‘No quick wins’: China has the world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor
www.scmp.com
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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      • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml
        121·
        1 day ago

        There is no such thing as unbiased sources buddy. If someone tells you a source is unbiased, they are either lying to you or don’t understand how biases work.

          • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml
            10·
            1 day ago

            No one is pretending it isn’t. But the fact that it is pointed doesn’t automatically make it false. You are rejecting sources on little more than vibes here.

              • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml
                10·
                1 day ago

                Almost all pieces ever written about the “Uyghur genocide” go back to this one “bad dude” Adrian Zenz if you follow the chain of sources back to their origins. And both of the articles you liked have him as source, not just one.

                The reason it’s so bad is because Adrian Zenz isn’t merely biased, he’s a known liar. He’s a fraud who pretends to be an expert on China despite not speaking a single word of any of the languages just because he’s been to China a single time over 10 years ago. He is being referenced despite all that by CIA financed medias (such as the BBC via USAID) because his lies are exactly the kind of things western bourgeois want us to think about China.

                Your comparing Dessalines pointing out that your sources cite Zenz to you pointing out that some of his links go to X is misguided at best, Musk isn’t the author of what is written on these X posts, Zenz is the author of the lies your sources tells.

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
        161·
        1 day ago

        Its just a bunch of links to news articles, just like you posted. Only mine don’t reference anti-semites who work for the US state department, western state media in a desperate attempt to show that their enemies kill as many muslims as they do (including right now I might add), and reactionary east-turkistan uyghur separatists.

          • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
            111·
            1 day ago

            It’s kinda neat how everyone that disagrees is conveniently anti-semetic or state sponsored and miraculously everyone that agrees with you is definently not biased or morally dubious in anyway.

            Now you’re just vagueposting in bad faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

            • Where is your evidence that anyone here is antisemitic, state sponsored, or “morally dubious”?
            • There is literally no such thing as a non-biased person, so that’s a meaningless accusation.
          • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
            121·
            1 day ago

            The basis for Zenz’s sinophobia (and that of many china-watchers), is reactionary christian evangelism, which views birth control as a “sin”, so they make it their personal “crusade” to attack what they consider a heathen, non-christian state. All these far-right religious extremists also tend to be anti-semitic, so there’s not much contradiction there.

            Ironically Trump is using the strategy to deport people

            Trump and zenz are both white-supremacist sinophobes who would be more than happy to deport all people of chinese descent. They work for the same project and towards the same goal, global white-supremacy.

              • freagle@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
                91·
                1 day ago

                You miss the point. There are no other sources. Everything you have linked in this argument is traceable back to Adrian Zenz. This is why media literacy is so important. Go digging through your “news” articles and see if you can find the source for their claims. You will find that there is a massive web of “sources” that are all self referential for this particular topic and they all trace back to things published by Adrian Zenz. Zenz’s original reporting has been thoroughly debunked because his reporting was bad faith speculation on cherry-picked datasets with forced interpretations. But none of the derivative articles have ever been retracted and none of have changed their position.

                Dessalines is not telling you that everyone who disagrees is an anti-Semite. They are saying that all of your sources traceback to the same anti-Semite