this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’ (www.scmp.com)
submitted 4 days ago by schizoidman@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
246 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

https://archive.is/2nQSh

It marks the first long-term, stable operation of the technology, putting China at the forefront of a global race to harness thorium – considered a safer and more abundant alternative to uranium – for nuclear power.

The experimental reactor, located in the Gobi Desert in China’s west, uses molten salt as the fuel carrier and coolant, and thorium – a radioactive element abundant in the Earth’s crust – as the fuel source. The reactor is reportedly designed to sustainably generate 2 megawatts of thermal power.

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[–] eleitl@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Some of the new Russian reactor types are designed to burn away dangerous hot actinides. MSR need onboard fuel processing to continue to operate anyway.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

These are fast reactors and operate on different principles. The coolant there is sodium and while hard to design and run, it's doable. French had similar reactor but only one and it was shut down. Nice thing about fast reactors is that these can burn even-numbered isotopes of plutonium, useless in water moderated reactor, and give fresh mostly 239Pu plutonium of good quality. weapons grade even, and IAEA doesn't like it. But who cares since nonproliferation is dead anyway?

[–] eleitl@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The new generation of Russian fast neutron reactors use lead and lead-bismuth as coolant, not sodium anymore. They are not proper breeders, as I understood it.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 2 points 2 days ago

These were not supposed to be breeders, but this is only due to agreements that are ignored ny now. Technical capability is there