[ExI] China building a Thorium molten salt reactor

[Stuart LaForge]

China will start building a Thorium-based molten salt reactor in 2025. 
It is expected to start generating power in 2029-2030.

https://www.neimagazine.com/news/china-to-build-worlds-first-thorium-molten-salt-npp-in-gobi-desert/?cf-view


China has announced the construction of a nuclear power plant that will 
be fuelled by liquid fuel based on molten thorium salt. The Shanghai 
Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) has been engaged in research in 
this area since 2011 focusing on liquid fluoride-thorium reactors 
(LFTRs). The construction of a prototype of a thorium molten salt 
reactor (TMSR) with a capacity of 2 MW began in September 2018 and was 
reportedly completed in August 2021. China is seeking to get full 
intellectual property rights to this technology.

Now China plans to build the world’s first NPP based on molten salt in 
the Gobi desert. Construction will begin in 2025 with the aim of 
developing safer and more environmentally friendly nuclear energy. The 
reactor does not need water for cooling, since it uses liquid salt and 
carbon dioxide to transfer heat and generate electricity.

In 2022, SINAP received permission from the Ministry of Ecology and 
Environmental Protection to commission an experimental MTSR. This is the 
first nuclear molten salt reactor since the United States stopped its 
molten salt test reactor in 1969. The application for the operation of 
the experimental reactor was considered in China in June 2023, it was 
considered to be fully compliant with safety requirements.

The reactor will use fuel enriched in less than 20% U-235, with a 
thorium reserve of about 50 kg and a conversion factor of about 0.1. 
FLiBe – a eutectic mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride 
containing 99.95% lithium-7 will be used, and the fuel will consist of 
uranium tetrafluoride (UF4).

It is expected that the implementation of the project will begin with 
some refuelling online and removal of gaseous fission products. However, 
after 5-8 years, all fuel salts will be disposed of for processing and 
separation of fission products and secondary actinides for storage. The 
reactor will launch an ongoing process of processing uranium and thorium 
salts with the operational separation of fission products and secondary 
actinoids. If this project is successful, China plans to fully 
commission a 373 MW reactor by 2030.

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I hope that this is a wake up call to the West. NIMBYs be damned; if we 
don't get started on something similar, then China will be eating our 
lunch by the end of the next decade. Burning coal to power our Tesla EVs 
is not a viable alternative.

Stuart LaForge