3 ms·

I think I read recently that this was a US idea that was abandoned that China took up and made it work. Is that accurate?

impossiblefork 11mo ago
Historical experiments with alternative fuel cycles, not serious development attempts. A serious development attempt happened in India though.
T-A 11mo ago
Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Hi...
jbverschoor 11mo ago
Well, fible energy is trying to do lots. Gates invested in MSTR (molten salt thorium reactor). But regulation, while it has its purposes, stifles many things. At the same time time it’s not even doing what they were meant for. There are a number of countries being run far better than the US or the EU
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- dmix 11mo ago
  > There are a number of countries being run far better than the US or the EU It will be funny if China is what convinces the US to be more open to free industry. Opposite day vs the 1970s
  - bilbo0s 11mo ago
    To be fair, these advances are not being made in China due to "free industry". They have something of a command economy for their critical sectors. So it's unfair not to point out that it's easy to make advances if a nation as a whole points to a hill and says, "take that hill". Of course you can do it under those circumstances. If it's just your company or some trifling consortium trying to develop nuclear energy advances in a "free industry" environment, the guy who is just slapping up windmills, [T Boone Pickens RIP], is just gonna mop the floor with you. There's just no way to compete on moonshots like that.
    - lunar-whitey 11mo ago
      China has many capital controls but generally supports industrial activity in the state interest; the US does the opposite.
- hunterpayne 11mo ago
  Gates invested in the traveling wave reactor which was a bust. Then he sold his entire investment in nuclear several years ago. He's very rich so perhaps he has other nuclear investments that I'm not aware of but none are in the MSTR space unless they are secret/private.
  - JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
    > none are in the MSTR space unless they are secret/private TerraPower is not secret.
lunar-whitey 11mo ago
No country has seriously invested in the thorium fuel cycle because it cannot be used to create weapons. Unfortunately, the technology also began to look most promising as an energy source around the same time the Three Mile Island nuclear accident effectively ended all interest in nuclear energy in the United States.
- retrac 11mo ago
  India has shown some of the most interest to date, due to their lack of domestic uranium reserves. But it's been slow going their fast breeder reactor plans were delayed by like two decades. But it is built and it was loaded with fuel last month [0] The French interest in breeder reactors and nuclear reprocessing also originates from a similar concern about lack of domestic access to raw uranium. Though Super-phoenix [0] was a more traditional uranium -> plutonium approach and not thorium. They gave up because just using uranium is way, way cheaper than synthesizing your own fissile materials. [0] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/indias-prototype-fast-breeder-reactor-facing-first-of-a-kind-delay https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/indias-prototype... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix
- lazide 11mo ago
  Also, it’s only energy positive under some specific carefully managed conditions, and is a real pain to make work. If you have easy access to uranium, you just use it directly instead.
  - hunterpayne 11mo ago
    Depends on what you want out of your reactor. You want to make a synthetic fuel, Thorium not Uranium. You want a liquid fueled reactor (because its safer and proliferation resistant), Thorium not Uranium. You want 900C heat instead of 300C heat, Thorium not Uranium. The fuel costs of a NPP are a tiny rounding error. If you want electricity and want to build it today, Uranium not Thorium. You are using arguments from 50 years ago when many incorrect assumptions about cost structure and fuel availability were used to make decisions.
preisschild 11mo ago
Yeah, the US had an experimental Molten Salt Reactor in the 60s
tim333 11mo ago
The US had a similar but not identical reactor in the 60s, the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment It had uranium-233 from breeding from thorium in other reactors. The main problem with these things is they seem very unprofitable. The US reactor ran from 1964 to 1969 and produced a small amount of power but is still running about $10m a year in decommissioning costs. You thing you can run these things a while and think it's over but: >Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident, as well as a potentially dangerous build-up of fluorine gas: the environment above the solidified salt was approximately one atmosphere of fluorine. The ensuing decontamination and decommissioning project was called "the most technically challenging"...

impossiblefork 11mo ago

Historical experiments with alternative fuel cycles, not serious development attempts. A serious development attempt happened in India though.

T-A 11mo ago

Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Hi...

jbverschoor 11mo ago

Well, fible energy is trying to do lots. Gates invested in MSTR (molten salt thorium reactor). But regulation, while it has its purposes, stifles many things. At the same time time it’s not even doing what they were meant for. There are a number of countries being run far better than the US or the EU

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
dmix 11mo ago
> There are a number of countries being run far better than the US or the EU It will be funny if China is what convinces the US to be more open to free industry. Opposite day vs the 1970s
- bilbo0s 11mo ago
  To be fair, these advances are not being made in China due to "free industry". They have something of a command economy for their critical sectors. So it's unfair not to point out that it's easy to make advances if a nation as a whole points to a hill and says, "take that hill". Of course you can do it under those circumstances. If it's just your company or some trifling consortium trying to develop nuclear energy advances in a "free industry" environment, the guy who is just slapping up windmills, [T Boone Pickens RIP], is just gonna mop the floor with you. There's just no way to compete on moonshots like that.
  - lunar-whitey 11mo ago
    China has many capital controls but generally supports industrial activity in the state interest; the US does the opposite.
hunterpayne 11mo ago
Gates invested in the traveling wave reactor which was a bust. Then he sold his entire investment in nuclear several years ago. He's very rich so perhaps he has other nuclear investments that I'm not aware of but none are in the MSTR space unless they are secret/private.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
  > none are in the MSTR space unless they are secret/private TerraPower is not secret.

lunar-whitey 11mo ago

No country has seriously invested in the thorium fuel cycle because it cannot be used to create weapons. Unfortunately, the technology also began to look most promising as an energy source around the same time the Three Mile Island nuclear accident effectively ended all interest in nuclear energy in the United States.

retrac 11mo ago
India has shown some of the most interest to date, due to their lack of domestic uranium reserves. But it's been slow going their fast breeder reactor plans were delayed by like two decades. But it is built and it was loaded with fuel last month [0] The French interest in breeder reactors and nuclear reprocessing also originates from a similar concern about lack of domestic access to raw uranium. Though Super-phoenix [0] was a more traditional uranium -> plutonium approach and not thorium. They gave up because just using uranium is way, way cheaper than synthesizing your own fissile materials. [0] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/indias-prototype-fast-breeder-reactor-facing-first-of-a-kind-delay https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/indias-prototype... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix
lazide 11mo ago
Also, it’s only energy positive under some specific carefully managed conditions, and is a real pain to make work. If you have easy access to uranium, you just use it directly instead.
- hunterpayne 11mo ago
  Depends on what you want out of your reactor. You want to make a synthetic fuel, Thorium not Uranium. You want a liquid fueled reactor (because its safer and proliferation resistant), Thorium not Uranium. You want 900C heat instead of 300C heat, Thorium not Uranium. The fuel costs of a NPP are a tiny rounding error. If you want electricity and want to build it today, Uranium not Thorium. You are using arguments from 50 years ago when many incorrect assumptions about cost structure and fuel availability were used to make decisions.

preisschild 11mo ago

Yeah, the US had an experimental Molten Salt Reactor in the 60s

tim333 11mo ago

The US had a similar but not identical reactor in the 60s, the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment It had uranium-233 from breeding from thorium in other reactors. The main problem with these things is they seem very unprofitable. The US reactor ran from 1964 to 1969 and produced a small amount of power but is still running about $10m a year in decommissioning costs. You thing you can run these things a while and think it's over but: >Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident, as well as a potentially dangerous build-up of fluorine gas: the environment above the solidified salt was approximately one atmosphere of fluorine. The ensuing decontamination and decommissioning project was called "the most technically challenging"...