It marks the first long-term, stable operation of the technology, putting China at the forefront of a global race to harness thorium – considered a safer and more abundant alternative to uranium – for nuclear power.
The experimental reactor, located in the Gobi Desert in China’s west, uses molten salt as the fuel carrier and coolant, and thorium – a radioactive element abundant in the Earth’s crust – as the fuel source. The reactor is reportedly designed to sustainably generate 2 megawatts of thermal power.
Me opening the comment section knowing that its just gonna be a bunch of racism… like i get it i hate the chinese government as well but give credit to the millions of scientists and people who are actually trying to make life better on this earth. If something isnt american, it can still be nice to have.
Where do you get racism? Did you just want to complain about racism?
Too lazy to scroll down an inch or two to see the comments questioning the tech just because it’s China or making unrelated anti-China comments?
Again, what the hell does that have to do with race? China is not a race.
I personally believe the CCP is doing an amazing job. Communism is working wonderfully
EDIT: Anti-communists are hilarious. “It’s not communism but capitalism.” And if it is communism, then it is evil because communism bad. Or some made up stuff about uyghurs or queer people.
It’s not communism, it’s state-capitalism
I don’t think it’s communism anymore but the Chinese gov are actually looking after their own citizens in my opinion. I kind wish Xi was in charge of the UK honestly.
They tend to think of everything long term and all of those projects are paying off, also Healthcare free education etc they are investing more in their own population than anyone else. US is in my opinion as UK guy pretty much done they’ve picked a fight that they won’t win.
Their own citizens…except for LGBTQ people or uyghurs of course.
Every time I read a headline about how there’s a genocide in Xinjiang, it’s in the same newspaper that insists Israel Has The Right To Defend Itself and Yemen needs to be bombed to powder.
At some point, it reads like liberal agitprop. An excuse to scare liberals into hating a foreign country so we can justify… what? Tariffs? TikTok bans? Nuclear war?
Same with LGBTQ rights. We’ve got a DOGE department doing a pogrom on “woke” government workers while I still get an earful about how mean China is to minority groups?
What am I supposed to take away from this?
That the world isn’t black and white, and both sides can be awful at the same time.
Sometimes a country will inflate the appearance of problems in an enemy nation in order to stoke resentment at home and justify military action abroad.
In Iraq, we made up a bunch of lies about soldiers murdering babies in incubators. After Vietnam, we had Cold Warriors repeating the POW/MIA lies that suggested they were holding hundreds of American hostages for decades, in order to justify continued sanctions and embargos. The slanders against Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Iran have been relentless, all while the US conducted insidious guerrilla wars that have raped, mutilated, and killed countless civilians.
At some point “Both Sides Are Bad” doesn’t cut it. You have to address your own nation’s sins - the lies, the sabotage, the assassinations and us sponsored genocides - before a rational listener can take criticism of your political rivals seriously.
The Uyghur genocide situation has been confirmed by multiple countries, please don’t start a genocide denial debate here.
On most of the fediverse, I find discussions really great with no idiots/trolls… apart from technology. Here it seems some get triggered by any tech from outside the US.
This announcement would be seen as a massive breakthrough anywhere else. China has its problems, I’m fully aware of the red flags and government influence. But only a fool would question their technological advances at this point. They are moving ahead at lightning speed, especially in energy and battery tech.
Even on the consumer side, Huawei invested more in R&D last year than Samsung or Intel. Huawei consumer division could have been expected to be dead by now with the chip ban, yet survived and are thriving again. Not because the Chinese were forced to by their phones, Apple still sell in China, but because they innovated like hell. A Chinese buyer has the option today of buying a tri-folding tablet phone with super fast charging or an American designed device with 3 year old tech (chip aside). Americans don’t have that choice.
Its also the reason why traditional European car brands are tanking in China. VW can no longer expect to sell on prestige alone. Here in Britain, our consumer tech offering is already almost non existent. We no longer have a true British owned car company. Our famous Mini was sold to the Germans. Jaguar/Range Rover to the Indians. MG to the Chinese. Its depressing. But I do feel fortunate to at least have choice (we can buy a BYD or Xiaomi here) and that I’m not subject to only American tech reporting. BYD will later this year have 7 different car models on sale in Britain vs 6 (soon to be 5) from Ford. This is a paradigm shift, considering for almost the last 20 years Ford had at least 2 cars in the top 5 best sellers in the UK.
Apologies for going off on one. But i’d highly recommend US readers check out Chinese tech sites from time to time (eg carnewschina/huawei central etc) rather than just relying on the verge. Sure not all Chinese tech will be successful, sure some designs may be clones, but the shear scale of investment from China will make them unstoppable. I believe the changing of the guard happened a while ago, where about to see it play out in all industries…
What are you on about?
Nearly every upvoted comment is in praise of this. Only 2 comments warn caution about Chinese data.
Why do people need to lie and pretend China is this big victim being picked on.
You would never write a paragraph like that in defense of the amount of anti-US sentiment on Lemmy, so it’s not like you actually care about being fair to nations. Posts like yours reek of nothing more than propaganda.
scrolled past and saw one for almost every subthread.
Post about western achievements are often taken as granted (except maybe curing cancer), while eastern ones are scrutinised to the smallest of details.
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Yeah yeah, “you can’t believe it until Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk confirm it”
Not Eastern ones, Chinese specifically. Japanese or Korean science is generally trusted, but dictatorships have a tendency of making shit up to look better. We’ll believe it when we see it.
China has plenty of achievements, but also plenty of bullshit vaporware. We’ll see which one this is.
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I mean I thought thorium reactors were figured out already? The economics of it and lobbying by big oil was the problem. It ain’t that surprising that China could make a thorium reactor though.
