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China prepares to test thorium-fuelled nuclear reactor
- 1024core 5y agoIt's a shame that India hasn't jumped on the Thorium train. India has plenty of Thorium (some call India the "Saudi Arabia of Thorium"). India desperately needs to shut down its coal power plants and replace them with something safer (like a Thorium reactor)
- nine_k 5y agoThat would require really powerful industry, and political will. While the former may be more or less present, the latter is apparently concentrated on totally different issues.
- mynameismon 5y agoMore than political will, it requires co-operation from the people. If you do not convince people that a thorium reactor is safe and necessary, the progress on the reactor will be stalled by public protests and frivolous lawsuits. By the time work actually begins, elections will be around the corner and you will be soon voted out of power to be replaced by someone who's sole motive will be to reverse all the work done for reactor.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- adrianN 5y agoIt is my understanding that India's reliance on coal stems at least in part from close ties between politicians and coal companies. India is pretty well suited for renewables too, yet they choose to burn more coal.
- pm90 5y agoAgreed, however It also has plenty of coal and cheap labor, which makes coal fired power plants economic.
- sinyug 5y ago> It's a shame that India hasn't jumped on the Thorium train. I have been hearing about this all my life. And I don't think we will see any progress in our lifetimes. We have a cultural problem with over-promising and under-delivering regardless of who is in power. We cannot even get regular nuclear power plants installed without interference from foreign NGOs interfering in Indian politics, local anti-nuclear fear-mongers and Christian churches.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudankulam_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudankulam_Nuclear_Power_Plant
- dustypotato 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_power_programme#Stage_III_%E2%80%93_Thorium_Based_Reactors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_... It's trying, but progress is slow
- known 5y agoIndia follows the "Sheep Herd" mentality. The whole country's economy is based on people getting into "Profitable" domains mostly following the success of a pioneer in the field. The most recent example of this ideology is the "Business Process Outsourcing" industry. New BPO units are propping up here and there at a dime a dozen leading to a quality deterioration in the final deliverable. This process will continue till a saturation level is reached and then they will wait till another "Killer" domain picks up momentum. Till then India will be in a so called "Calm Period" where nothing great and major takes place. https://qz.com/519777/why-india-needs-a-new-constitution/ https://qz.com/519777/why-india-needs-a-new-constitution/
- chitowneats 5y agoVery exciting stuff. I hope they succeed and others can use it as a model.
- xbmcuser 5y agoChina seems to be the only country still exploring new nuclear fission technologies commercialization at government level. In the US and other western countries it is mostly by commercial companies so I feel China probably will take the lead in nuclear in the next few decades. As this requires decades long planning and commercial companies are unable to work unless they get quick results. I previously submitted about China's plan to convert nuclear waste to glass for easier storage. So China seems to have planned to use a lot of nuclear power in the future and has also made plans for storing the nuclear waste. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28507599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28507599
- john_yaya 5y agoI’m not sure the race between government entities and the private sector always favors the former, even when it comes to R&D. A prime (no pun intended) example of that is the race to sequence the human genome.
- elil17 5y agoI don’t think that’s the example you think it is - HGP was a US government project. Private companies went on to commercialize gene sequencing, but the R&D was started by the public sector.
- paganel 5y agoTo be fair that's lots more money involved and needed in nuclear research. Of course that the private sector can also get hold of that amount of money but because of the way greater sums involved it needs to "show results" sooner rather than later. Those using government funds can label it as "military research" or something similar and then they're looking at a least a few decades of no-one asking them where the money went and why.
- DantesKite 5y agoI hope China succeeds. For all this talk about climate change dangers, the West is taking the most suboptimal approach.
- BurningFrog 5y agoChina is also building a huge number of coal plants, unfortunately.
- jpgvm 5y agoYou aren't wrong. They have enormous energy problems thus are building everything at breakneck speed. They are however commited to carbon neutrality by 2060 so there is good reason to believe they intend to scale back coal as soon as they are able in favor of their nuclear and renewable generation is that capacity comes online. China lives or dies on the approval of it's populace and they have made it abundantly clear that air quality and public health are what they care about and so it will be so.
- dragonelite 5y agoI think they said their peak would be at around 2030~2040 then it would decrease to being carbon neutral.
- Fricken 5y agoI'm not a big fan of China's huge emissions growths over the last decade, but, on the other hand, they have a pretty good track record of coming up with plans and sticking to them, and they do have a plan.
- fy20 5y agoWhich is exactly why we should be hoping this works. Given the way the Chinese economy works - being state controlled and all - if it takes off I expect they will start replacing coal plants with this, well before EOL. In the West it would he much harder to do that.
- holoduke 5y agoVery interesting. A potential safer and cheaper operating costs. A somewhat more complex design is required though. The west need to focus on nuclear again to stay competitive. Too bad that we don't have true leaders anymore. But only people who are afraid to make choices and play it safe.
- dagw 5y agoLots of countries have parties with leaders and politicians making clear and strong arguments for pushing for more nuclear power. The one thing all these parties have in common is that almost no one votes for them.
- Aachen 5y ago> people who are afraid to make choices and play it safe. Where it should be noted that playing it safe does not refer to anything physical. Playing it safe for climate means nuclear, playing it safe for accidental deaths means nuclear, playing it safe for your election campaign... somehow, that means anti-nuclear.
- legulere 5y agoIn Germany we had a thorium reactor running in production, that was shit down because of issues: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300
- tsjq 5y agoApt typo ;)
- Aachen 5y agoReason: fuel pebbles getting stuck in feed lines somehow causing small amounts of radioactive material to be leaked, if I'm reading and summarizing this right. Transporting pebbles seems like the least hard thing about nuclear energy, interesting.
- MichaelMoser123 5y agothe THTR-300 was a prototype system. It's a pitty that they didn't follow through with the next generation. I hope that the Chinese have studied the design of the THTR-300.
- amai 5y ago"As was determined in 1989, dismantling would begin after approximately 30 years in safe enclosure." 30 years waiting time before one can start to demolish the reactor. That shows how dangerous this technology really is.
- dsq 5y agoThis is a main selling point of having a high proportion of your politicians having an engineering background. They will have an understanding of technical subjects and more willingness to authorize technical projects, unlike lawyer based government in the West.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoNot just that, Chinese politicians also understand what key technologies (or even whole companies) to prioritize buying or stealing from the West, like EV and battery tech, renewables, networking, robotics, AI and semiconductors. While German politicians still ask for the internet to be printed for them.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoThe lack if strategic thinking, and subjugation by the US, of Germany has been made painfully clear with the Covid vaccine. While the UK made sure that the Oxford vaccine went to British pharma, the German let Pfizer take over BioNTech's vaccine.
- ginko 5y agoGermany got through the pandemic with about half as many infections and deaths per capita as the UK. The vaccination rates are almost the same as the UK by now. So I wouldn't call this a great strategic victory for the UK. Especially since it also cost them quite a bit of goodwill in Europe.
- makomk 5y agoAll the blaming of the UK seems to have been really blatant scapegoating that went unchallenged because it fit with what the media wanted people to believe, though. The UK suffered the same shortfall in yield of the AstraZeneca vaccine as everywhere else, though to a slightly lesser extent early on as the production line here got funded earlier and the early teething troubles sorted out sooner. We were also far more reliant on the AZ vaccine than the EU, as they themselves liked to point out in order to argue they actually did a good job. This meant the yield and blood clot issues had a much bigger impact here. The UK government just did a far better job of limiting the impact of this by ordering more vaccines early on, basing their rollout on what AZ could actually deliver, and better public communications about the safety of the vaccine. There's no reason the EU couldn't have done the same other than their own decisions - AZ was quite keen to set up larger-scale manufacturing for the EU, and they could easily have negotiated a provision like the UK's requiring timely notice of how much vaccine would actually be delivered. They just didn't because they didn't seem to understand why this was necessary.
- tsjq 5y agoWhat about the weapon-making-ability from these reactors ?
- adrianN 5y agoWhat about it? China already has access to nuclear weapons.
- throwaway210222 5y ago1. there is a theoretical pathway from the Protactinium product. But its easier to just start a weapon from natural uranium.
- KoftaBob 5y agoChina already has nukes.
- hkt 5y agoChina turns my head weekly at this point. The West is just depressing government by rent seekers. (Not a China spambot: just wish politicians weren't all the same)
- tuatoru 5y agoAgree about the second part. China's government seems to be taking The Stepford Wives as an instruction manual. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives
- semisober 5y agoJust read it and it seems obviously very impressive that they managed to switch from uranium to Thorium. But I do wonder how their trials of fusion reactors are going. Not too long ago there were breakthroughs in this tech. Perhaps if more work got put into this we could finally break the needed gap and produce more power that we put into it. Thus making it a viable and clean power source of the future.
- tuatoru 5y agoFusion is still a lab experiment. If a fusion reactor with an energy gain of 100 and stable operation in the 10_000_000 second range were announced tomorrow, we would be only 20 years away from breaking sod on the first commercial-scale plant -- if the process goes very smoothly. From there it would be only 30 to 50 years before fusion was making a significant contribution on a global scale, if it can compete commercially.
- Aachen 5y agoIf I remember correctly they're also paying into ITER, which afaik is the most promising thing in the works right now (not counting DEMO that's barely started planning), so that'll take a while still.
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- andygroundwater 5y agoFair play to the lads!
- Tycho 5y agoWhat happens if the CCP uses its dictator powers to rapidly transform China into a low-carbon economy and then starts leveraging the carbon credits system to heavily penalize and stymy western rivals?
- aembleton 5y agoThen we all benefit by having less carbon being added to the atmosphere every year.
- tsimionescu 5y agoThey save the world from the worse man-made catastrophe in history? The least of our problems is any country moving to carbon neutrality too early. Unfortunately, China is nowhere near carbon neutrality, and is not really moving in that direction with any speed at the moment.
- faichai 5y ago> Molten-salt reactors are just one of many advanced nuclear technologies China is investing in. In 2002, an intergovernmental forum identified six promising reactor technologies to fast-track by 2030, including reactors cooled by lead or sodium liquids. China has programmes for all of them. The west is so fucked. Meanwhile in the UK we’re reintroducing Imperial units, getting the UAE to invest in our infrastructure and fighting inane culture wars on Twitter. The lack of proactivity and long term planning for things that matter, combined with academia’s lurch towards publishing treadmills instead of truly novel innovation means we are surely going to fall behind. At this point China’s future hegemony is all but assured.
- lmilcin 5y agoCongratulations. You just discovered the simple fact of life that you can do everything much faster when you don't need half your population to agree on it and don't need to spend your whole focus on getting their approval to be reelected. I just hope you understand what you wish for.
- PikachuEXE 5y agoIt's just another person not learning enough from history. Soviet Union actually looks better... before their fall
- bilbo0s 5y agoAs someone who lived through the cold war, I can tell you the Soviet Union never looked "better". Maybe I was just the one crazy person who thought the Soviet lifestyle and society was dreary, but I don't think I was. If you think the soviets looked better, you're likely looking at the past through rose colored glasses. Most people would have done anything they could to avoid living that "better" soviet life.
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- lenkite 5y agoGood news. China will likely prove thorium reactors work and then sell them to other nations. US&EU will give lectures to the world on renewables and how terrible nuclear power is, yet will keep using their coal plants. Plans on shutting coal will keep moving indefinitely into the future - 2020, 2030, 2040, yadda https://www.power-eng.com/coal/eia-u-s-coal-fired-generation-making-2021-rally-so-far/ https://www.power-eng.com/coal/eia-u-s-coal-fired-generation... https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/coal-overtakes-wind-become-germanys-top-electricity-source https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/coal-ov...
- slim 5y agoI hope they have acquired all the intellectual property for this like 5G. It's hilarious to see USA and UK deny access to chinese technology while trying to get around their intellectual property
- motives 5y agoIt's worth mentioning IP law is applied on a per-territory basis (i.e. you have to register your IP in every territory you would like it enforced, and that territory's courts are solely responsible for its enforcement in that territory). Many countries government have laws which restrict IP in national security concerns [0], which nuclear reactors may come under. Furthermore, patents require the innovation used is published publicly, which may not be desirable for sensitive technologies like nuclear reactors. Trade secrets and the like are more likely to be used in this particular case. [0] - https://www.wipo.int/pct/en/texts/nat_sec.html https://www.wipo.int/pct/en/texts/nat_sec.html
- bayesian_horse 5y agoMore likely: China will pollute much of their countryside and waste billions on corruption and inefficiency. Also, China is polluting their air to a much higher degree than any western nation, and can't keep up with rising demand. Radioactive waste spilling into ground water would be a catastrophe. Meanwhile, actual democracies can't place nuclear reactors and other facilities wherever they please. Citizens would object.
- steeve 5y agoDo we know which design it is ?
- lionkor 5y agochinese design
- Aachen 5y agoYou think it has a Made in PRC sticker?
- acidburnNSA 5y agoGraphite-moderated FLiBe salt fuel with air-dump final heat rejection.
- Gravityloss 5y agoGreat! There are western startups working on thorium energy as well. For example, this video of a Danish startup Seaborg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps8oi_HY35E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps8oi_HY35E
- amai 5y agoAnd the nuclear waste they will send to Taiwan.
- amai 5y agoChina is really copying everything from the west, even the bad ideas.