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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[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes. They compete for the same raw material. That's the whole point. Gives you a perfectly good reason to excavate it.

[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That's not a point in favor of why they coexist. The military is going to fund uranium mining one way or the other, given the potency of nuclear weapons as a deterrence, as well as their own militarized applications of nuclear reactors powering aircraft carriers.

The only valid argument for why military planning influenced civilian nuclear power because the military also tested and decided on nuclear power for various applications because it was efficient, reliable and had long term viability with minimal space investment. But even the military came to the conclusion it wanted nuclear power where it could get independent of wanting nuclear weapons.

Edit: And as a bonus, just because this myth is so dumb, Chicago-1 predated the Manhattan project and is directly cited as being an inspiration for the Manhattan project, not the other way around as people keep trying to claim. Even without nuclear weapons we would still have uranium powered nuclear reactors, and they'd probably be more prevalent without all the fearmongers hopping on the big oil bandwagon and spewing propaganda that couldn't be further from the truth.

[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 days ago

It is a point for them to coexist. It's called plausible deniability.

What exactly are you trying to argue? That it's not a good reason for a country to get a bunch of uranium without raising questions?

There was absolutely no incentive to research more about alternative fuels, uranium and plutonium were materials the nuclear powers wanted. For more than just 1 reason...

If countries REALLY wanted nuclear power without Uranium. They would have researched it. Like China have. But no one else has. Well some have, but they all gave up a long time ago.

Sweden was researching it, but decided to go with Uranium, coincidentally, they just happened to also research nuclear weapons... very strange coincidence that... (Sweden was later encouraged to halt all nuclear weapons research)