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- cross-posted to:
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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.
US experiments were broken off because it gives no excuse to attain materials for nuclear weapons. Same excuse everyone else use.
This excuse doesn’t make any sense. This myth also needs to die. You can’t get weapons grade materials from fission reactors, and you certainly aren’t converting spent fuel into weapons. The process of refining weapons grade uranium or synthesizing plutonium have nothing to do with energy producing reactors
Uranium was endorsed because it was easier to create a reactor with and didn’t have to deal with the corrosive issue that metallurgy of the early nuclear age into the 50s couldn’t really handle economically.
Thorium fuel cycle is useful for weapon production. Germany also abandoned thorium despite no interest in weapon production.