This article from September 5th claims they are planning a power plant and their prototype reached criticality but was not designed to generate electricity.
If it works, great. That’s not a guarantee. Test reactors do not make practical power plants.
The only difference between a test reactor and a live reactor is attaching a turbine.
But that article was talking about one specific type of reactor. The Molten Salt Reactor. Those are good. Completely walk away safe. They also are key for having nuclear power in areas with little water. But they’re not the only type of reactor that uses Thorium.
CANDU reactors can burn thorium. It was part of the design specifications. They can also burn natural uranium. i.e. unenriched.
There have been CANDU reactors online for decades…
It was the reactor of choice for something like 20 years, before falling out of fashion.
MSRs are good, but are Thorium only, which wasn’t fashionable until recently.
See, prior to about 10-15 years ago, the automatic answer to “how do you get a lot of power in a water poor area” was fossil fuels. Now we have options. Nuclear is one of them, but we need to dust off some older tech and bring it up to modern standards.
That takes time, but less then inventing new types of battery that can handle grid loads.
This article from September 5th claims they are planning a power plant and their prototype reached criticality but was not designed to generate electricity.
If it works, great. That’s not a guarantee. Test reactors do not make practical power plants.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-06/china-building-thorium-nuclear-power-station-gobi/104304468
The only difference between a test reactor and a live reactor is attaching a turbine.
But that article was talking about one specific type of reactor. The Molten Salt Reactor. Those are good. Completely walk away safe. They also are key for having nuclear power in areas with little water. But they’re not the only type of reactor that uses Thorium.
CANDU reactors can burn thorium. It was part of the design specifications. They can also burn natural uranium. i.e. unenriched.
And your explanation for why no country is powering a city with one yet is what?
There have been CANDU reactors online for decades…
It was the reactor of choice for something like 20 years, before falling out of fashion.
MSRs are good, but are Thorium only, which wasn’t fashionable until recently.
See, prior to about 10-15 years ago, the automatic answer to “how do you get a lot of power in a water poor area” was fossil fuels. Now we have options. Nuclear is one of them, but we need to dust off some older tech and bring it up to modern standards.
That takes time, but less then inventing new types of battery that can handle grid loads.