Chinese scientists have achieved a milestone in clean energy technology by successfully adding fresh fuel to an operational thorium molten salt reactor, according to state media reports.
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 development was announced by the project’s chief scientist, Xu Hongjie, during a closed-door meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on April 8, the official Guangming Daily reported on Friday.
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.
Some experts see the technology as the next energy revolution and claim that just one thorium-rich mine in Inner Mongolia could – theoretically – meet China’s energy needs for tens of thousands of years, while producing minimal radioactive waste.
A much bigger thorium molten salt reactor is already being built in China and is slated to achieve criticality by 2030. That research reactor is designed to produce 10 megawatts of electricity.
China’s state-owned shipbuilding industry has also unveiled a design for thorium-powered container ships that could potentially achieve emission-free maritime transport.
Meanwhile, US efforts to revive the development of a molten salt reactor remain on paper, despite bipartisan congressional support and Department of Energy initiatives.
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Lmao, 10MW. That’s the equivalent of like 2,000 solar panels. How big is this reactor and how much space is required for operations?
I get so tired of these shit takes that obviously haven't put much thought into the topic based on the clear barely surface level perspective, but love to repeat the same talking points confidently.
Most renewables like solar and wind cannot handle the second and third points well, of at all. And options that can like hydro and geothermal power are very location dependent.
You need to stop thinking of nuclear as an alternative to renewables and instead as the replacement for the fossil fuel plants that provide base power generation 24/7/365 like coal, gas, and the peaker plants.
Renewables alone do not solve modern societal power needs, but we can replace fossil fuels immediately with better options, like nuclear. As it is uranium power plants are extremely misunderstood by the public from decades of disinformation from the fossil fuel AND renewable industries and a fundamental misunderstanding of radioactivity by the public. Thorium specifically goes around that by removing the uranium Boogeyman, and meltdown risk. Most molten salt reactor designs operate on a Fail-Safe design principle that doesn't require power to continuously cool the fuel to prevent meltdown like most current uranium reactors do, instead requiring power to prevent that failsafe, often via an ice plug actively keeping the fuel in the system for operation.
I'd love to know the cost of thorium reactors vs some experimental grid level battery technology with solar or wind. Like liquid metal batteries made out of dirt cheap materials, or liquid flow batteries. I'm pro nuclear, but it's weird that there hasn't been much progress in scalable cheap grid storage.
The problem with current battery tech, even the experimental stuff, is just the sheer capacity needed for something that can get close to powering a city through renewable gaps, like overnight for solar. It necessitates looking at alternate "battery" options outside of traditional battery tech. Battery storage can help extremely well for outages and instability, but providing a city amount of power for potentially 8-12 hours of renewable downtime is an entirely different story.
Things like pumped hydro storage, or solar heat batteries are good examples of alternatives. Your "battery" isn't storing electricity directly, but instead an energy form that you can then take back out later to generate electricity from. Unfortunately most of those also have specific requirements that aren't very universal, like most city-scale renewables.
The best is almost always going to be a combination of things, but that is rarely the cost effective option, and sadly that's what really matters with our current systems. Fossil fuel options are almost always the cheapest to build and operate, largely because they don't actually have to deal with their pollution.
Yeah I guess the fundamental problem is the scalability because building automated battery factories that automate manufacturing isn't easy.