China’s nuclear power industry drives demand for boron-10 isotope and high-end products rely on imports

In nature, there are two natural isotopes of boron: boron-10 isotope and boron-11 isotope. Among them, the natural abundance of boron-10 isotope is less than 20%, and high-abundance boron-10 series products must be artificially prepared. Boron-10 isotope has efficient neutron absorption ability. Its ability to capture thermal neutrons is about 80,000 times that of boron-11 isotope. It is the preferred neutron absorber in the field of nuclear technology. Boron-10 isotope also has the advantages of a wide absorption spectrum, no gamma rays after absorption, and is non-toxic and non-carcinogenic.

With the vigorous development of my country’s nuclear power industry, the demand for boron-10 isotope products is increasing, and the quality requirements are also getting higher and higher. Due to the limited scale of domestic industrial production of boron-10 isotope, there is still a big gap between product production technology and quality and foreign advanced levels, and high-end products still require foreign imports. With the advent of the era of fast neutron reactors in fourth-generation nuclear power plants, my country’s demand for high-quality boron-10 isotope products is increasing. At the same time, the demand for domestic production enterprises to industrially produce higher-end products is also becoming more and more urgent.

According to the “Global and China Boron-10 Isotope Industry In-depth Research Report in 2023” released by the Industrial Research Center It shows that from a production perspective, currently, only a few countries in the world, such as the United States, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France, have achieved industrial production of boron 10, and their technical and product performance levels are also relatively high. Among them, the United States has the largest production of boron 10. In recent years, with the continuous advancement of relevant technologies in China, domestic Dalian Borntan Technology Co., Ltd., Liaoning Honghao Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., and Dalian Tairui Haiming Chemical have achieved industrial production, greatly meeting domestic demand.

From the perspective of demand structure, developed countries such as Europe, the United States, and Japan have more demand for high-end products, while the demand of developing countries with relatively backward economies is mainly concentrated in the mid- to low-end fields. However, with the rapid economic development of developing countries, the new demand for boron 10 is shifting to developing countries. Boron 10 can be used to manufacture nuclear leakage prevention control boxes, lightweight materials for nuclear equipment, cancer targeting agents, etc. It is now widely used in the nuclear power industry, national defense equipment, medical and other fields.

Industrial researchers believe that in recent years, my country’s nuclear power-driven ship technology development, nuclear power plant construction and use The expansion of scale and the increase in the application of nuclear medicine have led to an increase in demand for boron 10, and the market size has continued to expand. On the supply side, although China has made great progress in the production technology and production process of boron 10, and the number of enterprises is also increasing, it still faces certain obstacles in the production of high-abundance boron 10, and there is still a gap with advanced countries. In the future, boron-10 isotope production technology will be further improved. With the deepening of demand in existing application fields and the expansion of new application fields, the market demand for boron-10 isotope industry will continue to increase.