First Thorium Reactor

by greg - 2025-04-21 10:29:08 ( in education, research, energy, nuclear) [php version] rebuild

Good for them!  The U.S. has been trying to perfect thorium reactors for years and has supposedly been unable to.  I say "supposedly" because the nuclear industry may have been trying to block thorium reactors.

On 4/21/2025 9:21 AM, someone wrote:

Pretty interesting. See First Thorium Reactor.

China has world’s first thorium reactor in landmark for clean nuclear energy. China has activated the world’s only operational thorium molten salt reactor, marking a global breakthrough in clean nuclear energy using declassified United States research.

Chinese scientists reloaded fuel into the working reactor in the Gobi Desert without halting operations, a feat revealed during a closed-door meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on April 8, according to Guangming Daily.

Thorium is seen by experts as a safer, more abundant alternative to uranium. It produces less long-lived radioactive waste and carries a lower risk of weaponisation.

Combined with molten salt reactor design—first tested by US scientists in the 1960s—this technology operates at atmospheric pressure and is engineered to self-limit overheating.