It won’t be long before someone says that the Chinese breakthrough is due to the theft of a technology from the U.S. that the U.S. doesn’t have. From Hua Bin at unz.com:
China has operationalized the world’s first thorium nuclear reactor
As the world is spellbound by the zigzagging tariff war drama launched by reality TV star Donnie Trump and people marvel at the sheer destructiveness of a stupid mad man, a truly momentous event just happened in China.
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 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. Nuclear industry experts see thorium as the holy grail for future energy revolution next to nuclear fusion, which I’ll touch on briefly at the end.
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.
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 latest breakthrough to add fresh fuel to an operational reactor indicates such technology is ready for sustained commercial deployment.
It marks the first long-term, stable operation of the technology, putting China at the forefront of a global race to harness thorium 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 as the fuel source. The reactor is designed to sustainably generate 2 megawatts of thermal power.
The development was announced by the project’s chief scientist, Xu Hongjie, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on April 8. Xu said China “now leads the global frontier for thorium nuclear technology”.
