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China has deservedly consolidated as the country to which all the nations that bet on nuclear energy look. It currently has 58 nuclear reactors whose joint capacity is approximately 61 GWE (electric gigawatts). Besides, It has another 28 reactors under construction that will add additional 33.65 GWE. And just a month ago the State Council approved the construction of 10 more nuclear reactors. China is already the second country with more machines of this type, only behind the US.
In any case, the best asset of this Asian country is its commitment to innovation. And the reactor of Molten Sales and Torio TMSR-LF1 is a very valuable letter of presentation. This machine received the approval of the Chinese Nuclear Safety Administration in mid -June 2023 after having successfully completed the initial testing phase that started in 2021. and since then the itinerary that had set the Institute of Applied Physics of Shanghai, which is the institution responsible for its tuning.
As explained by the American nuclear engineer Nick Touran In your tweetthe TMSR-LF1 reactor officially entered into operation on October 11, 2023. A few months later, on June 17, 2024, He started working at full power. And on October 8 of last year the technicians who operate it detected protacinium-233 (PA-233), a radioactive isotope intermediate derived from the transformation of the thorium into Uranium-233 as part of the fuel cycle of the thorium.
This nuclear reactor is in the Minqin industrial complex of the province of Gansu, in northern China. It has a power of 2 thermal megawatts (MWT), and, although it will not be the first Fourth Generation Nuclear Reactor In activity, and not the first one that Torio will use as fuel, it will be the first of molten salts that will use this chemical element. However, the ambition of this Asian country does not end here; It is already planning to build a molten salts and more capacity sales reactor for 2030.
The modernization of China’s nuclear arsenal is accelerating
Nuclear physics has two faces. We all know that the knowledge that has given us can be used to generate electricity and favor the development of large population masses, as we have just seen, but it can also be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. China carried out its first test with an atomic bomb in 1964. Initially its scientists had the help of Soviet nuclear engineers, but this alliance was broken in 1959 and the country that was then led by Mao Zedong was forced to continue with this project without having any external help.
This isolation did not prevent China from carrying out the first test with a hydrogen bomb in 1967, just three years after launching its first atomic bomb. During the next three decades the Chinese nuclear armament continued advancing, although Mao never aspired to deal with the number of atomic and hydrogen bombs With the US or the Soviet Union first, and Russia later. His doctrine pursued China’s survival by resorting to deterrence, but without directly involving themselves in the cold war that the two hegemonic powers held at the end of the 20th century.
“Beijing has the ambition to create a wide sphere of influence in the regions of the Indian and the Pacific, as well as becoming the leading world power”
The funny thing is that everything changed during the first decade of the 21st century. China’s economic capacity was growing and its scientific and technical development during the second half of the twentieth century had been out of all doubt. The US government was already realized that this Asian country was consolidating as a superpower Able to dispute your world supremacy. This was the context in which the tension between these two countries was born that seems to be currently reaching its peak.
The following literal extract of the document that collects The National Security Strategy Published by the US government in October 2022, it reflects very clearly why it considers China a threat: “The People’s Republic of China (RPC) is the only competitor that has both the intention of remodeling international order and, increasingly, more and more Economic, diplomatic, military and technological capacity To do so. Beijing has the ambition to create a wide sphere of influence in the regions of the Indian and the Pacific, as well as to become the leading world power. “These lines perfectly condense the background history that has triggered the international situation in which we meet.
If we stick to its military development the US Department of Defense He estimates that China currently has an arsenal made up of More than 600 nuclear eyeletsand plans to increase this figure until reaching 1,000 eyelets in 2030. USA and Russia have an arsenal of approximately 5,200 and 5,500 eyelets respectively, although many of them are in reserve and others will be dismantled. China has less eyelets, it is evident, but at least rivals with the US if we stick to the sophistication of its intercontinental ballistic missiles, its nuclear submarines, its bomber and its hypersonic missiles. Let us trust that China, the US, Russia and the other nuclear powers enter and stop this climbing of the nuclear weapons.
Image | Пресguese
More information | US Department of Defense
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