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China may have achieved a “Sputnik moment” in the clean energy technology race by successfully reloading a nuclear reactor that runs on thorium.

According to Chinese state media, a group of scientists recently managed to without causing a shutdown — a feat never achieved before. The success was announced by the project’s chief scientist Xu Hongjie during a closed-door meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on April 8, Chinese news outlet last week.

Such a breakthrough could be transformative to the global energy landscape, as thorium has long been hailed as a far safer and cheaper alternative to uranium in nuclear reactors. While also a radioactive element, thorium produces less waste, and the silver-colored metal, mostly found in monazite, is much more common in the Earth’s crust.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), thorium is three times more abundant in nature than uranium, but historically has found little use in power generation due to the significant economic and technical hurdles.

China takes lead

The latest announcement in China represents a key step in removing some of the hurdles. In the April 8 meeting, Xu said China “now leads the global frontier” in nuclear energy, as cited by Guangming Daily.

The reactor used by Xu’s team is a prototype located in the Gobi Desert, known for its rich endowment of minerals such as uranium and rare earths. The experimental unit is able to generate 2 megawatts of thermal power, using molten salt to carry the fuel and manage heat, with thorium serving as its fuel source.

Compared to uranium, thorium can generate a significantly higher amount of energy via nuclear fission. A estimates that thorium’s power generation could be 35 times higher. Thorium molten-salt reactors (TMSRs) are also compact, do not require water cooling, cannot experience a meltdown and produce very little long-lived radioactive waste, according to the IAEA.

When announcing the breakthrough, Xu acknowledged that its project was based on previous research by US researchers who pioneered molten salt reactor technology in the 1950s, but abandoned shortly after to pursue uranium-fueled ones.

Xu — who was tasked with the thorium reactor project in 2009 — told Chinese media that his team spent years dissecting declassified American documents, replicating experiments and innovating beyond them.

Vast thorium supply

The technology breakthrough follows a report earlier this year that China’s thorium reserves, already known as the world’s largest, may actually be bigger than previously estimated, according to a national survey cited by in February.

In the report, scientists claim that the Bayan Obo mining complex in Inner Mongolia, which is the world’ s largest rare earth producer and has a huge amount of thorium in tailings, could yield 1 million tonnes of thorium – enough to fuel China for 60,000 years.

The Chinese government has long aimed to harness the power-generation potential of thorium, which it sees as part of the nation’s strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. The country, as the world’s-second-largest carbon emitter, has reportedly been working on thorium-fueled reactors since the 1970s.

Last year, China of the world’s first thorium molten-salt reactors in the Gobi Desert. These are larger than the one used in Xu’s project, and are expected to generate 10 megawatts of electricity starting in 2029.