends'." Miller had responded "'Well, he was in the Klan. Boo me, but he was in the Klan.'" The "Standard" said "he'd be an HBO politician trying to play to a T.G.I. Friday's electorate."


title: Dennis Miller

text: When asked about Miller's chances, Martin Kaplan, director of USC's Norman Lear Center theorized that Miller might face a tough primary battle to win the Republican nomination from other members of the party that had actual political experience. He told a reporter that while Miller did have good name recognition, unlike Schwarzenegger he did not have the ability to "chill the enthusiasm of other Republicans from getting into the race."


title: Dennis Miller

text: By November 2003, "The New York Times" did a piece on the Republican opposition to Boxer and reported that "Mr. Miller was never serious about the idea, Republican officials who spoke with him say. ... 'Dennis has never contacted us,' said George M. Sundheim III, chairman of the state Republican Party". The "Times" pointed out that while the Republican Party was talking about drafting him, Miller "had signed a multiyear contract with CNBC as a political talk show host."


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller, invoking his pleasant home life in Santa Barbara with his wife and two children, later told "The New York Times", "They inquired about my availability to run against Barbara Boxer, but I'm not at the point where I would consider it." He expanded on the subject in an interview with "Time" magazine saying he had declined the draft offer because "At some point that involves moving to Washington, D.C., sitting in a room all day with a moron like Barbara Boxer. I'm just not interested. I like open minds, and I think in Washington right now, we might as well start painting those people red and blue." He told the Associated Press, "Maybe when I get older I would think about it, just as a lark, view it as its own form of a TV show. I think it would be fun to get in there and turn out the whole process—just refuse to play, and don't budge. Get rid of me if you want, but I'm just going to do what I want."


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller did not appear on the 2015 show for the 40th anniversary of "Saturday Night Live", and rumors spread that he and fellow alum Victoria Jackson had not been invited due to their conservative political activism. He took to Twitter to dispel the claims, saying Lorne Michaels was classy, well-mannered and invited everyone, but he declined. He later told an interviewer that he would have loved to be there, but could not due to family commitments.


title: Dennis Miller

text: In 1988, Miller voted for George H. W. Bush, a fact he brought up in 1992 as proof that he was "essentially conservative."


title: Dennis Miller

text: In 1992, Miller, who had endorsed the candidacy of Jerry Brown during the Democratic primaries, moved his support to Independent candidate Ross Perot. Miller volunteered for Ross Perot's candidacy at his San Fernando Valley campaign office. Miller told a reporter, "I don't know that you need to know that much about him. He's an outsider, and the two-party system is going to hell." Miller stated that he had become "really grossed out by the system after observing the behavior of politicians in both parties during the confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas.


title: Dennis Miller

text: When Ross Perot dropped out of the Presidential race on July 16, 1992, saying he feared a conspiracy against his family, many began to joke about his sanity. On July 30, 1995, Miller told a reporter, "I'd vote for him [Perot] tomorrow. I don't think he's a genius but I love the thought of him at State Dinners mistaking the Queen of Denmark for Kaye Ballard. People say to me, 'You wouldn't want Ross Perot with his finger on the button.' But believe me, they would never let Ross Perot near the real button. They would rig up a stunt button for him, and if he ever pressed it, it would squirt him in the face with milk or something."


title: Dennis Miller

text: In 1995, considering the candidates for president, Miller told a reporter, "I don't respect Bill Clinton. He's the same as [George H. W.] Bush or [Bob] Dole. Clinton's my age, and I know how full of shit I am. So I look at him and think, 'I know you. You're the guy who used to tap the keg.'" He continued to mock Clinton when he won the Presidency, and later admitted to voting for Bob Dole in the 1996 election (despite Perot being on the ballot in every state).


title: Dennis Miller

text: On February 21, 2007, while appearing as a guest on "The O'Reilly Factor", and again on May 25, 2007, while appearing as a guest on "The Tonight Show", Miller stated that he initially supported Rudy Giuliani for president in 2008. After Giuliani's departure from the race he redirected his support to John McCain. Miller said that he gave Barack Obama six to eight months before forming an opinion on him, because he saw that his election was inspiring to black youth and hoped it would be healing. He came to the conclusion that Obama was mostly hype, and in actuality, "He's an inept civil servant who stinks."


title: Dennis Miller

text: Miller endorsed Herman Cain in the 2012 Republican primary, but later dropped his support, saying of Cain, "He can't win!" He later campaigned for Mitt Romney in the general election. After the Presidential election of 2012, Miller appeared on Fox News and said that under Obama, the US is on the road to the "European model".


title: Dennis Miller

text: In 2016, Miller did not endorse any particular Republican primary candidate. By December 16, 2015, he told Bill O'Reilly, "I would vote for any of them over Hillary, except for Lindsey Graham who is like a varicose Charlie Crist. I get the feeling he's out the door when he gets a chance. And Pataki, who I shared an elevator with once and he is a creepy, creepy drip. But other than that I would vote for any of those people over Hillary." Miller became a strong supporter of Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. general election, addressing a tweet to Republicans who were uncertain after Trump wrapped up the nomination: "Don't kid yourself. At this point, any vote for anyone that is not Donald Trump is a vote for Hillary Clinton. Also, both Presidential boxes left blank is a vote for Hillary Clinton because, as mindless as Liberals can be, even they don't enter into suicide pacts with that petulant, whiny part of themselves. If that is your wont, fine... do it! But don't bullshit yourself. You're electing Hillary Clinton because you want to elect Hillary Clinton."


title: Thorium

text: Thorium is a weakly radioactive metallic chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is silvery and tarnishes black when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft and malleable and has a high melting point. Thorium is an electropositive actinide whose chemistry is dominated by the +4 oxidation state; it is quite reactive and can ignite in air when finely divided.


title: Thorium

text: All known thorium isotopes are unstable. The most stable isotope, Th, has a half-life of 14.05 billion years, or about the age of the universe; it decays very slowly via alpha decay, starting a decay chain named the thorium series that ends at stable Pb. On Earth, thorium and uranium are the only significantly radioactive elements that still occur naturally in large quantities as primordial elements. Thorium is estimated to be over three times as abundant as uranium in the Earth's crust, and is chiefly refined from monazite sands as a by-product of extracting rare-earth metals.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium was discovered in 1828 by the Norwegian amateur mineralogist Morten Thrane Esmark and identified by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. Its first applications were developed in the late 19th century. Thorium's radioactivity was widely acknowledged during the first decades of the 20th century. In the second half of the century, thorium was replaced in many uses due to concerns about its radioactivity.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium is still being used as an alloying element in TIG welding electrodes but is slowly being replaced in the field with different compositions. It was also material in high-end optics and scientific instrumentation, used in some broadcast vacuum tubes, and as the light source in gas mantles, but these uses have become marginal. It has been suggested as a replacement for uranium as nuclear fuel in nuclear reactors, and several thorium reactors have been built. Thorium is also used in strengthening magnesium, coating tungsten wire in electrical equipment, controlling the grain size of tungsten in electric lamps, high-temperature crucibles, and glasses including camera and scientific instrument lenses. Other uses for thorium include heat-resistant ceramics, aircraft engines, and in light bulbs. Ocean science has utilised Pa/Th isotope ratios to understand the ancient ocean.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium is a moderately soft, paramagnetic, bright silvery radioactive actinide metal. In the periodic table, it lies to the right of actinium, to the left of protactinium, and below cerium. Pure thorium is very ductile and, as normal for metals, can be cold-rolled, swaged, and drawn. At room temperature, thorium metal has a face-centred cubic crystal structure; it has two other forms, one at high temperature (over 1360 °C; body-centred cubic) and one at high pressure (around 100 GPa; body-centred tetragonal).


title: Thorium

text: Thorium metal has a bulk modulus (a measure of resistance to compression of a material) of 54 GPa, about the same as tin's (58.2 GPa). Aluminium's is 75.2 GPa; copper's 137.8 GPa; and mild steel's is 160–169 GPa. Thorium is about as hard as soft steel, so when heated it can be rolled into sheets and pulled into wire.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium is nearly half as dense as uranium and plutonium and is harder than both. It becomes superconductive below 1.4 K. Thorium's melting point of 1750 °C is above both those of actinium (1227 °C) and protactinium (1568 °C). At the start of period 7, from francium to thorium, the melting points of the elements increase (as in other periods), because the number of delocalised electrons each atom contributes increases from one in francium to four in thorium, leading to greater attraction between these electrons and the metal ions as their charge increases from one to four. After thorium, there is a new downward trend in melting points from thorium to plutonium, where the number of f electrons increases from about 0.4 to about 6: this trend is due to the increasing hybridisation of the 5f and 6d orbitals and the formation of directional bonds resulting in more complex crystal structures and weakened metallic bonding. (The f-electron count for thorium metal is a non-integer due to a 5f–6d overlap.) Among the actinides up to californium, which can be studied in at least milligram quantities, thorium has the highest melting and boiling points and second-lowest density; only actinium is lighter. Thorium's boiling point of 4788 °C is the fifth-highest among all the elements with known boiling points.


title: Thorium

text: The properties of thorium vary widely depending on the degree of impurities in the sample. The major impurity is usually thorium dioxide ); even the purest thorium specimens usually contain about a tenth of a percent of the dioxide. Experimental measurements of its density give values between 11.5 and 11.66 g/cm: these are slightly lower than the theoretically expected value of 11.7 g/cm calculated from thorium's lattice parameters, perhaps due to microscopic voids forming in the metal when it is cast. These values lie between those of its neighbours actinium (10.1 g/cm) and protactinium (15.4 g/cm), part of a trend across the early actinides.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium can form alloys with many other metals. Addition of small proportions of thorium improves the mechanical strength of magnesium, and thorium-aluminum alloys have been considered as a way to store thorium in proposed future thorium nuclear reactors. Thorium forms eutectic mixtures with chromium and uranium, and it is completely miscible in both solid and liquid states with its lighter congener cerium.


title: Thorium

text: All but two elements up to bismuth (element 83) have an isotope that is practically stable for all purposes ("classically stable"), with the exceptions being technetium and promethium (elements 43 and 61). All elements from polonium (element 84) onward are measurably radioactive. Th is one of the two nuclides beyond bismuth (the other being U) that have half-lives measured in billions of years; its half-life is 14.05 billion years, about three times the age of the earth, and slightly longer than the age of the universe. Four-fifths of the thorium present at Earth's formation has survived to the present. Th is the only isotope of thorium occurring in quantity in nature. Its stability is attributed to its closed nuclear subshell with 142 neutrons. Thorium has a characteristic terrestrial isotopic composition, with atomic weight 232.0377(4). It is one of only four radioactive elements (along with bismuth, protactinium and uranium) that occur in large enough quantities on Earth for a standard atomic weight to be determined.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium nuclei are susceptible to alpha decay because the strong nuclear force cannot overcome the electromagnetic repulsion between their protons. The alpha decay of Th initiates the 4"n" decay chain which includes isotopes with a mass number divisible by 4 (hence the name; it is also called the thorium series after its progenitor). This chain of consecutive alpha and beta decays begins with the decay of Th to Ra and terminates at Pb. Any sample of thorium or its compounds contains traces of these daughters, which are isotopes of thallium, lead, bismuth, polonium, radon, radium, and actinium. Natural thorium samples can be chemically purified to extract useful daughter nuclides, such as Pb, which is used in nuclear medicine for cancer therapy. Th (alpha emitter with an 18.68 days half-life) can also be used in cancer treatments such as targeted alpha therapies. Th also very occasionally undergoes spontaneous fission rather than alpha decay, and has left evidence of doing so in its minerals (as trapped xenon gas formed as a fission product), but the partial half-life of this process is very large at over 10 years and alpha decay predominates.


title: Thorium

text: In total, 32 radioisotopes have been characterised, which range in mass number from 207 to 238. After Th, the most stable of them (with respective half-lives) are Th (75,380 years), Th (7,340 years), Th (1.92 years), Th (24.10 days), and Th (18.68 days). All of these isotopes occur in nature as trace radioisotopes due to their presence in the decay chains of Th, U, U, and Np: the last of these is long extinct in nature due to its short half-life (2.14 million years), but is continually produced in minute traces from neutron capture in uranium ores. All of the remaining thorium isotopes have half-lives that are less than thirty days and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than ten minutes.


title: Thorium

text: In deep seawaters the isotope Th makes up to 0.04% of natural thorium. This is because its parent U is soluble in water, but Th is insoluble and precipitates into the sediment. Uranium ores with low thorium concentrations can be purified to produce gram-sized thorium samples of which over a quarter is the Th isotope, since Th is one of the daughters of U. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) reclassified thorium as a binuclidic element in 2013; it had formerly been considered a mononuclidic element.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium has three known nuclear isomers (or metastable states), Th, Th, and Th. Th has the lowest known excitation energy of any isomer, measured to be . This is so low that when it undergoes isomeric transition, the emitted gamma radiation is in the ultraviolet range.


title: Thorium

text: Different isotopes of thorium are chemically identical, but have slightly differing physical properties: for example, the densities of pure Th, Th, Th, and Th are respectively expected to be 11.5, 11.6, 11.6, and 11.7 g/cm. The isotope Th is expected to be fissionable with a bare critical mass of 2839 kg, although with steel reflectors this value could drop to 994 kg. Th is not fissionable, but it is fertile as it can be converted to fissile U by neutron capture and subsequent beta decay.


title: Thorium

text: Two radiometric dating methods involve thorium isotopes: uranium–thorium dating, based on the decay of U to Th, and ionium–thorium dating, which measures the ratio of Th to Th. These rely on the fact that Th is a primordial radioisotope, but Th only occurs as an intermediate decay product in the decay chain of U. Uranium–thorium dating is a relatively short-range process because of the short half-lives of U and Th relative to the age of the Earth: it is also accompanied by a sister process involving the alpha decay of U into Th, which very quickly becomes the longer-lived Pa, and this process is often used to check the results of uranium–thorium dating. Uranium–thorium dating is commonly used to determine the age of calcium carbonate materials such as speleothem or coral, because uranium is more soluble in water than thorium and protactinium, which are selectively precipitated into ocean-floor sediments, where their ratios are measured. The scheme has a range of several hundred thousand years. Ionium–thorium dating is a related process, which exploits the insolubility of thorium (both Th and Th) and thus its presence in ocean sediments to date these sediments by measuring the ratio of Th to Th. Both of these dating methods assume that the proportion of Th to Th is a constant during the period when the sediment layer was formed, that the sediment did not already contain thorium before contributions from the decay of uranium, and that the thorium cannot migrate within the sediment layer.


title: Thorium

text: A thorium atom has 90 electrons, of which four are valence electrons. Four atomic orbitals are theoretically available for the valence electrons to occupy: 5f, 6d, 7s, and 7p. Despite thorium's position in the f-block of the periodic table, it has an anomalous [Rn]6d7s electron configuration in the ground state, as the 5f and 6d subshells in the early actinides are very close in energy, even more so than the 4f and 5d subshells of the lanthanides: thorium's 6d subshells are lower in energy than its 5f subshells, because its 5f subshells are not well-shielded by the filled 6s and 6p subshells and are destabilized. This is due to relativistic effects, which become stronger near the bottom of the periodic table, specifically the relativistic spin–orbit interaction. The closeness in energy levels of the 5f, 6d, and 7s energy levels of thorium results in thorium almost always losing all four valence electrons and occurring in its highest possible oxidation state of +4. This is different from its lanthanide congener cerium, in which +4 is also the highest possible state, but +3 plays an important role and is more stable. Thorium is much more similar to the transition metals zirconium and hafnium than to cerium in its ionization energies and redox potentials, and hence also in its chemistry: this transition-metal-like behaviour is the norm in the first half of the actinide series.


title: Thorium

text: Despite the anomalous electron configuration for gaseous thorium atoms, metallic thorium shows significant 5f involvement. A hypothetical metallic state of thorium that had the [Rn]6d7s configuration with the 5f orbitals above the Fermi level should be hexagonal close packed like the group 4 elements titanium, zirconium, and hafnium, and not face-centred cubic as it actually is. The actual crystal structure can only be explained when the 5f states are invoked, proving that thorium is metallurgically a true actinide.


title: Thorium

text: Tetravalent thorium compounds are usually colourless or yellow, like those of silver or lead, as the ion has no 5f or 6d electrons. Thorium chemistry is therefore largely that of an electropositive metal forming a single diamagnetic ion with a stable noble-gas configuration, indicating a similarity between thorium and the main group elements of the s-block. Thorium and uranium are the most investigated of the radioactive elements because their radioactivity is low enough not to require special handling in the laboratory.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium is a highly reactive and electropositive metal. With a standard reduction potential of −1.90 V for the /Th couple, it is somewhat more electropositive than zirconium or aluminium. Finely divided thorium metal can exhibit pyrophoricity, spontaneously igniting in air. When heated in air, thorium turnings ignite and burn with a brilliant white light to produce the dioxide. In bulk, the reaction of pure thorium with air is slow, although corrosion may occur after several months; most thorium samples are contaminated with varying degrees of the dioxide, which greatly accelerates corrosion. Such samples slowly tarnish, becoming grey and finally black at the surface.


title: Thorium

text: At standard temperature and pressure, thorium is slowly attacked by water, but does not readily dissolve in most common acids, with the exception of hydrochloric acid, where it dissolves leaving a black insoluble residue of ThO(OH,Cl)H. It dissolves in concentrated nitric acid containing a small quantity of catalytic fluoride or fluorosilicate ions; if these are not present, passivation by the nitrate can occur, as with uranium and plutonium.


title: Thorium

text: Most binary compounds of thorium with nonmetals may be prepared by heating the elements together. In air, thorium burns to form , which has the fluorite structure. Thorium dioxide is a refractory material, with the highest melting point (3390 °C) of any known oxide. It is somewhat hygroscopic and reacts readily with water and many gases; it dissolves easily in concentrated nitric acid in the presence of fluoride.


title: Thorium

text: When heated in air, thorium dioxide emits intense blue light; the light becomes white when is mixed with its lighter homologue cerium dioxide (, ceria): this is the basis for its previously common application in gas mantles. A flame is not necessary for this effect: in 1901, it was discovered that a hot Welsbach gas mantle (using with 1% ) remained at "full glow" when exposed to a cold unignited mixture of flammable gas and air. The light emitted by thorium dioxide is higher in wavelength than the blackbody emission expected from incandescence at the same temperature, an effect called candoluminescence. It occurs because : Ce acts as a catalyst for the recombination of free radicals that appear in high concentration in a flame, whose deexcitation releases large amounts of energy. The addition of 1% cerium dioxide, as in gas mantles, heightens the effect by increasing emissivity in the visible region of the spectrum; but because cerium, unlike thorium, can occur in multiple oxidation states, its charge and hence visible emissivity will depend on the region on the flame it is found in (as such regions vary in their chemical composition and hence how oxidising or reducing they are).


title: Thorium

text: Several binary thorium chalcogenides and oxychalcogenides are also known with sulfur, selenium, and tellurium.


title: Thorium

text: All four thorium tetrahalides are known, as are some low-valent bromides and iodides: the tetrahalides are all 8-coordinated hygroscopic compounds that dissolve easily in polar solvents such as water. Many related polyhalide ions are also known. Thorium tetrafluoride has a monoclinic crystal structure like those of zirconium tetrafluoride and hafnium tetrafluoride, where the ions are coordinated with ions in somewhat distorted square antiprisms. The other tetrahalides instead have dodecahedral geometry. Lower iodides (black) and (gold-coloured) can also be prepared by reducing the tetraiodide with thorium metal: they do not contain Th(III) and Th(II), but instead contain and could be more clearly formulated as electride compounds. Many polynary halides with the alkali metals, barium, thallium, and ammonium are known for thorium fluorides, chlorides, and bromides. For example, when treated with potassium fluoride and hydrofluoric acid, forms the complex anion (hexafluorothorate(IV)), which precipitates as an insoluble salt, (potassium hexafluorothorate(IV)).


title: Thorium

text: Thorium borides, carbides, silicides, and nitrides are refractory materials, like those of uranium and plutonium, and have thus received attention as possible nuclear fuels. All four heavier pnictogens (phosphorus, arsenic, antimony, and bismuth) also form binary thorium compounds. Thorium germanides are also known. Thorium reacts with hydrogen to form the thorium hydrides and , the latter of which is superconducting below 7.5–8 K; at standard temperature and pressure, it conducts electricity like a metal. The hydrides are thermally unstable and readily decompose upon exposure to air or moisture.


title: Thorium

text: In an acidic aqueous solution, thorium occurs as the tetrapositive aqua ion , which has tricapped trigonal prismatic molecular geometry: at pH < 3, the solutions of thorium salts are dominated by this cation. The ion is the largest of the tetrapositive actinide ions, and depending on the coordination number can have a radius between 0.95 and 1.14 Å. It is quite acidic due to its high charge, slightly stronger than sulfurous acid: thus it tends to undergo hydrolysis and polymerisation (though to a lesser extent than ), predominantly to in solutions with pH 3 or below, but in more alkaline solution polymerisation continues until the gelatinous hydroxide forms and precipitates out (though equilibrium may take weeks to be reached, because the polymerisation usually slows down before the precipitation). As a hard Lewis acid, favours hard ligands with oxygen atoms as donors: complexes with sulfur atoms as donors are less stable and are more prone to hydrolysis.


title: Thorium

text: High coordination numbers are the rule for thorium due to its large size. Thorium nitrate pentahydrate was the first known example of coordination number 11, the oxalate tetrahydrate has coordination number 10, and the borohydride (first prepared in the Manhattan Project) has coordination number 14. These thorium salts are known for their high solubility in water and polar organic solvents.


title: Thorium

text: Many other inorganic thorium compounds with polyatomic anions are known, such as the perchlorates, sulfates, sulfites, nitrates, carbonates, phosphates, vanadates, molybdates, and chromates, and their hydrated forms. They are important in thorium purification and the disposal of nuclear waste, but most of them have not yet been fully characterized, especially regarding their structural properties. For example, thorium nitrate is produced by reacting thorium hydroxide with nitric acid: it is soluble in water and alcohols and is an important intermediate in the purification of thorium and its compounds. Thorium complexes with organic ligands, such as oxalate, citrate, and EDTA, are much more stable. In natural thorium-containing waters, organic thorium complexes usually occur in concentrations orders of magnitude higher than the inorganic complexes, even when the concentrations of inorganic ligands are much greater than those of organic ligands.


title: Thorium

text: In January 2021, the aromaticity has been observed in a large metal cluster anion consisting of 12 bismuth atoms stabilised by a center thorium cation. This compound was shown to be surprisingly stable, unlike many previous known aromatic metal clusters.


title: Thorium

text: Most of the work on organothorium compounds has focused on the cyclopentadienyl complexes and cyclooctatetraenyls. Like many of the early and middle actinides (up to americium, and also expected for curium), thorium forms a cyclooctatetraenide complex: the yellow , thorocene. It is isotypic with the better-known analogous uranium compound uranocene. It can be prepared by reacting with thorium tetrachloride in tetrahydrofuran (THF) at the temperature of dry ice, or by reacting thorium tetrafluoride with . It is unstable in air and decomposes in water or at 190 °C. Half sandwich compounds are also known, such as , which has a piano-stool structure and is made by reacting thorocene with thorium tetrachloride in tetrahydrofuran.


title: Thorium

text: The simplest of the cyclopentadienyls are and : many derivatives are known. The former (which has two forms, one purple and one green) is a rare example of thorium in the formal +3 oxidation state; a formal +2 oxidation state occurs in a derivative. The chloride derivative is prepared by heating thorium tetrachloride with limiting used (other univalent metal cyclopentadienyls can also be used). The alkyl and aryl derivatives are prepared from the chloride derivative and have been used to study the nature of the Th–C sigma bond.


title: Thorium

text: Other organothorium compounds are not well-studied. Tetrabenzylthorium, , and tetraallylthorium, , are known, but their structures have not been determined. They decompose slowly at room temperature. Thorium forms the monocapped trigonal prismatic anion , heptamethylthorate(IV), which forms the salt (tmeda = ). Although one methyl group is only attached to the thorium atom (Th–C distance 257.1 pm) and the other six connect the lithium and thorium atoms (Th–C distances 265.5–276.5 pm), they behave equivalently in solution. Tetramethylthorium, , is not known, but its adducts are stabilised by phosphine ligands.


title: Thorium

text: Th is a primordial nuclide, having existed in its current form for over ten billion years; it was formed during the r-process, which probably occurs in supernovae and neutron star mergers. These violent events scattered it across the galaxy. The letter "r" stands for "rapid neutron capture", and occurs in core-collapse supernovae, where heavy seed nuclei such as Fe rapidly capture neutrons, running up against the neutron drip line, as neutrons are captured much faster than the resulting nuclides can beta decay back toward stability. Neutron capture is the only way for stars to synthesise elements beyond iron because of the increased Coulomb barriers that make interactions between charged particles difficult at high atomic numbers and the fact that fusion beyond Fe is endothermic. Because of the abrupt loss of stability past Bi, the r-process is the only process of stellar nucleosynthesis that can create thorium and uranium; all other processes are too slow and the intermediate nuclei alpha decay before they capture enough neutrons to reach these elements.


title: Thorium

text: In the universe, thorium is among the rarest of the primordial elements, because it is one of the two elements that can be produced only in the r-process (the other being uranium), and also because it has slowly been decaying away from the moment it formed. The only primordial elements rarer than thorium are thulium, lutetium, tantalum, and rhenium, the odd-numbered elements just before the third peak of r-process abundances around the heavy platinum group metals, as well as uranium. In the distant past the abundances of thorium and uranium were enriched by the decay of plutonium and curium isotopes, and thorium was enriched relative to uranium by the decay of U to Th and the natural depletion of U, but these sources have long since decayed and no longer contribute.


title: Thorium

text: In the Earth's crust, thorium is much more abundant: with an abundance of 8.1 g/tonne, it is one of the most abundant of the heavy elements, almost as abundant as lead (13 g/tonne) and more abundant than tin (2.1 g/tonne). This is because thorium is likely to form oxide minerals that do not sink into the core; it is classified as a lithophile under the Goldschmidt classification, meaning that it is generally found combined with oxygen. Common thorium compounds are also poorly soluble in water. Thus, even though the refractory elements have the same relative abundances in the Earth as in the Solar System as a whole, there is more accessible thorium than heavy platinum group metals in the crust.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium is the 41st most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Natural thorium is usually almost pure Th, which is the longest-lived and most stable isotope of thorium, having a half-life comparable to the age of the universe. Its radioactive decay is the largest single contributor to the Earth's internal heat; the other major contributors are the shorter-lived primordial radionuclides, which are U, K, and U in descending order of their contribution. (At the time of the Earth's formation, K and U contributed much more by virtue of their short half-lives, but they have decayed more quickly, leaving the contribution from Th and U predominant.) Its decay accounts for a gradual decrease of thorium content of the Earth: the planet currently has around 85% of the amount present at the formation of the Earth. The other natural thorium isotopes are much shorter-lived; of them, only Th is usually detectable, occurring in secular equilibrium with its parent U, and making up at most 0.04% of natural thorium.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium only occurs as a minor constituent of most minerals, and was for this reason previously thought to be rare. In nature, thorium occurs in the +4 oxidation state, together with uranium(IV), zirconium(IV), hafnium(IV), and cerium(IV), and also with scandium, yttrium, and the trivalent lanthanides which have similar ionic radii. Because of thorium's radioactivity, minerals containing it are often metamict (amorphous), their crystal structure having been damaged by the alpha radiation produced by thorium. An extreme example is ekanite, , which almost never occurs in nonmetamict form due to the thorium it contains.


title: Thorium

text: Monazite (chiefly phosphates of various rare-earth elements) is the most important commercial source of thorium because it occurs in large deposits worldwide, principally in India, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, and Malaysia. It contains around 2.5% thorium on average, although some deposits may contain up to 20%. Monazite is a chemically unreactive mineral that is found as yellow or brown sand; its low reactivity makes it difficult to extract thorium from it. Allanite (chiefly silicates-hydroxides of various metals) can have 0.1–2% thorium and zircon (chiefly zirconium silicate, ) up to 0.4% thorium.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium dioxide occurs as the rare mineral thorianite. Due to its being isotypic with uranium dioxide, these two common actinide dioxides can form solid-state solutions and the name of the mineral changes according to the content. Thorite (chiefly thorium silicate, ), also has a high thorium content and is the mineral in which thorium was first discovered. In thorium silicate minerals, the and ions are often replaced with (where M = Sc, Y, or Ln) and phosphate () ions respectively. Because of the great insolubility of thorium dioxide, thorium does not usually spread quickly through the environment when released. The ion is soluble, especially in acidic soils, and in such conditions the thorium concentration can be higher.


title: Thorium

text: In 1815, the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius analysed an unusual sample of gadolinite from a copper mine in Falun, central Sweden. He noted impregnated traces of a white mineral, which he cautiously assumed to be an earth (oxide in modern chemical nomenclature) of an unknown element. Berzelius had already discovered two elements, cerium and selenium, but he had made a public mistake once, announcing a new element, "gahnium", that turned out to be zinc oxide. Berzelius privately named the putative element "thorium" in 1817 and its supposed oxide "thorina" after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. In 1824, after more deposits of the same mineral in Vest-Agder, Norway, were discovered, he retracted his findings, as the mineral (later named xenotime) proved to be mostly yttrium orthophosphate.


title: Thorium

text: In 1828, Morten Thrane Esmark found a black mineral on Løvøya island, Telemark county, Norway. He was a Norwegian priest and amateur mineralogist who studied the minerals in Telemark, where he served as vicar. He commonly sent the most interesting specimens, such as this one, to his father, Jens Esmark, a noted mineralogist and professor of mineralogy and geology at the Royal Frederick University in Christiania (today called Oslo). The elder Esmark determined that it was not a known mineral and sent a sample to Berzelius for examination. Berzelius determined that it contained a new element. He published his findings in 1829, having isolated an impure sample by reducing (potassium pentafluorothorate(IV)) with potassium metal. Berzelius reused the name of the previous supposed element discovery and named the source mineral thorite.


title: Thorium

text: Berzelius made some initial characterizations of the new metal and its chemical compounds: he correctly determined that the thorium–oxygen mass ratio of thorium oxide was 7.5 (its actual value is close to that, ~7.3), but he assumed the new element was divalent rather than tetravalent, and so calculated that the atomic mass was 7.5 times that of oxygen (120 amu); it is actually 15 times as large. He determined that thorium was a very electropositive metal, ahead of cerium and behind zirconium in electropositivity. Metallic thorium was isolated for the first time in 1914 by Dutch entrepreneurs Dirk Lely Jr. and Lodewijk Hamburger.


title: Thorium

text: In the periodic table published by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, thorium and the rare-earth elements were placed outside the main body of the table, at the end of each vertical period after the alkaline earth metals. This reflected the belief at that time that thorium and the rare-earth metals were divalent. With the later recognition that the rare earths were mostly trivalent and thorium was tetravalent, Mendeleev moved cerium and thorium to group IV in 1871, which also contained the modern carbon group (group 14) and titanium group (group 4), because their maximum oxidation state was +4. Cerium was soon removed from the main body of the table and placed in a separate lanthanide series; thorium was left with group 4 as it had similar properties to its supposed lighter congeners in that group, such as titanium and zirconium.


title: Thorium

text: While thorium was discovered in 1828 its first application dates only from 1885, when Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach invented the gas mantle, a portable source of light which produces light from the incandescence of thorium oxide when heated by burning gaseous fuels. Many applications were subsequently found for thorium and its compounds, including ceramics, carbon arc lamps, heat-resistant crucibles, and as catalysts for industrial chemical reactions such as the oxidation of ammonia to nitric acid.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium was first observed to be radioactive in 1898, by the German chemist Gerhard Carl Schmidt and later that year, independently, by the Polish-French physicist Marie Curie. It was the second element that was found to be radioactive, after the 1896 discovery of radioactivity in uranium by French physicist Henri Becquerel. Starting from 1899, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford and the American electrical engineer Robert Bowie Owens studied the radiation from thorium; initial observations showed that it varied significantly. It was determined that these variations came from a short-lived gaseous daughter of thorium, which they found to be a new element. This element is now named radon, the only one of the rare radioelements to be discovered in nature as a daughter of thorium rather than uranium.


title: Thorium

text: After accounting for the contribution of radon, Rutherford, now working with the British physicist Frederick Soddy, showed how thorium decayed at a fixed rate over time into a series of other elements in work dating from 1900 to 1903. This observation led to the identification of the half-life as one of the outcomes of the alpha particle experiments that led to the disintegration theory of radioactivity. The biological effect of radiation was discovered in 1903. The newly discovered phenomenon of radioactivity excited scientists and the general public alike. In the 1920s, thorium's radioactivity was promoted as a cure for rheumatism, diabetes, and sexual impotence. In 1932, most of these uses were banned in the United States after a federal investigation into the health effects of radioactivity. 10,000 individuals in the United States had been injected with thorium during X-ray diagnosis; they were later found to suffer health issues such as leukaemia and abnormal chromosomes. Public interest in radioactivity had declined by the end of the 1930s.


title: Thorium

text: Up to the late 19th century, chemists unanimously agreed that thorium and uranium were the heaviest members of group 4 and group 6 respectively; the existence of the lanthanides in the sixth row was considered to be a one-off fluke. In 1892, British chemist Henry Bassett postulated a second extra-long periodic table row to accommodate known and undiscovered elements, considering thorium and uranium to be analogous to the lanthanides. In 1913, Danish physicist Niels Bohr published a theoretical model of the atom and its electron orbitals, which soon gathered wide acceptance. The model indicated that the seventh row of the periodic table should also have f-shells filling before the d-shells that were filled in the transition elements, like the sixth row with the lanthanides preceding the 5d transition metals. The existence of a second inner transition series, in the form of the actinides, was not accepted until similarities with the electron structures of the lanthanides had been established; Bohr suggested that the filling of the 5f orbitals may be delayed to after uranium.


title: Thorium

text: It was only with the discovery of the first transuranic elements, which from plutonium onward have dominant +3 and +4 oxidation states like the lanthanides, that it was realised that the actinides were indeed filling f-orbitals rather than d-orbitals, with the transition-metal-like chemistry of the early actinides being the exception and not the rule. In 1945, when American physicist Glenn T. Seaborg and his team had discovered the transuranic elements americium and curium, he proposed the actinide concept, realising that thorium was the second member of an f-block actinide series analogous to the lanthanides, instead of being the heavier congener of hafnium in a fourth d-block row.


title: Thorium

text: In the 1990s, most applications that do not depend on thorium's radioactivity declined quickly due to safety and environmental concerns as suitable safer replacements were found. Despite its radioactivity, the element has remained in use for applications where no suitable alternatives could be found. A 1981 study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States estimated that using a thorium gas mantle every weekend would be safe for a person, but this was not the case for the dose received by people manufacturing the mantles or for the soils around some factory sites. Some manufacturers have changed to other materials, such as yttrium. As recently as 2007, some companies continued to manufacture and sell thorium mantles without giving adequate information about their radioactivity, with some even falsely claiming them to be non-radioactive.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium has been used as a power source on a prototype scale. The earliest thorium-based reactor was built at the Indian Point Energy Center located in Buchanan, New York, United States in 1962. China may be the first to have a shot at commercializing the technology. The country with the largest estimated reserves of thorium in the world is India, which has sparse reserves of uranium. In the 1950s, India targeted achieving energy independence with their three-stage nuclear power programme. In most countries, uranium was relatively abundant and the progress of thorium-based reactors was slow; in the 20th century, three reactors were built in India and twelve elsewhere. Large-scale research was begun in 1996 by the International Atomic Energy Agency to study the use of thorium reactors; a year later, the United States Department of Energy started their research. Alvin Radkowsky of Tel Aviv University in Israel was the head designer of Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first American civilian reactor to breed thorium. He founded a consortium to develop thorium reactors, which included other laboratories: Raytheon Nuclear Inc. and Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States, and the Kurchatov Institute in Russia.


title: Thorium

text: In the 21st century, thorium's potential for reducing nuclear proliferation and its waste characteristics led to renewed interest in the thorium fuel cycle. India has projected meeting as much as 30% of its electrical demands through thorium-based nuclear power by 2050. In February 2014, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), in Mumbai, India, presented their latest design for a "next-generation nuclear reactor" that burns thorium as its fuel ore, calling it the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR). In 2009, the chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission said that India has a "long-term objective goal of becoming energy-independent based on its vast thorium resources."


title: Thorium

text: When gram quantities of plutonium were first produced in the Manhattan Project, it was discovered that a minor isotope (Pu) underwent significant spontaneous fission, which brought into question the viability of a plutonium-fueled gun-type nuclear weapon. While the Los Alamos team began work on the implosion-type weapon to circumvent this issue, the Chicago team discussed reactor design solutions. Eugene Wigner proposed to use the Pu-contaminated plutonium to drive the conversion of thorium into U in a special converter reactor. It was hypothesized that the U would then be usable in a gun-type weapon, though concerns about contamination from U were voiced. Progress on the implosion weapon was sufficient, and this converter was not developed further, but the design had enormous influence on the development of nuclear energy. It was the first detailed description of a highly enriched water-cooled, water-moderated reactor similar to future naval and commercial power reactors.


title: Thorium

text: During the Cold War the United States explored the possibility of using Th as a source of U to be used in a nuclear bomb; they fired a test bomb in 1955. They concluded that a U-fired bomb would be a very potent weapon, but it bore few sustainable "technical advantages" over the contemporary uranium–plutonium bombs, especially since U is difficult to produce in isotopically pure form.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium metal was used in the radiation case of at least one nuclear weapon design deployed by the United States (the W71).


title: Thorium

text: The low demand makes working mines for extraction of thorium alone not profitable, and it is almost always extracted with the rare earths, which themselves may be by-products of production of other minerals. The current reliance on monazite for production is due to thorium being largely produced as a by-product; other sources such as thorite contain more thorium and could easily be used for production if demand rose. Present knowledge of the distribution of thorium resources is poor, as low demand has led to exploration efforts being relatively minor. In 2014, world production of the monazite concentrate, from which thorium would be extracted, was 2,700 tonnes.


title: Thorium

text: The common production route of thorium constitutes concentration of thorium minerals; extraction of thorium from the concentrate; purification of thorium; and (optionally) conversion to compounds, such as thorium dioxide.


title: Thorium

text: There are two categories of thorium minerals for thorium extraction: primary and secondary. Primary deposits occur in acidic granitic magmas and pegmatites. They are concentrated, but of small size. Secondary deposits occur at the mouths of rivers in granitic mountain regions. In these deposits, thorium is enriched along with other heavy minerals. Initial concentration varies with the type of deposit.


title: Thorium

text: For the primary deposits, the source pegmatites, which are usually obtained by mining, are divided into small parts and then undergo flotation. Alkaline earth metal carbonates may be removed after reaction with hydrogen chloride; then follow thickening, filtration, and calcination. The result is a concentrate with rare-earth content of up to 90%. Secondary materials (such as coastal sands) undergo gravity separation. Magnetic separation follows, with a series of magnets of increasing strength. Monazite obtained by this method can be as pure as 98%.


title: Thorium

text: Industrial production in the 20th century relied on treatment with hot, concentrated sulfuric acid in cast iron vessels, followed by selective precipitation by dilution with water, as on the subsequent steps. This method relied on the specifics of the technique and the concentrate grain size; many alternatives have been proposed, but only one has proven effective economically: alkaline digestion with hot sodium hydroxide solution. This is more expensive than the original method but yields a higher purity of thorium; in particular, it removes phosphates from the concentrate.


title: Thorium

text: Acid digestion is a two-stage process, involving the use of up to 93% sulfuric acid at 210–230 °C. First, sulfuric acid in excess of 60% of the sand mass is added, thickening the reaction mixture as products are formed. Then, fuming sulfuric acid is added and the mixture is kept at the same temperature for another five hours to reduce the volume of solution remaining after dilution. The concentration of the sulfuric acid is selected based on reaction rate and viscosity, which both increase with concentration, albeit with viscosity retarding the reaction. Increasing the temperature also speeds up the reaction, but temperatures of 300 °C and above must be avoided, because they cause insoluble thorium pyrophosphate to form. Since dissolution is very exothermic, the monazite sand cannot be added to the acid too quickly. Conversely, at temperatures below 200 °C the reaction does not go fast enough for the process to be practical. To ensure that no precipitates form to block the reactive monazite surface, the mass of acid used must be twice that of the sand, instead of the 60% that would be expected from stoichiometry. The mixture is then cooled to 70 °C and diluted with ten times its volume of cold water, so that any remaining monazite sinks to the bottom while the rare earths and thorium remain in solution. Thorium may then be separated by precipitating it as the phosphate at pH 1.3, since the rare earths do not precipitate until pH 2.


title: Thorium

text: Alkaline digestion is carried out in 30–45% sodium hydroxide solution at about 140 °C for about three hours. Too high a temperature leads to the formation of poorly soluble thorium oxide and an excess of uranium in the filtrate, and too low a concentration of alkali leads to a very slow reaction. These reaction conditions are rather mild and require monazite sand with a particle size under 45 μm. Following filtration, the filter cake includes thorium and the rare earths as their hydroxides, uranium as sodium diuranate, and phosphate as trisodium phosphate. This crystallises trisodium phosphate decahydrate when cooled below 60 °C; uranium impurities in this product increase with the amount of silicon dioxide in the reaction mixture, necessitating recrystallisation before commercial use. The hydroxides are dissolved at 80 °C in 37% hydrochloric acid. Filtration of the remaining precipitates followed by addition of 47% sodium hydroxide results in the precipitation of thorium and uranium at about pH 5.8. Complete drying of the precipitate must be avoided, as air may oxidise cerium from the +3 to the +4 oxidation state, and the cerium(IV) formed can liberate free chlorine from the hydrochloric acid. The rare earths again precipitate out at higher pH. The precipitates are neutralised by the original sodium hydroxide solution, although most of the phosphate must first be removed to avoid precipitating rare-earth phosphates. Solvent extraction may also be used to separate out the thorium and uranium, by dissolving the resultant filter cake in nitric acid. The presence of titanium hydroxide is deleterious as it binds thorium and prevents it from dissolving fully.


title: Thorium

text: High thorium concentrations are needed in nuclear applications. In particular, concentrations of atoms with high neutron capture cross-sections must be very low (for example, gadolinium concentrations must be lower than one part per million by weight). Previously, repeated dissolution and recrystallisation was used to achieve high purity. Today, liquid solvent extraction procedures involving selective complexation of are used. For example, following alkaline digestion and the removal of phosphate, the resulting nitrato complexes of thorium, uranium, and the rare earths can be separated by extraction with tributyl phosphate in kerosene.


title: Thorium

text: Non-radioactivity-related uses of thorium have been in decline since the 1950s due to environmental concerns largely stemming from the radioactivity of thorium and its decay products.


title: Thorium

text: Most thorium applications use its dioxide (sometimes called "thoria" in the industry), rather than the metal. This compound has a melting point of 3300 °C (6000 °F), the highest of all known oxides; only a few substances have higher melting points. This helps the compound remain solid in a flame, and it considerably increases the brightness of the flame; this is the main reason thorium is used in gas lamp mantles. All substances emit energy (glow) at high temperatures, but the light emitted by thorium is nearly all in the visible spectrum, hence the brightness of thorium mantles.


title: Thorium

text: Energy, some of it in the form of visible light, is emitted when thorium is exposed to a source of energy itself, such as a cathode ray, heat, or ultraviolet light. This effect is shared by cerium dioxide, which converts ultraviolet light into visible light more efficiently, but thorium dioxide gives a higher flame temperature, emitting less infrared light. Thorium in mantles, though still common, has been progressively replaced with yttrium since the late 1990s. According to the 2005 review by the United Kingdom's National Radiological Protection Board, "although [thoriated gas mantles] were widely available a few years ago, they are not any more." Thorium is also used to make cheap permanent negative ion generators, such as in pseudoscientific health bracelets.


title: Thorium

text: During the production of incandescent filaments, recrystallisation of tungsten is significantly lowered by adding small amounts of thorium dioxide to the tungsten sintering powder before drawing the filaments. A small addition of thorium to tungsten thermocathodes considerably reduces the work function of electrons; as a result, electrons are emitted at considerably lower temperatures. Thorium forms a one-atom-thick layer on the surface of tungsten. The work function from a thorium surface is lowered possibly because of the electric field on the interface between thorium and tungsten formed due to thorium's greater electropositivity. Since the 1920s, thoriated tungsten wires have been used in electronic tubes and in the cathodes and anticathodes of X-ray tubes and rectifiers. Thanks to the reactivity of thorium with atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen, thorium also acts as a getter for impurities in the evacuated tubes. The introduction of transistors in the 1950s significantly diminished this use, but not entirely. Thorium dioxide is used in gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) to increase the high-temperature strength of tungsten electrodes and improve arc stability. Thorium oxide is being replaced in this use with other oxides, such as those of zirconium, cerium, and lanthanum.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium dioxide is found in heat-resistant ceramics, such as high-temperature laboratory crucibles, either as the primary ingredient or as an addition to zirconium dioxide. An alloy of 90% platinum and 10% thorium is an effective catalyst for oxidising ammonia to nitrogen oxides, but this has been replaced by an alloy of 95% platinum and 5% rhodium because of its better mechanical properties and greater durability.


title: Thorium

text: When added to glass, thorium dioxide helps increase its refractive index and decrease dispersion. Such glass finds application in high-quality lenses for cameras and scientific instruments. The radiation from these lenses can darken them and turn them yellow over a period of years and it degrades film, but the health risks are minimal. Yellowed lenses may be restored to their original colourless state by lengthy exposure to intense ultraviolet radiation. Thorium dioxide has since been replaced in this application by rare-earth oxides, such as lanthanum, as they provide similar effects and are not radioactive.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium tetrafluoride is used as an anti-reflection material in multilayered optical coatings. It is transparent to electromagnetic waves having wavelengths in the range of 0.350–12 µm, a range that includes near ultraviolet, visible and mid infrared light. Its radiation is primarily due to alpha particles, which can be easily stopped by a thin cover layer of another material. Replacements for thorium tetrafluoride are being developed as of the 2010s, which include Lanthanum trifluoride.


title: Thorium

text: Mag-Thor alloys (also called thoriated magnesium) found use in some aerospace applications, though such uses have been phased out due to concerns over radioactivity.


title: Thorium

text: The main nuclear power source in a reactor is the neutron-induced fission of a nuclide; the synthetic fissile nuclei U and Pu can be bred from neutron capture by the naturally occurring quantity nuclides Th and U. U occurs naturally and is also fissile. In the thorium fuel cycle, the fertile isotope Th is bombarded by slow neutrons, undergoing neutron capture to become Th, which undergoes two consecutive beta decays to become first Pa and then the fissile U:


title: Thorium

text: U is fissile and can be used as a nuclear fuel in the same way as U or Pu. When U undergoes nuclear fission, the neutrons emitted can strike further Th nuclei, continuing the cycle. This parallels the uranium fuel cycle in fast breeder reactors where U undergoes neutron capture to become U, beta decaying to first Np and then fissile Pu.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium is more abundant than uranium, and can satisfy world energy demands for longer. It is particularly suitable for being used as fertile material in molten salt reactors.


title: Thorium

text: Th absorbs neutrons more readily than U, and U has a higher probability of fission upon neutron capture (92.0%) than U (85.5%) or Pu (73.5%). It also releases more neutrons upon fission on average. A single neutron capture by U produces transuranic waste along with the fissile Pu, but Th only produces this waste after five captures, forming Np. This number of captures does not happen for 98–99% of the Th nuclei because the intermediate products U or U undergo fission, and fewer long-lived transuranics are produced. Because of this, thorium is a potentially attractive alternative to uranium in mixed oxide fuels to minimise the generation of transuranics and maximise the destruction of plutonium.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium fuels result in a safer and better-performing reactor core because thorium dioxide has a higher melting point, higher thermal conductivity, and a lower coefficient of thermal expansion. It is more stable chemically than the now-common fuel uranium dioxide, because the latter oxidises to triuranium octoxide (), becoming substantially less dense.


title: Thorium

text: The used fuel is difficult and dangerous to reprocess because many of the daughters of Th and U are strong gamma emitters. All U production methods result in impurities of U, either from parasitic knock-out (n,2n) reactions on Th, Pa, or U that result in the loss of a neutron, or from double neutron capture of Th, an impurity in natural Th:


title: Thorium

text: U by itself is not particularly harmful, but quickly decays to produce the strong gamma emitter Tl. (Th follows the same decay chain, but its much longer half-life means that the quantities of Tl produced are negligible.) These impurities of U make U easy to detect and dangerous to work on, and the impracticality of their separation limits the possibilities of nuclear proliferation using U as the fissile material. Pa has a relatively long half-life of 27 days and a high cross section for neutron capture. Thus it is a neutron poison: instead of rapidly decaying to the useful U, a significant amount of Pa converts to U and consumes neutrons, degrading the reactor efficiency. To avoid this, Pa is extracted from the active zone of thorium molten salt reactors during their operation, so that it does not have a chance to capture a neutron and will only decay to U.


title: Thorium

text: The irradiation of Th with neutrons, followed by its processing, need to be mastered before these advantages can be realised, and this requires more advanced technology than the uranium and plutonium fuel cycle; research continues in this area. Others cite the low commercial viability of the thorium fuel cycle: the international Nuclear Energy Agency predicts that the thorium cycle will never be commercially viable while uranium is available in abundance—a situation which may persist "in the coming decades". The isotopes produced in the thorium fuel cycle are mostly not transuranic, but some of them are still very dangerous, such as Pa, which has a half-life of 32,760 years and is a major contributor to the long-term radiotoxicity of spent nuclear fuel.


title: Thorium

text: Natural thorium decays very slowly compared to many other radioactive materials, and the emitted alpha radiation cannot penetrate human skin. As a result, handling small amounts of thorium, such as those in gas mantles, is considered safe, although the use of such items may pose some risks. Exposure to an aerosol of thorium, such as contaminated dust, can lead to increased risk of cancers of the lung, pancreas, and blood, as lungs and other internal organs can be penetrated by alpha radiation. Internal exposure to thorium leads to increased risk of liver diseases.


title: Thorium

text: The decay products of Th include more dangerous radionuclides such as radium and radon. Although relatively little of those products are created as the result of the slow decay of thorium, a proper assessment of the radiological toxicity of Th must include the contribution of its daughters, some of which are dangerous gamma emitters, and which are built up quickly following the initial decay of Th due to the absence of long-lived nuclides along the decay chain. As the dangerous daughters of thorium have much lower melting points than thorium dioxide, they are volatilised every time the mantle is heated for use. In the first hour of use large fractions of the thorium daughters Ra, Ra, Pb, and Bi are released. Most of the radiation dose by a normal user arises from inhaling the radium, resulting in a radiation dose of up to 0.2 millisieverts per use, about a third of the dose sustained during a mammogram.


title: Thorium

text: Some nuclear safety agencies make recommendations about the use of thorium mantles and have raised safety concerns regarding their manufacture and disposal; the radiation dose from one mantle is not a serious problem, but that from many mantles gathered together in factories or landfills is.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium is odourless and tasteless. The chemical toxicity of thorium is low because thorium and its most common compounds (mostly the dioxide) are poorly soluble in water, precipitating out before entering the body as the hydroxide. Some thorium compounds are chemically moderately toxic, especially in the presence of strong complex-forming ions such as citrate that carry the thorium into the body in soluble form. If a thorium-containing object has been chewed or sucked, it loses 0.4% of thorium and 90% of its dangerous daughters to the body. Three-quarters of the thorium that has penetrated the body accumulates in the skeleton. Absorption through the skin is possible, but is not a likely means of exposure. Thorium's low solubility in water also means that excretion of thorium by the kidneys and faeces is rather slow.


title: Thorium

text: Tests on the thorium uptake of workers involved in monazite processing showed thorium levels above recommended limits in their bodies, but no adverse effects on health were found at those moderately low concentrations. No chemical toxicity has yet been observed in the tracheobronchial tract and the lungs from exposure to thorium. People who work with thorium compounds are at a risk of dermatitis. It can take as much as thirty years after the ingestion of thorium for symptoms to manifest themselves. Thorium has no known biological role.


title: Thorium

text: Powdered thorium metal is pyrophoric: it ignites spontaneously in air. In 1964, the United States Department of the Interior listed thorium as "severe" on a table entitled "Ignition and explosibility of metal powders". Its ignition temperature was given as 270 °C (520 °F) for dust clouds and 280 °C (535 °F) for layers. Its minimum explosive concentration was listed as 0.075 oz/cu ft (0.075 kg/m); the minimum igniting energy for (non-submicron) dust was listed as 5 mJ.


title: Thorium

text: In 1956, the Sylvania Electric Products explosion occurred during reprocessing and burning of thorium sludge in New York City, United States. Nine people were injured; one died of complications caused by third-degree burns.


title: Thorium

text: Thorium exists in very small quantities everywhere on Earth although larger amounts exist in certain parts: the average human contains about 40 micrograms of thorium and typically consumes three micrograms per day. Most thorium exposure occurs through dust inhalation; some thorium comes with food and water, but because of its low solubility, this exposure is negligible.


title: Thorium

text: Exposure is raised for people who live near thorium deposits or radioactive waste disposal sites, those who live near or work in uranium, phosphate, or tin processing factories, and for those who work in gas mantle production. Thorium is especially common in the Tamil Nadu coastal areas of India, where residents may be exposed to a naturally occurring radiation dose ten times higher than the worldwide average. It is also common in northern Brazilian coastal areas, from south Bahia to Guarapari, a city with radioactive monazite sand beaches, with radiation levels up to 50 times higher than world average background radiation.


title: Thorium

text: Another possible source of exposure is thorium dust produced at weapons testing ranges, as thorium is used in the guidance systems of some missiles. This has been blamed for a high incidence of birth defects and cancer at Salto di Quirra on the Italian island of Sardinia.


title: Take Me to Church

text: "Take Me to Church" is a song by Irish singer-songwriter Hozier. It was released as his debut single on 13 September 2013, originally featuring on his extended play of the same name, before being featured as the opening track of his 2014 debut album "Hozier". A struggling musician at the time of its composition, Hozier wrote and recorded the song in the attic of his parents' home in County Wicklow. A mid-tempo soul song, its lyrics use religious terminology to describe a romantic relationship in the face of Church discrimination. The song caught the attention of Rubyworks Records, where producer Rob Kirwan collaborated with Hozier on the final recording.


title: Take Me to Church

text: The accompanying music video premiered in September 2013, directed by Brendan Canty and Conal Thomson. It was shot in black-and-white and follows a romantic relationship between two men and its subsequent violent homophobic backlash. Upon its YouTube release in September 2013, the video quickly went viral, leading to Hozier's subsequent license with Columbia Records US and Island Records UK. In 2014, the song achieved widespread global popularity, topping the charts in 12 countries and reaching the top 10 in 21 other territories. The song also received critical acclaim.