Bob Young, chairman of Beowulf Mining, and investor Bruce Rowan intend to launch thorium company All Star Minerals onto OFEX.

All Star, where Rowan holds 63 per cent, Young nearly 20 per cent and Beowulf 17 per cent, boasts a Russian deposit of monazite. This is a beach sand that is host to thorium, an element first discovered in 1828 and now hailed by protagonists as an alternative to uranium in the generation of nuclear power and, crucially, one which does not readily lend itself to military applications.

The entrepreneurial Young, who is advised by small company specialist Ruegg and King & Shaxon, is off to Russia this weekend to put developments in train. He contends that thorium, which splits into uranium 233 rather than uranium 237, produces 'the wrong isotope' and less waste than conventional uranium and would therefore be virtually useless for producing atomic or nuclear weapons.

Young claims the thorium message is already impressing itself on the power generation industry abroad. He cites a £200 million merger now underway in the USA between two thorium companies, Nova Star and Thorium Power Inc.

One director of All Star is Conrad Wyndham, a youthful former colleague of share tipster Tom Winnifrith. Young has recruited him less for his technical and industrial expertise than for his putative skill in tapping small company investors.

More details are expected imminently.