China announces nuclear energy breakthrough with fourth-gen, gas-cooled reactor plant — here's how it could power over 15 million homes

TCD - The Cool Down:  China has announced that it is expanding the world's first fourth-generation nuclear power plant, Interesting Engineering reported.

The Shidaowan nuclear power plant in eastern China's Shandong province — a joint development from China Huaneng Group, Tsinghua University, and China National Nuclear Corporation — features the world's first high-temperature gas-cooled reactor and started commercial operation in December, per the news report.

Now, the plant is being expanded to include another third-generation pressurized water reactor along with four more pressurized water reactors at a later date.

"We will maximize the effect of the third-generation pressurized water reactor and the fourth-generation high-temperature gas-cooled reactor integrated at the big base; further enhance China's nuclear power equipment manufacturing, construction, operation and maintenance capabilities; continuously expand the scenarios of comprehensive utilization of nuclear energy; and cultivate and develop new quality productive forces in nuclear power," said Zhang Aijun, vice president of the HTGR Nuclear Power Company, Ltd., per Interesting Engineering.

When completed, the plant will reportedly generate enough power annually for over 17 million three-member households, offsetting about 12.7 million tons of standard coal consumption and about 30.4 million tons of planet-overheating carbon pollution.

Though nuclear power remains a scary prospect for much of the public because of the nuclear meltdown disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, it is also a reliable source of clean energy that is far safer than many believe — and is getting theoretically safer with scientific and technological breakthroughs such as the ones China is employing.

According to China Global Television Network, the technology that China is using to create new fourth-gen reactors — tech that has been referred to as "meltdown-proof" — includes a "pebble-bed reactor." Tsinghua University researchers have said this type of design is much safer than a reactor with traditional fuel rods, per The Independent. (Not everyone necessarily agrees with the safety assessment of the new plants, though, as one 2021 Union of Concerned Scientists report pointed out.)

Chinese scientists have also developed a method of extracting uranium from seawater, making nuclear energy potentially even more economically viable as well as safer.

And it isn't just China that is making breakthroughs in the nuclear energy realm. A nuclear energy plant is being built in Wyoming on the site of a retiring coal plant. The nuclear plant will use liquid sodium as a coolant instead of water, mitigating the risk of meltdown.