What does this mean for all U308 stocks?China hails nuclear tech breakthrough
- Source: Global Times
- [08:35 January 04 2011]
- Comments
Chinese scientists have made a technological breakthrough in the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, and the efforts could potentially solve the country's uranium-supply problem, state television reported Monday.
The technology, developed and tested at the No. 404 Factory of the China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) in the Gobi Desert, Gansu Province, enables the re-use of irradiated fuel and is able to boost the usage rate of uranium materials at nuclear plants by 60-fold.
"With the new technology, China's existing detected uranium resources can be used for 3,000 years," China Central Television (CCTV) reported.
"By then, we need to reprocess the nuclear fuel - that is, to extract the irradiated fuel at nuclear stations and newly generated nuclear fuel through a series of chemical processes and use these materials to make fuel elements needed for nuclear power stations," Wang Jian, chief reprocessing engineer for the project, was quoted by CCTV as saying.
Sun Qin, general manger of CNNC, added that "China is one of the few nations in the world that maintains technology on nuclear fuel cycles ... and play a guiding role globally."
China, as well as France, Britain and Russia, support reprocessing as a means for the management of highly radioactive spent fuel and as a source of fissile material for future nuclear fuel supplies.
China is planning a massive push into nuclear power in an effort to wean itself off coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. It now has 12 working reactors with 10.15 gigawatts of total generating capacity.
Agencies