You possibly can principally copy and paste that line into numerous tales about immediately’s superior reactor expertise. Molten-salt cooling programs? Invented within the mid-Twentieth century however by no means commercialized. Identical for a number of various fuels, like TRISO. And, in fact, there’s thorium.
This one analysis reactor in China operating with another gas says quite a bit about this second for nuclear vitality expertise: Many teams are trying into the previous for applied sciences, with a brand new urge for food for constructing them.
First, it’s necessary to notice that China is the sizzling spot for nuclear vitality proper now. Whereas the US nonetheless has essentially the most operational reactors on this planet, China is catching up rapidly. The nation is constructing reactors at a outstanding clip and at the moment has extra reactors underneath building than every other nation by far. Simply this week, China authorized 10 new reactors, totaling over $27 billion in funding.
China can 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 immediately: giant reactors that use enriched uranium for gas and high-pressure water to maintain the reactor cool). Excessive-temperature reactors that use gasoline as a coolant are one main space of focus for China—a couple of reactors that use this expertise have lately began up, and extra are within the planning levels or underneath building.
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 by means of refueling with out shutting down. (Typical reactors usually must be stopped to replenish the gas 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 large 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 truthful, 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 targeted 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 sources into all types of various reactor applied sciences within the Fifties and ’60s. A reactor at Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory in Tennessee that ran within the Nineteen Sixties used Uranium-233 gas (which will be generated when thorium is bombarded with radiation).