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China seems to be the only country still exploring new nuclear fission technologies commercialization at government level. In the US and other western countries

China 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 ago
I’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 ago
  I 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.
  - john_yaya 5y ago
    That’s not really accurate. Celera ran in parallel to the HGP, and (at least for a while) generated superior results at 1/10th the cost.
    - elil17 5y ago
      They started 8 years after HGP (which was a 13 year long project), used data from HGP, and only ever sequenced a mouse genome.
- paganel 5y ago
  To 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.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
This assumes that Chinese nuclear producers follow all the rules strictly and there is no corruption involved. The Japanese people lost their trust in the government and companies to keep things safe, which is what killed the industry in that country. While China isn’t going to face similar voter pressure, one accident like Fukushima could make things really chaotic quickly.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Even with Fukushima, nuclear is far safer than coal.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    It doesn’t matter. Public perception will do nuclear in faster than a slow killing coal plant (not that Japan does much new coal, they’ve doubled down on LNG).
  - specktr 5y ago
    Likely true (I don’t know the source you’re referencing) given cancer risk associated with coal etc. But single nuclear events and fears associated with them stand out to voters, long term health implications of coal or other adverse effects of other power alternatives likely do not.
    - samuel 5y ago
      China has no voters, so they don't need to be worried about public opinion(for now). Furthermore, the effects of air pollution are more evident there so it's easier to sell the tradeoff, IMO(I know almost nothing about China, TBH).
      - dragonelite 5y ago
        China has a lot of polling stations, they can crawl social media to get what is annoying citizens. They also have a long and rich workers uprising and rebellion. There is enough to be worried about.
88840-8855 5y ago
Germany also has a state backed research program. This, however, has been cut after Fukushima and the political decision to not rely on nuclear energy anymore. People got scared, understandable, hence, the decision back than had a huge support. China is a technocratic autocracy. Although they rely on the approval of the masses, they can plan long term, instead from election to election. And they calculate whether it's worth or not to manipulate the public opinion on certain topics.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Germany is doing a huge disservice to everyone by continuing to burn coal instead of keeping (to say nothing of expansion) their nuclear power stations. I understand knee-jerk reactions to huge events like Chernobyl, but they should not last this long. I think French nuclear energy companies profited off that handsomely.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    It wasn't a knee-jerk reaction, at least not in proper context. German nuclear exit was organized in the 90-2000s, formally under the red-green Schröder government, then delayed under the conservative government afterwards (so called Ausstieg vom Ausstieg) and then again overturned after Fukushima. It's largely a secular trend in most of the world as nuclear energy usage has continued to fall, mostly for financial reasons.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      The first exit was surprisingly well planned, for the time. Obviously back then climate change wasn't even close to as urgent as it is now. The overturned Ausstieg-vom-Ausstieg was a knee-jerk reaction to a change in public opinion, a change that included traditionally conservative voters.
    - jabl 5y ago
      And after securing the nuclear exit and leaving political office Schröder got a board seat at the Nordstream gas pipeline project. How... convenient. Germany was going to switch to renewables? Yeah, haha, good one.
yborg 5y ago
This is a 2 MWt research reactor. The US operated a 7.5 MWt molten salt thorium fueled reactor at ORNL from 1964-1969; I wouldn't consider the technology new.
- oefrha 5y ago
  No, that reactor was uranium-fueled, not thorium-fueled.
  - eco 5y ago
    It used U-235 then switched to U-233 bred from thorium in a separate reactor (but still partially testing the thorium fuel cycle). They did this to simplify the design by not needing to incorporate the breeding elements into a novel new reactor design so they could focus on measuring the reactor's performance. I think it's fair to say it was thorium fueled, just in two separate stages (U-233 only comes into existence by breeding thorium). The long term plan was to next make a breeding version of the reactor and use thorium directly but development was cancelled.
    - oefrha 5y ago
      Well I suppose the characterization as thorium-fueled is debatable. In any case, it was certainly designed to study the prospects of an actual liquid fluoride thorium reactor. The current reactor can be viewed as an application or successor to that experiment, and it's based on the same design with modern improvements; TFA did point this out.
brundolf 5y ago
This could be good for the world when it comes to climate change, nuclear being the most powerful way to cut emissions and China being one of the biggest polluters right now.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  How are we measuring "powerful" here? It's widely accepted that renewables, efficiency, carbon fees and global legislation are the leading ways to cut emisions. Nuclear is cool tech, it just seems people are strangely monomaniacal about it and I've never understood why. Maybe it's like "flying cars" and it caught people's attention at an early age and persists as a idea even when it's not actually as generally useful as decent public transport and city planning.
  - oytis 5y ago
    > It's widely accepted By whom? The benefit of nuclear power is that it is low on CO2 emissions (unlike fossil fuels) and can produce sufficient amount of power for an industrial society (unlike renewables)
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      No one important, just every government in the world. I agree on your first point (and posted some stats that back it up) but not on your second. Just stop for a moment and ponder, who has a strong financial motive to spread the idea that renewable energy (and carbon fees and all that other stuff) is not a good solution. Have you noticed that the thing that links nuclear boosters is their opinion on renewables being useless?
      - oytis 5y ago
        > who has a strong financial motive to spread the idea that renewable energy (and carbon fees and all that other stuff) is not a good solution. Do you mean that renewables (wind, solar, what else?) can't produce enough energy for the industry is just an opinion not a fact? I'm happy to see the data that would refute it.
anticodon 5y ago
In Russia, state owned company Rosatom builds incredibly cool things like fast breeder reactors and floating nuclear power station. It's also currently building 35 nuclear reactors around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov
mytailorisrich 5y ago
In France as well with the caveat that the French government is constrained by EU subsidies laws and political risk (nuclear energy is a political risk), not to mention financing limitations as well.
buzzwords 5y ago
Countries like Iran would like to, but they are not allowed to.
KoftaBob 5y ago
Couldn't you say something very similar about space? > In the US and other western countries it is mostly by commercial companies > this requires decades long planning and commercial companies are unable to work unless they get quick results. and yet that didn't stop SpaceX from leapfrogging entire nation-states in rocket technology, being the first to develop fully reusable rockets that land themselves, and as a result, are by far the cheapest option for launching things like commercial satellites. I don't see why commercial companies can't accomplish similar things in the nuclear power space.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Well, SpaceX did all that mostly on government money, as NASA was by far the largest buyer of SpaceX rocket launches, and directly invested hundreds of millions of dollars on top of that (and are still doing so).
credit_guy 5y ago
> China seems to be the only country still exploring new nuclear fission technologies commercialization at government level Maybe you should head over to the US Department of Energy website and take a look [1], [2]. [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-reactor-technologies https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-reactor-technologies [2] https://www.energy.gov/ne/our-budget https://www.energy.gov/ne/our-budget
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  Commercialization being the operative word. Nuclear research is nice, but doesn't help one bit compared to building reactors even with 50-year-old tech.
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    If we are talking commercialization, then DoE awarded more than $1 BN to NuScale to develop small modular nuclear reactors [1] . They could go live sometime this decade. This thorium experimental reactor in China, is just that, an experimental one. If everything goes well, they'll have a commercial version in 2030, but it's way to early to estimate how likely this is. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2020/10/29/the-future-of-small-modular-reactors-department-of-energy-awards-135-billion-to-nuscale-power-for-smr-development/?sh=55a781214dab https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2020/10/29/the-futur...
hker 5y ago
> As this requires decades long planning and commercial companies are unable to work unless they get quick results. There are western startups working on thorium powered molten salt reactors, see this 2019 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps8oi_HY35E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps8oi_HY35E, from another comment in this thread [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28563477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28563477
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Why is the picture of the linked article reminding me of this scene [1] http://thebigpicturemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/THX-1138-1.png http://thebigpicturemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/... from [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 ?

john_yaya 5y ago

I’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 ago
I 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.
- john_yaya 5y ago
  That’s not really accurate. Celera ran in parallel to the HGP, and (at least for a while) generated superior results at 1/10th the cost.
  - elil17 5y ago
    They started 8 years after HGP (which was a 13 year long project), used data from HGP, and only ever sequenced a mouse genome.
paganel 5y ago
To 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.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

This assumes that Chinese nuclear producers follow all the rules strictly and there is no corruption involved. The Japanese people lost their trust in the government and companies to keep things safe, which is what killed the industry in that country. While China isn’t going to face similar voter pressure, one accident like Fukushima could make things really chaotic quickly.

WalterBright 5y ago
Even with Fukushima, nuclear is far safer than coal.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  It doesn’t matter. Public perception will do nuclear in faster than a slow killing coal plant (not that Japan does much new coal, they’ve doubled down on LNG).
- specktr 5y ago
  Likely true (I don’t know the source you’re referencing) given cancer risk associated with coal etc. But single nuclear events and fears associated with them stand out to voters, long term health implications of coal or other adverse effects of other power alternatives likely do not.
  - samuel 5y ago
    China has no voters, so they don't need to be worried about public opinion(for now). Furthermore, the effects of air pollution are more evident there so it's easier to sell the tradeoff, IMO(I know almost nothing about China, TBH).
    - dragonelite 5y ago
      China has a lot of polling stations, they can crawl social media to get what is annoying citizens. They also have a long and rich workers uprising and rebellion. There is enough to be worried about.

88840-8855 5y ago

Germany also has a state backed research program. This, however, has been cut after Fukushima and the political decision to not rely on nuclear energy anymore. People got scared, understandable, hence, the decision back than had a huge support. China is a technocratic autocracy. Although they rely on the approval of the masses, they can plan long term, instead from election to election. And they calculate whether it's worth or not to manipulate the public opinion on certain topics.

nine_k 5y ago
Germany is doing a huge disservice to everyone by continuing to burn coal instead of keeping (to say nothing of expansion) their nuclear power stations. I understand knee-jerk reactions to huge events like Chernobyl, but they should not last this long. I think French nuclear energy companies profited off that handsomely.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  It wasn't a knee-jerk reaction, at least not in proper context. German nuclear exit was organized in the 90-2000s, formally under the red-green Schröder government, then delayed under the conservative government afterwards (so called Ausstieg vom Ausstieg) and then again overturned after Fukushima. It's largely a secular trend in most of the world as nuclear energy usage has continued to fall, mostly for financial reasons.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    The first exit was surprisingly well planned, for the time. Obviously back then climate change wasn't even close to as urgent as it is now. The overturned Ausstieg-vom-Ausstieg was a knee-jerk reaction to a change in public opinion, a change that included traditionally conservative voters.
  - jabl 5y ago
    And after securing the nuclear exit and leaving political office Schröder got a board seat at the Nordstream gas pipeline project. How... convenient. Germany was going to switch to renewables? Yeah, haha, good one.

yborg 5y ago

This is a 2 MWt research reactor. The US operated a 7.5 MWt molten salt thorium fueled reactor at ORNL from 1964-1969; I wouldn't consider the technology new.

oefrha 5y ago
No, that reactor was uranium-fueled, not thorium-fueled.
- eco 5y ago
  It used U-235 then switched to U-233 bred from thorium in a separate reactor (but still partially testing the thorium fuel cycle). They did this to simplify the design by not needing to incorporate the breeding elements into a novel new reactor design so they could focus on measuring the reactor's performance. I think it's fair to say it was thorium fueled, just in two separate stages (U-233 only comes into existence by breeding thorium). The long term plan was to next make a breeding version of the reactor and use thorium directly but development was cancelled.
  - oefrha 5y ago
    Well I suppose the characterization as thorium-fueled is debatable. In any case, it was certainly designed to study the prospects of an actual liquid fluoride thorium reactor. The current reactor can be viewed as an application or successor to that experiment, and it's based on the same design with modern improvements; TFA did point this out.

brundolf 5y ago

This could be good for the world when it comes to climate change, nuclear being the most powerful way to cut emissions and China being one of the biggest polluters right now.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
How are we measuring "powerful" here? It's widely accepted that renewables, efficiency, carbon fees and global legislation are the leading ways to cut emisions. Nuclear is cool tech, it just seems people are strangely monomaniacal about it and I've never understood why. Maybe it's like "flying cars" and it caught people's attention at an early age and persists as a idea even when it's not actually as generally useful as decent public transport and city planning.
- oytis 5y ago
  > It's widely accepted By whom? The benefit of nuclear power is that it is low on CO2 emissions (unlike fossil fuels) and can produce sufficient amount of power for an industrial society (unlike renewables)
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    No one important, just every government in the world. I agree on your first point (and posted some stats that back it up) but not on your second. Just stop for a moment and ponder, who has a strong financial motive to spread the idea that renewable energy (and carbon fees and all that other stuff) is not a good solution. Have you noticed that the thing that links nuclear boosters is their opinion on renewables being useless?
    - oytis 5y ago
      > who has a strong financial motive to spread the idea that renewable energy (and carbon fees and all that other stuff) is not a good solution. Do you mean that renewables (wind, solar, what else?) can't produce enough energy for the industry is just an opinion not a fact? I'm happy to see the data that would refute it.

anticodon 5y ago

In Russia, state owned company Rosatom builds incredibly cool things like fast breeder reactors and floating nuclear power station. It's also currently building 35 nuclear reactors around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov

mytailorisrich 5y ago

In France as well with the caveat that the French government is constrained by EU subsidies laws and political risk (nuclear energy is a political risk), not to mention financing limitations as well.

buzzwords 5y ago

Countries like Iran would like to, but they are not allowed to.

KoftaBob 5y ago

Couldn't you say something very similar about space? > In the US and other western countries it is mostly by commercial companies > this requires decades long planning and commercial companies are unable to work unless they get quick results. and yet that didn't stop SpaceX from leapfrogging entire nation-states in rocket technology, being the first to develop fully reusable rockets that land themselves, and as a result, are by far the cheapest option for launching things like commercial satellites. I don't see why commercial companies can't accomplish similar things in the nuclear power space.

tsimionescu 5y ago
Well, SpaceX did all that mostly on government money, as NASA was by far the largest buyer of SpaceX rocket launches, and directly invested hundreds of millions of dollars on top of that (and are still doing so).

credit_guy 5y ago

> China seems to be the only country still exploring new nuclear fission technologies commercialization at government level Maybe you should head over to the US Department of Energy website and take a look [1], [2]. [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-reactor-technologies https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-reactor-technologies [2] https://www.energy.gov/ne/our-budget https://www.energy.gov/ne/our-budget

MagnumOpus 5y ago
Commercialization being the operative word. Nuclear research is nice, but doesn't help one bit compared to building reactors even with 50-year-old tech.
- credit_guy 5y ago
  If we are talking commercialization, then DoE awarded more than $1 BN to NuScale to develop small modular nuclear reactors [1] . They could go live sometime this decade. This thorium experimental reactor in China, is just that, an experimental one. If everything goes well, they'll have a commercial version in 2030, but it's way to early to estimate how likely this is. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2020/10/29/the-future-of-small-modular-reactors-department-of-energy-awards-135-billion-to-nuscale-power-for-smr-development/?sh=55a781214dab https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2020/10/29/the-futur...

hker 5y ago

> As this requires decades long planning and commercial companies are unable to work unless they get quick results. There are western startups working on thorium powered molten salt reactors, see this 2019 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps8oi_HY35E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps8oi_HY35E, from another comment in this thread [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28563477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28563477

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

Why is the picture of the linked article reminding me of this scene [1] http://thebigpicturemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/THX-1138-1.png http://thebigpicturemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/... from [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 ?