Nuclear power is a very powerful method of creating a lot of energy that can then be used to power entire cities. However, nuclear energy, which although it is “clean” in its production, has the problem of what to do with the waste it generates, which is highly radioactive. However, China has proposed creating a nuclear reactor whose waste is not as polluting and uses the same energy as conventional ones.
Although around nuclear power plants, if there is no disaster or leak like those of Chernobyl or Fukushima, it is an environment in which their presence is not noticed, another thing comes when they talk about the nuclear cemeteries of the materials that are derived of their operation, due to the high levels of radiation or the time they remain active.
However, China believes it has found the key to creating a plant whose waste is not hazardous (or at least not so much because it is estimated that it will “only” be a problem for 500 years), thanks to the use of salt and thorium.
China and its commitment to “greener” nuclear energy
The Asian country hopes that the first nuclear reactor model will be completed next month and that the relevant tests will begin in two. It is estimated that in approximately nine years it will be ready to operate.
Current nuclear reactors use uranium, which is a highly radioactive material and whose residues can contaminate an area for thousands of years , making it uninhabitable, as is the case of Chernobyl, in Ukraine, where the largest nuclear disaster (or at least the most famous) in the world.
Thorium and salt, the most important
China would use thorium , an element that performs perfectly in a mixed way with salt , and can even close a leak if there is one. In addition, it can work without water, so it could be built in areas far from civilization and not in places where there are always large amounts of water, near cities. In fact, the Asian giant is building this first reactor in an area far from civilization and surrounded by a desert.
With this technology, China would overtake other world powers that continue to use uranium in their nuclear power plants and are still far from creating ones that use this new material instead. It is curious that China, one of the most polluting countries in the world since it uses a huge amount of coal, is thinking of using these future nuclear power plants to alleviate the problem of nuclear waste and at the same time depend less on fossil fuels, with an energy source capable of supplying energy to a country, increasingly hungry for electricity, having become the world’s factory.
