“Chinese scientists have used a molten-salt reactor to breed uranium from thorium for the first time. This process converts thorium—far more abundant on Earth than uranium—into a usable fuel, and could also make future reactors safer, cleaner, and more efficient,” reports The Doomslayer.
The South China Morning Post adds:
An experimental reactor developed in the Gobi Desert by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics has achieved thorium-to-uranium fuel conversion, paving the way for an almost endless supply of nuclear energy.
The achievement makes the 2 megawatt liquid-fuelled thorium-based molten salt reactor (TMSR) the only operating example of the technology in the world to have successfully loaded and used thorium fuel.
According to the academy, the experiment has provided initial proof of the technical feasibility of using thorium resources in molten salt reactor systems and represents a major leap forward for the technology.
It is the first time in the world that scientists have been able to acquire experimental data on thorium operations from inside a molten salt reactor, according to a report by Science and Technology Daily.
Chinese researchers also hope to make nuclear power cheaper through a new process for extracting uranium from water.
Belgium has canceled its plans to shut down its nuclear power plants.
MIT scientists plan to build a fusion power plant in Virginia, and a utility says that small nuclear reactors will be coming to Virginia.
Last year, CNN reported that “old, unexploded” nuclear “warheads” are being turned into fuel in Tennessee, “to power the next generation of America’s nuclear reactors — small, modular power stations that are easier and cheaper to build. They require far less upkeep and physical space than the aging fleet of large nuclear power plants.”
Poland’s ‘Project Phoenix’ plans to build small modular reactors across Poland. Such reactors are a new technology that has been used largely in pilot projects.
Nuclear power is already “the safest form of energy we have, if you consider deaths per megawatt of energy produced,” notes Yale University’s Steven Novella. “Wind turbines, surprisingly, kill more people than nuclear plants,” notes an environmentalist. And “solar panels require 17 times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create over 200 times more waste,” such as “dust from toxic heavy metals including lead, cadmium, and chromium.”
Nuclear plants emit no air pollution, only harmless steam. Unlike wind farms, nuclear power plants don’t kill birds. The biggest utility that generates wind power pleaded guilty to federal crimes for killing 150 eagles.
