‘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.

https://archive.is/2nQSh

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 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.

      • xia@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        819·
        7 days ago

        According to GPT-4.1:

        In 1959, Norway achieved a notable milestone by starting up its first nuclear reactor, the JEEP I (Joint Establishment Experimental Pile), located at Kjeller. This reactor was primarily used for research purposes, including early experiments with alternative nuclear fuels such as thorium. While JEEP I itself was not a thorium reactor per se, it laid the groundwork for subsequent Norwegian research into thorium as a nuclear fuel. This early phase demonstrated Norway’s scientific interest in thorium, leveraging its domestic thorium resources and contributing to later thorium reactor experiments.

          • Frostbeard@lemmy.worldEnglish
            6·
            7 days ago

            Norway has one of the worlds largest deposits of thorium, but I have ot heard that we had a working reactor, just the principle of one.

            If the chinese has indeed made it work I think we need to prepare for USA wanting to annex Norway as well

          • xia@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            3·
            7 days ago

            I hope it’s not “worse than useless” (which would mean “misleading”), as my goal was simply to find more identifiers for discussion or research beyond those provided: norway, thorium, 1959…

            • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              3·
              7 days ago

              I’m sorry to come on so strong – I don’t think it’s worse than useless as a tool to approach the right answers – but as I saw people upvoting this ‘answer’ without doing any checking, it occurs to me that this is how misinformation spreads. I hope my comment makes more sense in that context.