Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports that the nuclear race is on. China is upping the ante dramatically on thorium nuclear energy. Scientists in Shanghai have been told to accelerate plans to build the first fully-functioning thorium reactor within ten years, instead of 25 years as originally planned. He suggests that this is definitely a race. China faces fierce competition from overseas and to get there first will not be an easy task, says Professor Li Zhong, a leader of the program. He said researchers are working under warlike pressure to deliver.
They may do the world a big favor. They may even help to close the era of fossil fuel hegemony, and with it choke off the regimes that have such trouble adapting to rational modern behavior. The West risks being left behind, still relying on the old uranium reactor technology that was originally designed for US submarines in the 1950s.
The Chinese are currently building 28 standard reactors by far the biggest nuclear push in the world and working on several research and development fronts at once. This is to break what it calls a dependence on imported fuel, but also to fight pollution in China that is damaging their population of billions.
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