What China Found Beneath the Sand Could Change the World — Thorium Reactor Begins

Описание: Since the very beginning of our existence, humanity has been relentlessly trying to reshape the world to fit our own needs and desires.
Sometimes those efforts have paid off, and other times they have led to devastating failure.
Our entire history has been driven by trial and error, one step at a time.
One of the most irreversible mistakes we ever made was probably discovering nuclear fission far too early, because that discovery led directly to the creation of the atomic bomb and brought us dangerously close to our own extinction.
And yet, people did not waste any time. They immediately started trying to harness that same chain reaction as a new source of energy that might help us survive.
And against all odds, they actually made it work.
Even as missiles loaded with nuclear warheads kept piling up, hundreds of nuclear power plants were being built all over the world, generating electricity that was cleaner and cheaper than fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, the fuel those power plants rely on, uranium, comes with serious risks of its own.
The waste produced by commercial nuclear reactors contains plutonium-239, which can be repurposed to build nuclear weapons.
That is why scientists started wondering if we could use something else as nuclear fuel, something like thorium.
Thorium is an element that is cheaper than uranium and leaves behind far less long-lived radioactive waste.
So here is the obvious question: “If that is true, then why did we not just use thorium from the beginning?”
The answer is pretty simple: uranium-235 is the only naturally occurring isotope that can sustain a chain reaction on its own.
Natural thorium-232, cannot keep a chain reaction going by itself.
Even so, scientists never gave up. They kept believing there had to be a solution to that roadblock.
And eventually, they found a breakthrough.
The idea of a thorium reactor was first proposed in the United States back in the 1950s. But today, it is Chinese researchers who are leading the charge.

Why Thorium?
How Is Thorium Used in a Nuclear Reactor?
A Breakthrough in China?