‘No quick wins’: China has the world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor
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Team working on project reportedly achieves milestone by completing fuel reloading while experimental molten salt reactor was running.

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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  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    563·
    2 days ago

    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.

    1. It’s a research reactor, it will be relatively small because it’s not intended to provide a production power source.
    2. It can operate 24 hours a day, independent of weather or most external variables.
    3. Its power is variable and can handle varying loads on demand.

    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.

    • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
      13·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        232·
        2 days ago

        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.

        • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
          31·
          2 days ago

          Yeah I guess the fundamental problem is the scalability because building automated battery factories that automate manufacturing isn’t easy.

    • solrize@lemmy.world
      49·
      2 days ago

      It’s a research reactor, it will be relatively small because it’s not intended to provide a production power source.

      I get that and a research reactor is a fine thing, but I’d like to have gotten some info about the scaling potential. Like are there obstacles to large scale utility power being generated with thorium?

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        222·
        2 days ago

        The only obstacles are a general lack of real world experience.

        Both Thorium and Uranium were being researched in the 60s, but only one can readily be made into nuclear weaponry. So that’s where the research was focused, and not just in the US. Thorium molten salt reactors aren’t a particularly new idea, they date back to the same time period.

        Now that nuclear weaponry isn’t the focus, we’re finally seeing real research like this in alternative nuclear sources. Thorium is much more abundant than Uranium, and is fairly readily available worldwide. The byproducts are much less reactive, and the amount of nuclear “waste” is a fraction of uranium. Even there though, the nuclear waste issue has been blown way out of proportion. Most nuclear waste is not long term, only a small fraction is the stuff that lasts thousands of years, and the US already has more than enough storage built to store all long term nuclear waste for every reactor in operation several times over. But most of the programs to actually implement these processes have been cancelled because of various anti-nuclear and NIMBY groups. So instead in most cases… That waste just gets stored on site, at the nuclear plant. Which isn’t particularly an issue, but I think we can all agree is the worst option of all if you’re worried about potential contamination.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
        121·
        2 days ago

        I’m not sure if larger scale is the goal of thorium reactors. The benefit of using thorium is that it is safe to use and available everywhere.

        The companies that are researching it here in Denmark are aiming at making smaller reactors the size of shipping containers, so that they can be deployed anywhere needed.

        Sure, scaling by quantity is also scaling, but the point is that if they can make one that is financially viable, then they can also make a hundred or thousands of them. In that case, large nuclear reactors will be obsolete.

        • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
          3·
          2 days ago

          Wait, thorium reactors can be build small enough to fit in shipping containers? That would be incredible. I know they are now working on SMR reactors with helium as coolant that are very safe because nothing is under extreme pressure and explode even if there is a meltdown. Reading on wiki it seems there is a SMR with thorium fuel cycle, but EDIT: Copenhagen atomics really is building a thorium molten salt reactor that is safe from meltdown!

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
      916·
      2 days ago

      The old “renewables can’t do intermittency” trope is so tired by now. Battery storage is taking off in a big way and solar is simply unstoppable. Nuclear is never going to be an economically viable technology any more.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        221·
        2 days ago

        And yet, it is still true. Renewables that work via environmental factors like wind and solar will always be reliant on something else to help store excess power, and those storage options are still very limited. Battery storage is taking off, but it is still nowhere near the level to run an entire city for an extended period of time like overnight.

        We still need a base load option that’s reliably available at any time and quickly scaleable to handle burst demand. That is currently handled by fossil fuels, and can be directly replaced via nuclear, essentially as a drop in nearly 1 for 1 replacement.

        • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
          416·
          2 days ago

          That’s what the fossil and nuke lobby have been claiming for decades and they have been wrong at every turn. They’ll still be making the same claims once we’re at 100% renewable, which is pretty much inevitable at this point.