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China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’ (www.scmp.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by schizoidman@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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.

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[-] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 2 weeks ago

I can't find a clear source on this. Could you help? This one says 2013 http://thorenergy.no/

[-] xia@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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.

[-] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Worse than useless. None of this is shown to be true without a source.

[-] xia@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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.

[-] chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

So....

  1. Not a Thorium reactor

  2. Didn't produce any power

So China still has a win here.

[-] Frostbeard@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks 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

this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
91 points (98.9% liked)

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