Thorium: Cycles

No market price, only customs values

Thorium has no market price. The average value of US compound imports from France was $27/kg in 2024 and $26 in 2025, little changed since 2021. US exports through July 2025 had a unit value of $291/kg, showing how purity and form drive value. Thorium's supply cycle is the rare-earth cycle. Demand would change only if thorium-fuelled reactors became commercial. Programmes in many countries, including China and India, keep that possibility alive, but timing is uncertain.

US price, Average unit value of US imports of thorium compounds from France

Super-cycles in thorium

Thorium has had demand eras rather than price cycles, and today it has no market price. Early 20th-century gas mantles made monazite valuable, the atomic age made it strategic, and India's 1946 export ban showed how a supplier could hold it back. Later, radioactivity concerns removed most consumer uses, and thorium became an unwanted residue of rare-earth production. The next possible era is nuclear: India's PFBR reached criticality in April 2026, and China and others are testing thorium reactors. Any demand shift would take decades and would first draw on stored residues.

1. 1890s-1940s

   Thorium oxide gas mantles created the first monazite trade; India's Travancore (Kerala) beach sands became a leading source, and the US sourced thorium from India during the Second World War (Scheyder 2024).

   no price series in the sources used

2. 1946-1950s

   Newly independent India blocked monazite exports in 1946 to keep thorium and rare earths for its own industry and nuclear programme; the US tried to link wheat aid to easing the ban (Scheyder 2024).

   no price series in the sources used

3. 2021-2025

   A tiny, sporadic trade in thorium compounds for industry and research, mostly from France and India to the US.

   US import unit values from France $29/kg (2021), $26/kg (2022), $29/kg (2023), $27/kg (2024), $26/kg (2025e); from India $74/kg (2023); US exports $291/kg (2025, through July) (USGS MCS 2026)

4. 2026

   India's 500 MWe PFBR reached first criticality on 6 April 2026 after construction began in 2004, a step toward breeding uranium-233 from thorium.

   no thorium market price exists

What drives the cycle

• Rare-earth and mineral-sand output. Monazite, and therefore thorium, is produced only when rare earths and titanium minerals are mined.
• Thorium reactor programmes. India's three-stage plan and Chinese molten-salt research are the only routes to large demand.
• Radiation regulation. Rules on handling and disposal drive both the cost of monazite processing and the loss of consumer uses.
• Indian policy on beach-sand minerals. India reserves monazite mining for state entities and controls exports.

Metrics to track