3 ms·

Your news article link appears to state that China hopes to build a thorium reactor. It doesn’t seem say one is up and running, does it, or did I miss something

• dodobirdlord 5y ago
  Wikipedia indicates that some test reactors are currently operational, and there are construction projects underway for commercial reactors. The article notes that in 1999 there were 0 operating thorium reactors anywhere on earth, but that no longer seems to be true. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
• jabl 5y ago
  Be as it may, a thorium reactor is in no way particularly special compared to a uranium reactor [1]. As humankind is able to make uranium reactors work, we can make thorium reactors work. Just like with seawater extraction of uranium, there's no particular hurry to commercialize the technology since uranium so far is plentiful and cheap. [1] There is the issue that thorium by itself is not fissile, so it's a breeding fuel cycle similar to the U-Pu breeding cycle with reprocessing etc. Which, again, hasn't been developed as quickly as hoped many decades ago, as the simple once-through uranium cycle has been cheaper and good enough.
• Robotbeat 5y ago
  They’ve built one and plan to switch it on now, this month, and may have done so already. But the list of nuclear reactors that have used thorium as at least part of their fuel is surprisingly long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thorium-fueled_reactors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_tho... I generally discount arguments that are in the form of: “we cannot commercialize this because it has not yet been commercialized.” But do thorium fueled reactors exist? Absolutely.
  • deleted 5y ago
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