First Thorium Reactor
by greg - 2025-04-21 ( education / research / energy / nuclear ) [html version]
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.
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