China is beating America in the nuclear-energy race
They have pioneered a new generation of reactor
LAST YEAR engineers at China’s Shidaowan nuclear power plant turned off the pumps pushing coolant around the reactor core. Then they waited. At a typical power plant, this would have been dangerous. Nuclear reactions create lots of heat, which is normally transferred by a coolant and then converted into electricity. With the pumps off, the nuclear fuel might have continued to heat up until it liquefied and damaged the reactor. Such “meltdowns” can release radiation. That is what happened in 2011 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan after a tsunami damaged its cooling systems.
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This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Leading the way ”
From the September 14th 2024 edition
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