China Goes Nuclear

China is faced with incredible growth and a hunger for power to fuel that growth. Conventional power production isn't doing it anymore -- it's already not meeting demands, and is a bane to the environment. The Chinese estimate that by the year 2050, they'll require as much power as that produced by the entire world. What's China to do? Go nuclear. A lot of nuclear. To meet the projected demand, China needs nuclear reactors that are small, safe, easy to assemble and cheap. Their solution: a pebble-bed reactor. A pebble-bed reactor is a high-temperature reactor that is helium cooled and graphite-moderated. The helium flows through the core of the reactor, taking the heat from the nuclear reaction to power the turbines to produce electricity. (For more on pebble-bed reactors, click here.) The pebble-bed design is also safe. In case of a failure, the plant engineers can simply walk away from the reactor. Why? It cools itself down with the need for a coolant. Scientists from other parts of the world have been working to develop a pebble-bed reactor for years, with not much success as the Chinese have already achieved. They've already got a prototype, and are planning a full scale model by 2010. Those timelines are crazy in the world of nuclear reactors -- but so is China's growth. Check out the full article in Wired.