China Gains Massive Edge In Clean Nuclear Energy Race, Thanks To US Research Shelved In 1960s
China has scaled the first step towards proving the technical feasibility of using thorium resources in molten salt reactor systems.
After nearly 15 years of rigorous research, China has finally cracked a way to access almost an unlimited amount of nuclear energy through converting thorium to uranium with their experimental salt reactor, reports said this week.
The two megawatt liquid-fuelled thorium-based molten salt reactor or TMSR was developed in the Gobi Desert by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, and is the only one to have achieved this historical feat in fuel conversion.
The academy told South China Morning Post that the experiment is the first step towards proving the technical feasibility of using thorium resources in molten salt reactor systems.
While efforts began in 2011 after China promoted the vision to the status of a national scientific pilot project, the source of this knowledge dates even further, back to the US archives from the 1960s.
The United States, which had reportedly developed a small test reactor, may have marked its name on this milestone, had its research not been shelved back in the day to continue favoring uranium-based systems.
The project’s chief scientist, Xu Hongjie was quoted by the SCMP as saying, "US left its research publicly available, waiting for the right successor,” Xu was quoted as saying. “We were that successor.”
Xu added that his team spent years with the declassified US research and mastered every trick in the book before implementing it practically.
According to the SCMP report, a bigger thorium molten salt reactor is already in the works in China. It is estimated to produce 10 megawatts of electricity.
Another advantage of the TMSR is that it requires no water at all, in sharp contrast to conventional nuclear power plants that are usually built near coastlines because of their massive cooling needs.
Why Seen As A Massive Breakthrough
Uranium is not only of the most dangerous metals in terms of toxicity and radioactivity, but also difficult to mine due to its scarcity.
As per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ingestion of high concentrations of uranium can lead to severe health effects, such as cancer of the bone or liver. Inhaling large concentrations of uranium can cause lung cancer from the exposure to alpha particles. Moreover, its toxicity can cause kidney failure too.
Thorium, on the other hand, is present in much more abundance, and also produces lesser radioactive waste since it is less radioactive in nature, according to the World Nuclear Association.
China's new breakthrough, thereby, is expected to not only make its nuclear energy programme cleaner, but also pave the way for energy independence.
"The design not only dramatically improves fuel utilisation but also significantly reduces the volume of long-lived radioactive waste,” SCMP quoted Li Qingnuan, Communist Party secretary and deputy director at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, as saying.
