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Eco-friendly thorium nuclear reactor

25.07.2021

China plans to build the world's first experimental thorium nuclear reactor that does not require water to cool. Such a reactor can be called "clean".

The reactor will run on liquid thorium, and molten salts will be used for cooling. Such a setup would have a whole host of advantages. Firstly, the reactor does not require a huge amount of water, that is, it can work in desert regions. Secondly, thorium is much cheaper than uranium, and its decay does not produce elements that can be used to create nuclear weapons. Third, the waste from such a reactor has a half-life of 500 years versus 10 years for a uranium reactor.

In addition, in the event of an unforeseen situation, the cooling salt quickly hardens, effectively sealing the radioactive thorium.

The prototype of the 2 MW reactor will be ready in August, and the first tests will start in September. A full-scale reactor with a capacity of 100 MW will be ready only by 2030. It is planned to be built in the city of Wuwei.

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Sunspots affect the climate 07.09.2012

Scientists have long suspected that the 11-year solar cycle affects the climate of certain regions on Earth. Although taking into account the average annual temperatures did not make it possible to confirm the expected regularities. Now, an international team of researchers has found that unusually cold winters in Central Europe are directly related to low solar activity - these are precisely the periods when the number of sunspots was minimal. And the key factor was the accounting of those years when the largest rivers of Germany were covered with ice, and in the first place, the mighty Rhine.

Although the Earth's surface continues to warm in general, new observations have revealed a clear relationship between periods of low solar activity and some cooling in a limited area of Central Europe. According to Frank Cirocco, leader of the research team and professor at the Johannes Guttenberg University in Mainz, one can observe periods of cooling primarily by the behavior of the Rhine river: either it is frozen or it is not.

From the beginning of the 1780th to the middle of the XNUMXth century, the wide and full-flowing Rhine was actively used for cargo navigation. In the annual reporting documentation of the river ports on this river, information was necessarily displayed when and in what part of the Rhine was covered with ice. Scientists have used these readily available documents, as well as other historical data, to determine the number of freeze episodes since XNUMX.

Sirocco and his colleagues found that between 1780 and 1963 the Rhine froze over in several places fourteen times. The huge size of the river means that we are talking about very low temperatures. Comparison of episodes of rising rivers with an 11-year cycle of solar activity - a cycle of changes in the magnetic field of the Sun and, as a result, the total radiation power - allowed Professor Sirocco and his colleagues to establish that in ten cases out of fourteen, the Rhine froze exactly when the Sun was minimum number of spots. Using statistical methods, scientists have calculated that with a probability of 99%, the cold winters of Central Europe are inextricably linked with low solar activity.

When the number of sunspots decreases, the Sun emits less ultraviolet light. Less radiation - less heating of the atmosphere, which entails a change in the circulation of air flows in the troposphere and stratosphere of the Earth. These changes lead to climate events such as the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation). The authors of the study show that these changes are not only causing cooling in parts of Central Europe, but also warming in other European countries, such as Iceland. Thus, a decrease in solar activity will not necessarily cool the entire globe.

In fact, the climate is a complex system. And the short-term local temperature dip only temporarily masks the effect of global warming. But scientists do not deny the anthropogenic factor in climate change. "Climate is not described by just one variable," says Professor Sirocco. "In fact, we are dealing with at least five or six variables. One of them is definitely carbon dioxide, and the other is solar activity."

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