China Plans to Clean Up With Meltdown-Proof Nuclear Reactors

``During a recent visit to the Tsinghua facility, technologists were testing the huge helium blower that will circulate the gas coolant at the Shandong site once it starts up. Such high-temperature reactors are immune to meltdown because they don't require elaborate external cooling systems of the sort that failed at Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. The graphite coating protects the fuel from breaking down, even at temperatures well beyond those found in the reactor core during operation, and once the interior temperature passes a certain threshold, the nuclear reactions slow, cooling the reactor and making it essentially self-regulating... if [the reactor is] successful, Shandong plant would generate a total of 210 megawatts and will be followed by a 600-megawatt facility in Jiangxi province. Beyond that, China plans to sell these reactors internationally; in January, Chinese president Xi Jinping signed an agreement with King Salman bin Abdulaziz to construct a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in Saudi Arabia.''