China Successfully Reloads a Running Thorium Reactor
upstart writes:
According to Chinese state media, a group of scientists recently managed to refuel a working thorium molten salt reactor without causing a shutdown - a feat never achieved before. The success was announced by the project's chief scientist Xu Hongjie during a closed-door meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on April 8, Chinese news outlet Guangming Daily reported last week.
Such a breakthrough could be transformative to the global energy landscape, as thorium has long been hailed as a far safer and cheaper alternative to uranium in nuclear reactors. While also a radioactive element, thorium produces less waste, and the silver-colored metal, mostly found in monazite, is much more common in the Earth's crust.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), thorium is three times more abundant in nature than uranium, but historically has found little use in power generation due to the significant economic and technical hurdles.
[...] Compared to uranium, thorium can generate a significantly higher amount of energy via nuclear fission. A Stanford University research estimates that thorium's power generation could be 35 times higher. Thorium molten-salt reactors (TMSRs) are also compact, do not require water cooling, cannot experience a meltdown and produce very little long-lived radioactive waste, according to the IAEA.
When announcing the breakthrough, Xu acknowledged that its project was based on previous research by US researchers who pioneered molten salt reactor technology in the 1950s, but abandoned shortly after to pursue uranium-fueled ones.
Xu - who was tasked with the thorium reactor project in 2009 - told Chinese media that his team spent years dissecting declassified American documents, replicating experiments and innovating beyond them.
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