Manufacturing

China's second lunar satellite, the Chang'e-2, has been safely operating for 180 days as of April 1, and has reached its six-month designed life, according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND).

A series of photo released online shows that the PLA have new Armed Helicopter - WZ10. The WZ10 is not a concept or design on paper, it fly in the air now.

Chinese battery and automobile producer BYD Co. is scrambling to make a last-minute design change to its all-electric battery car and is now aiming to make the car available to private buyers in California and possibly a few other "key U.S. states" by 2012 after test marketing the car in Southern California during the second half of this year, said company Chairman and founder Wang Chuanfu in an interview.

The redesign of the car—called the e6—even before it is launched in the U.S. comes as a result of BYD's decision to improve the car's rear seating area and means the U.S. test marketing and launch of the electric car would be delayed, in the end, by about a year.

The company was aiming to begin the test marketing in California during the second half of last year. The e6 debuted in China last March as taxis in Shenzhen.

Though BYD is more known for its ambition in electric cars, the home-grown Chinese company sells mostly gasoline-fueled vehicles in China and is one of that country's top auto brands, with sales of more than 500,000 vehicles last year.

When China announced that one of its government companies had figured out how to reprocess spent uranium, it was with no small amount of fanfare.

The development was billed as a breakthrough that could save the nation the cost of importing uranium (known as yellowcake in its semi-processed form) and allow it to sidestep troublesome storage of radioactive waste material. “With the new technology, China’s existing detected uranium resources can be used for 3,000 years,” state-run China Central Television gushed on Monday when it delivered the news of the claimed breakthrough by China National Nuclear Corp. “Nuclear fuel feat to solve uranium shortage,” read a front page headline in the next day’s China Daily.

Foreign analysts were less excited. And the market seemed positively unconvinced: Uranium prices moved higher, not lower as would be expected if the largest future consumer had rid itself of the need to buy fresh supplies.

Actually, China National Nuclear made clear in a brief announcement (in Chinese), dated Dec. 22 and posted to its website, that the reprocessing claim is based on a very small pilot project, an experiment.