China’s National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) has granted an operating permit to the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for the country’s first thorium molten salt reactor (TMSR) demonstrator plant.

The NNSA said the reactor, TMSR-LF1, can now operate for 10 years after a review concluded it meets all national safety requirements.

In 2017, the China Academy of Sciences and the government of Gansu, a landlocked province in the northwest of the country, signed a cooperation agreement to work together on the TMSR project and to have a demonstration plant built in the city of Wuwei, in the Gobi Desert region.

Reports at the time said the total investment was planned to be about $450m (€412m).

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post said the reactor will still have to go through rounds of testing before it reaches first criticality.