{"id":31345,"date":"2011-03-23T00:07:59","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T22:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=31345"},"modified":"2023-04-06T15:36:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T12:36:24","slug":"safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-china-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/03\/23\/safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-china-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium\/","title":{"rendered":"Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Ambrose Evans-Pritchard<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- googleon: all --><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><a name=\"article\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h2>A few weeks before the tsunami struck Fukushima\u2019s uranium reactors and shattered public faith in nuclear power, China revealed that it was launching a rival technology to build a safer, cleaner, and ultimately cheaper network of reactors based on thorium.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>Thorium could be a much safer option for China which has been unsettled by the nuclear crisis in Japan where fears over radiation levels are rising\u00a0Photo: AP<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>This passed unnoticed \u2013except by a small of band of thorium enthusiasts \u2013 but it may mark the passage of strategic leadership in energy policy from an inert and status-quo West to a rising technological power willing to break the mould.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>If China\u2019s dash for thorium power succeeds, it will vastly alter the global energy landscape and may avert a calamitous conflict over resources as Asia\u2019s industrial revolutions clash head-on with the West\u2019s entrenched consumption.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>China\u2019s Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a \u201cthorium-based molten salt reactor system\u201d. The liquid fuel idea was pioneered by US physicists at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s, but the US has long since dropped the ball. Further evidence of Barack `Obama\u2019s \u201cSputnik moment\u201d, you could say.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium. The system is inherently less prone to disaster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cThe reactor has an amazing safety feature,\u201d said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA engineer at Teledyne Brown and a thorium expert.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ambrose Evans-Pritchard A few weeks before the tsunami struck Fukushima\u2019s uranium reactors and shattered public faith in nuclear power, China revealed that it was launching a rival technology to build a safer, cleaner, and ultimately cheaper network of reactors based on thorium. Thorium could be a much safer option for China which has been unsettled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":68113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}