Government researchers in China have revealed their design for a molten-salt nuclear reactor that could be the first in the world not to use water cooling.
Reported first by the South China Morning Post, the new reactor, by eliminating the need for water cooling, could be deployed in arid regions and help providing homes of larger populations with power.
What makes this reactor different is that instead of being powered by uranium (normally used in nuclear reactors), it actually uses liquid thorium.
Thorium is also relatively safer compared to uranium, as, it is known to solidify quite quickly when exposed to open air, this would indirectly make it a lot safer and reduce the diameter of radiation for the surrounding environment.
The molten reactor system works by letting liquid thorium to flow through the reactor, allowing for a nuclear chain reaction to commence while transferring the heat to a steam generator outside. The thorium then returns to the reactor and the cycle continues.
The concept to use liquid salt instead of uranium was first conceptualized in the 1940s, however, earlier effort faced numerous problems such as corrosion and cracking of pipes that transfer the molten salts. However, in recent years, developments in the field have made molten salt reactors much more possible.
The first such reactor is being developed by Professor Yan Rui and his colleagues at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics. The reactor is expected to be just 10 feet tall and 8-feet wide, however the power plant would be fairly massive as it would house other equipment like steam turbines.
The reactor is capable of producing up to 1000MW which is not as much as a uranium reactor but it is still capable enough to power 100,000 homes.
China aims to build its first molten salt reactor by the end of this decade -- 2030 -- and the national government aims to build several of such reactors in deserts of central and western China.