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China Invests Big in Clean and Cheap Energy from Thorium
- fastbeef 8y agoWasn’t Bill Gates a strong proponent for (and even investor in?) thorium reactors? Did that pan out?
- adventured 8y agoGates has put a lot of money into TerraPower to develop their traveling wave reactor tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor And routinely works eg with China: [Nov 2017] "Bill Gates' nuclear firm TerraPower and the China National Nuclear Corporation have signed an agreement to develop a world-first nuclear reactor, using other nuclear reactors' waste" https://www.smh.com.au/business/bill-gates-and-china-partner-on-worldfirst-nuclear-technology-20171106-gzfrf0.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/bill-gates-and-china-partner...
- yazr 8y agoTeraPower is a clever attempt at a fast reactor using uranium/plutonium fuel. We have had various fast reactors (commercial and research) since the 70s. IIRC they tend to be very twitchy, and have proliferation issues. Thorium reactors, a.k.a LFTR, a.k.a. "hope-ium" are still very much on the drawing board. They have some nice properties (stability, safer, liquid based). p.s. I am pro renewable. Nuclear will comeback around 2050 when we run out of space...
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoCan anybody provide any real-world examples of proliferation issues from nuclear material?
- FlipperBucket 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation ? Thorium/breeder reactors don't work for large booms, but would be fine for small booms and dirty bombs.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoWhat I mean to say is: Consider that the world's first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall at Windscale, England, was opened in 1956¹, has there ever been a nuclear material used as a weapon other than the obvious two and conventional depleted uranium armour piercing projectiles? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Early_years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Early_years
- KMag 8y agoIf you're going to count DU shells as nuclear proliferation, you should also count Po-210 poisoning (Litvinenko, and perhaps others) and that guy who poisoned his gf with I-131. Though, when talking of nuclear proliferation, we almost always mean just the proliferation of nuclear and thermonuclear explosive devices. North Korea used a power reactor to produce all of the Plutonium for its nuclear explosive devices, some of which were supposedly of a weapon form-factor have been used. If by "used" you mean "used in anger", then of course, there are only the two instances. (It also should be noted that in the context of nuclear reactors and proliferation, Little Boy is only tangentially related. Nuclear reactors weren't used in the production of Little Boy.)
- jrumbut 8y agoThat didn't happen by accident, but was the result of caution (and probably lowish number of attempts). I would be curious to hear how/if thorium presents a qualitatively different proliferation problem.
- jhayward 8y ago>Thorium/breeder reactors don't work for large booms Thorium breeder reactors in fact will work just fine for big booms by selectively producing protactinium-233 and then running it through a couple of decay and chemical separation cycles.
- Animats 8y agoIs there a better source for this than "Thorium Energy World"?
- fspeech 8y agoYou can try googling "Chinese TMSR Strategic Pioneer Science and Technology Project site:sinap.ac.cn" and "TMSR site:sinap.ac.cn". Or even just "thorium site:sinap.ac.cn".
- downrightmike 8y agoThese reactors do refine uranium 232. So still making something that is really dangerous. https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium.html https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium.html
- ulkhf 8y agoGiven the vast quantities of existing depleted uranium and spent nuclear fuel I feel the molten chloride fast breeder reactor should come first.
- soperj 8y agoCan't you just use a Candu reactor for that now?
- solarkraft 8y agoAh, Thorium.
- philipkglass 8y agoAFAICT this article offers no dates, no numbers, and no primary sources. China did announce a thorium research program back in 2011, and continues to publish research, but I don't see any notable recent developments reported on other sites. The IAEA does not currently list any reactors matching this description in operation or under construction in China: https://pris.iaea.org/pris/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.aspx?current=CN https://pris.iaea.org/pris/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.... World Nuclear News does not have any recent stories about Chinese thorium reactors. Is this article just a rehash of old news? Or has a Chinese thorium reactor achieved criticality recently? Videos of simulations and 3D renderings are a dime a dozen. New reactor concepts are interesting only when someone operates real hardware. China can do so but there's nothing in this article that makes me think it has just done so.
- gnusci 8y agoWell, it seems if a MSR will be built, it will be in China https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-power/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-...
- noobermin 8y agoPerhaps it's a slow...news(?) day at "thoriumenergyworld.com"
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tim333 8y agoSomething here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chinese-government-invest-billions-molten-salt-reactor-deng/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chinese-government-invest-bil... >[late 2017] China Academy of Sciences and the government of Gansu Province signed a co-operation agreement to work together on China’s Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) project and to have a demonstration or research reactor built in Gansu Province by 2020. >The total investment was planed to be 22 billion CNY (3 billion USD)
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- ChuckMcM 8y agoThis is basically translated from the Shanghai Institute of Applied physics (www.sinap.ac.cn) press releases. It will be interesting if China develops a complete Thorium fuel cycle and the reactor designs to take advantage of it.