China’s Nuclear Scientists Unveil Latest ‘Breakthrough’China says its nuclear industry has made a fresh technological breakthrough, which, even if it doesn’t immediately solve the country’s energy needs, underscores Beijing’s determination to be a leading font of knowledge about the controversial power source.
The China Institute of Atomic Energy said Thursday that a small, experimental “fast breeder” reactor outside Beijing had been hooked to the grid to produce electricity. Essentially, the tiny 20 megawatt nuclear plant “863” is now helping satisfy China’s vast power needs.
...Yet the process hasn’t proved workable on a large scale elsewhere. Fast-breeder programs have been abandoned in a number of countries, including the U.S., and the plants that remain are small. To some critics, it is a nuclear version of the “perpetual motion machine,” a seemingly problem-solving theory that doesn’t work well outside the laboratory.
...Among the practical challenges associated with fast-breeders: they are potentially riskier than more conventional light-water reactors, relying on cooling of the reactor core with a potentially dangerous loop of flammable sodium, rather than water. Plus, the fuel input is essentially weapons-grade uranium, which is difficult to handle compared with the chemically stable material that powers most nuclear plants, namely uranium dioxide...
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/07/21/china’s-nuclear-scientists-unveil-latest-breakthrough/
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