Fail-Safe Nuclear Power

Cheaper and cleaner nuclear plants could finally become reality, but not in the United States, where the technology was invented more than 50 years ago. Over the next two decades China hopes to build the world’s largest nuclear power industry. Plans include as many as 30 new conventional nuclear plants as well as a variety of next-generation reactors, including thorium molten-salt reactors, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and sodium-cooled fast reactors. The U.S. had built 104 nuclear reactors, but construction of new ones had all but come to a halt, and the technology remained stuck in the 1970s. Because conventional reactors require huge, costly containment vessels that can blow up in extreme conditions, and because they use extensive external cooling systems to make sure the solid-fuel core doesn’t overheat and cause a runaway reaction leading to a meltdown, they are hugely expensive. Today, though, as climate change accelerates and government officials and scientists seek a nuclear technology without the expensive problems that have stalled the conventional version, molten salt is enjoying a renaissance. Research programs on various forms of the technology are under way at universities and institutes in Japan, France, Russia, and the United States, in addition to the one at the Shanghai Institute.