You’ll be able to principally copy and paste that line into numerous tales about at the moment’s superior reactor know-how. Molten-salt cooling techniques? Invented within the mid-Twentieth century however by no means commercialized. Similar for a number of different fuels, like TRISO. And, after all, there’s thorium.
This one analysis reactor in China operating with an alternate gasoline says lots about this second for nuclear vitality know-how: Many teams are wanting into the previous for applied sciences, with a brand new urge for food for constructing them.
First, it’s essential to notice that China is the sizzling spot for nuclear vitality proper now. Whereas the US nonetheless has essentially the most operational reactors on the planet, China is catching up shortly. The nation is constructing reactors at a outstanding clip and at the moment has extra reactors below development than every other nation by far. Simply this week, China accredited 10 new reactors, totaling over $27 billion in funding.
China can also be main the way in which for some superior reactor applied sciences (that class contains principally something that deviates from the usual blueprint of what’s on the grid at the moment: giant reactors that use enriched uranium for gasoline and high-pressure water to maintain the reactor cool). Excessive-temperature reactors that use fuel as a coolant are one main space of focus for China—just a few reactors that use this know-how have lately began up, and extra are within the planning phases or below development.
Now, Chinese language state media is reporting that scientists within the nation reached a milestone with a thorium-based reactor. The reactor got here on-line in June 2024, however researchers say it lately went via refueling with out shutting down. (Standard reactors typically have to be stopped to replenish the gasoline provide.) The challenge’s lead scientists shared the outcomes throughout a closed assembly on the Chinese language Academy of Sciences.
I’ll emphasize right here that this isn’t some huge energy plant: This reactor is tiny. It generates simply two megawatts of warmth—lower than the analysis reactor on MIT’s campus, which rings in at six megawatts. (To be honest, MIT’s is among the largest college analysis reactors within the US, however nonetheless … it’s small.)
Regardless, progress is progress for thorium reactors, because the world has been fully centered on uranium for the final 50 years or so.
A lot of the unique analysis on thorium got here out of the US, which pumped assets into all types of various reactor applied sciences within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s. A reactor at Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory in Tennessee that ran within the Sixties used Uranium-233 gasoline (which will be generated when thorium is bombarded with radiation).
