(GIST OF SCIENCE REPORTER) THORIUM MOLTEN SALT BASED NUCLEAR STATION

(GIST OF SCIENCE REPORTER) THORIUM MOLTEN SALT BASED NUCLEAR STATION

(AUGUST-2024)

THORIUM MOLTEN SALT BASED NUCLEAR STATION

• China plans to create the world’s first nuclear power plant based on molten thorium salt in the Gobi Desert by 2025. 

Key Detail

• China’s molten thorium salt nuclear power plant will be the first and only molten salt nuclear reactor since the United States shut down its test reactor in 1969.

Advantages of Molten Salt Reactor

• The reactor does not need water for cooling because it uses liquid salt and carbon dioxide to transfer heat and generate electricity.

• It uses thorium as its primary fuel, which means worries over a potential shortage of uranium, the usual fuel used in nuclear reactors are reduced, as thorium is more abundant than uranium.

Advantages of using Thorium

• Thorium boasts several advantages over the conventional nuclear fuel, uranium-235. 

• Thorium can generate more fissile material (uranium-233) than it consumes while fuelling a water cooled or molten salt reactor.

• It generates fewer long-lived minor actinides than plutonium fuels. 

• Because of its abundance and its fissile material breeding capability, thorium could potentially offer a long-term solution to humanity’s energy needs.

• It is estimated that the Earth’s upper crust contains an average of 10.5 parts per million (ppm) of thorium, compared with about 3 ppm of uranium.

• Thorium-fuelled reactors produce less long-lived nuclear waste than present-day uranium-fuelled reactors. 

• Like other nuclear reactors, they do not emit greenhouse gases in operation.

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Courtesy: Science Reporter