China leads the world: Nuclear breakthrough. By Hua Bin in The Unz Review.
In early April, Chinese scientists achieved a milestone in clean energy technology by successfully adding fresh fuel to an operational thorium molten salt reactor, the first of its kind in the world.
The breakthrough signals the arrival of commercially viable thorium nuclear reactor in China’s future energy mix.
Thorium is the holy grail for energy, second only to nuclear fusion:
Thorium is much safer and more abundant alternative to uranium for nuclear power as it is widely available, cheaper to extract, has higher energy density, and produces far less long-lasting nuclear waste. It is far safer than uranium as it is not fissile on its own so cannot be weaponized. …
Thorium is found in abundant quantity in earth’s crust all over the world. One single mine in China’s Inner Mongolia, the Bayan Obo mine, has enough thorium deposits to theoretically meet China’s energy needs for the next 20,000 years, while producing minimal radioactive waste.
Molten salt safer and cleaner:
The most promising technological direction is to use thorium in molten salt reactors. While multiple nations are developing the technology, China is the first to build an experimental thorium molten salt reactor. …
The experimental reactor, located in the Gobi Desert in China’s west, uses molten salt as the fuel carrier and coolant, and thorium as the fuel source.
The reactor is designed to sustainably generate 2 megawatts of thermal power. … After construction of the experimental reactor started in 2018, most of the scientists involved in the project gave up their holidays — they worked day and night, and some stayed on site for more than 300 days in a year. The Gobi Desert is thousands of kilometres away from the major coastal cities.
By October 2023 it was built and achieved criticality — a sustained nuclear chain reaction. And by June 2024 it had reached full-power operation. …
A much bigger thorium molten salt reactor is already being built in China and is slated to achieve criticality by 2030. That research reactor is designed to produce 10 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 10,000 homes for a year.
China’s state-owned shipbuilding industry has also unveiled a design for thorium powered container ship that could potentially achieve emission-free maritime transport.
Meanwhile, US efforts to develop a molten salt reactor remain on paper, despite bipartisan congressional support and Department of Energy initiatives.
Xu said, “in the nuclear game, there are no quick wins. You need to have strategic stamina, focusing on doing just one thing for 20, 30 years.”
The US lead thrown away. By Elizabeth Rayne in Popular Mechanics.
When the first functional molten salt reactor was developed by scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, it ran at full power from 1965 though 1969 (over 13,000 hours), but the Department of Energy lost interest and no further work was done to advance the technology until the early 2000s. …
But that research remained available to the public, which is how China eventually discovered it and used it as a backbone for their own reactor.
And, as it turns out, molten salt is still an appealing option. Most nuclear reactors use water as a coolant, but because water is volatile — high pressure needs to be maintained so that it stays in its liquid state. Without that pressure, the water evaporates, and reactor fuel could overheat and suffer a meltdown. Using molten salt prevents radioactive sludge from leaking because the boiling point of salt is too high for it to evaporate at reactor temperatures. In case of overheating, the molten salt circling the reactor will expand and halt the reaction.
Attention President Trump. I know you’re busy, but could you get onto this urgently please?