20 ms·
This came up several times the last few weeks, but never stayed on the front for long. Also no comments. I guess soon the west has to copy chinas tech.
by _trampeltier 11mo ago
This came up several times the last few weeks, but never stayed on the front for long. Also no comments.
I guess soon the west has to copy chinas tech.
- pfdietz 11mo agoBreeding is a technology looking for a business case. It's more expensive than just using fresh uranium in current market conditions. It's a way from keeping future uranium shortages from making nuclear power more expensive; it's not a way to make nuclear cheaper than it currently is.
- NewJazz 11mo agoEmphasis on current market conditions. Relations with uranium mining countries and environmental opposition to uranium mining could shift conditions.
- SirHumphrey 11mo agoThe truth is that nuclear power is not that financially attractive at the present and would the price of uranium rise enough that breeders would become economically viable most countries would just stop bothering with nuclear power altogether.
- cpursley 11mo ago> The truth is that nuclear power is not that financially attractive Let me fix that for you: "The truth is that nuclear power is not that financially attractive in the bureaucratic high cost litigious Anglo-sphere". And that's pretty much all infrastructure these days, unfortunately.
- dalyons 11mo agoThey’re not financially attractive in other parts of the world either. China, a zero litigation single party state, is building some but a tiny % compared to their renewable buildout
- cpursley 11mo agoThey need a lot of energy from a variety of sources. China has 30 or so reactors under construction (half or so of all active projects).
- dalyons 11mo ago"China currently has 58 operable reactors with a total capacity of 56.9 GW. A further 30 reactors, with a total capacity of 34.4 GW are under construction" [1] So, yes, but... China installed 256GW of solar in the first 6 months of 2025 [2]. A full year estimate of ~350gw. So, the total of all nuclear under construction is 1/10th of the solar they installed in one year. Don't get me wrong, its cool to see diversity of non fossil sources, glad they are building some, but its a niche in their overall energy buildout. And they can only build that small niche because they dont have to be market priced, its state subsidized. [1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/ten-new-reactors-approved-in-china https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/ten-new-reactors... [2] https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/global-solar-installations-surge-64-in-first-half-of-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/global-solar-install...
- Hammershaft 11mo agoComparing nuclear reactor capacity to solar capacity is misleading because renewable capacity dramatically overstates actual generation. IIRC The capacity factor for solar ranges between %5-%25 of total capacity generated.
- dalyons 11mo agoYes yes, one of the usual reflexive context free points repeated every time solar comes up. Whatever the actual capacity factor is(5% is not a serious number ), I’m sure chinas energy planners know that, it’s hardly a gotcha. And still they’ve choose to build solar at a volume massively dwarfing nuclear (Edit: cycomanic explained it much better and more patiently than me)
- culi 11mo agoIt's not the litigiousness that makes it expensive. France was producing nuclear power plants at a cost per watt that nearly matches modern China. In fact, the mind-numbing cost overruns seem unique to the US. Here's a Nature article about it: https://archive.ph/Tpe0j https://archive.ph/Tpe0j Seems to me like it's more of a story of corruption than of over-regulation
- dalyons 11mo agofrance cant do it any more either. Flamanville was 12 years late and [1] 400% over budget. EPR2 is already delayed and over budget and they havent even started building yet! UK cant do it either, see hinkley point c [2] [1] https://www.nucnet.org/news/long-delayed-nuclear-plant-connected-to-national-grid-edf-announces-12-1-2024 https://www.nucnet.org/news/long-delayed-nuclear-plant-conne... [2] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/edf-announces-hinkley-point-c-delay-and-big-rise-i https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/edf-announces-hi...
- culi 11mo agoThat might be somewhat true but Flamanville was still about $4/watt while Vogtle 3 and 4 (which were built around the same time) were about $15/watt. It's still hard to place France and the US in the same bucket. The US really is uniquely inept at nuclear costs
- pfdietz 11mo agoFlammanville 3 was about €14/W, or about $16/W. https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/113695635521714572 https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/113695635521714572
- hunterpayne 11mo agoThe UK does the same thing. In fact, its across the entire west. Its almost as if absurd over-regulation is expensive. The Vogtle plant construction for example had to deal with 3 different tranches of changes to the design caused by regulators. Its not corruption, its over-regulation. If it is corruption, it is corrupt politicians intentionally over-regulating because their backers make lots of money extracting FFs.
- arcticbull 11mo agoThe cost of nuclear power is almost entirely capex and financing, not opex. Uranium input cost for nuclear power plants is 0.5c/kWh. With breeders you can divide that by about 100. At least as of a couple years ago nuclear costs just a little more than solar plus storage and that’s not stopping anyone heh.
- bigyabai 11mo agoCapex and financing is still an issue for many countries, and the opex is a non-zero commitment beyond just the fiscal portion. Most countries that pass-over nuclear energy are fairly justified in their decision. The status-quo is still not super psyched about nuclear proliferation. There is room to change that, but the cards are very heavily stacked in China's favor. America's bad at the financing part, fickle when it comes to enforcement & supply chains, and ostensibly 2 days away from bailing on the IAEA itself. The proliferation-resistance of Thorium reactors gives China an export trump card that America will struggle to match.
- ViewTrick1002 11mo agoWith recent price drops of solar and storage the difference is now multiples.
- hunterpayne 11mo agoThis is just plain false. Learn the difference between capacity cost and utilization cost.
- ViewTrick1002 11mo agoIt is LCOE outside of the US tariff bubble. Go ahead a calculate what co-locating ~$52/kWh BESS systems alongside an utility scale solar install costs per kWh. https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/26/china-energy-engineering-launches-record-25-gwh-storage-tender-as-prices-hit-historic-low/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/26/china-energy-engineering...
- culi 11mo agoChina has more uranium reserves and less thorium reserves than the US though Most thorium: India, Brazil, Australia, US, Turkey Most uranium: Australia, Kazakhstan, Canada, Russia, Namibia
- lunar-whitey 11mo agoThere is no business case for basic research, but if you stop basic research long enough you will have no business. The United States and its allies seem to have completely forgotten this.
- HPsquared 11mo agoIt makes sense for big monopolies like Bell, or the CCP. The investment can be justified if the ones investing are confident they will be able to capture the value and not some competitor.
- lunar-whitey 11mo agoBell Labs also served to maintain positive perceptions of the monopoly. Unix was famously developed despite the knowledge that AT&T would not be able to offer it as an independent product.
- coliveira 11mo agoNo business sense for scientific research? You know you're completely destroying the argument for capitalism, right?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- HPsquared 11mo agoI don't see how it follows. Anyway it's debatable if the current system with antitrust laws is true capitalism. One of those poorly-defined words that people argue over.
- pfdietz 11mo agoThis isn't basic research, it's applied research. Applied research lives or dies on the plausibility of the ultimate applicability.
- polski-g 11mo ago
- adrian_b 11mo agoThey highlight less the advantages from breeding, than other advantages of the molten salt design, like not needing a lot of cooling water, which allows this reactor to operate in the Gobi desert, the possibility of replacing the fuel without halting the reactor and various safety features.
- littlestymaar 11mo agoNuclear reactors don't need a particularly big amount of cooling water. The thermodynamic cycle needs a cold source though, and it's most commonly water. This doesn't depend on the reactor design and this is equally as true of coal plants. As long as you are making electricity out of a thermodynamic cycle, you need a heat source (be it a flame or a nuclear reaction) and a cold source.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- adrian_b 11mo agoAs the reactor is operating in the Gobi desert and China claims that its main advantage for them is exactly this possibility of operating in the inland arid areas of the country, unlike their current reactors that must be installed only close to the sea, in the part of the country with abundant water, they must have a solution for the cold source that does not involve water. Perhaps they use as a cold source the underground soil, though the soil thermal conductivity will limit the amount of power of the reactor. This reactor has a modest power, which could be explained by this constraint. If the reactor is as safe as they claim, the moderate output power per reactor could be compensated by installing many such reactors.
- littlestymaar 11mo ago> As the reactor is operating in the Gobi desert and China claims that its main advantage for them is exactly this possibility of operating in the inland arid areas of the country This is mainly a feature of the reactor being small. If you don't have much heat to dissipate, even air cooling becomes feasible. > unlike their current reactors that must be installed only close to the sea, in the part of the country with abundant water In reality even current water-cooled reactors can be pretty efficient in terms of water use if you design the cooling system with that in mind. See the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona. > Perhaps they use as a cold source the underground soil I'm not sure this would work, as you'd be storing heat in the soil without a real heat drain so the yield of the plant would decrease until it reaches zero. For small reactors air or radiative cooling are an option though.
- dmix 11mo agoIt also apparently provides a way to make reactors that don’t depend as much on water so they don’t all have to be near the coast. This would allow Western China to also develop reactors to help underpin their renewable and coal energy. > The interest in MSR technology and Thorium breeding did not disappear however. China's nuclear power production relies heavily on imported uranium,[10] a strategic vulnerability in the event of i.e. economic sanctions. Additionally, the relative lack of water available for cooling PWRs west of the Hu line is a limiting factor for siting them there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1?wprov=sfti1#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1?wprov=sfti1#History
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> also apparently provides a way to make reactors that don’t depend as much on water so they don’t all have to be near the coast Non-water microreactors broadly fall into two categories: ones using a different moderator, most commonly sodium, a sodium salt or helium; and those using heat pipes. Most microreactor designs don’t use water.
- littlestymaar 11mo agoNuclear plants don't need more water than a coal plant of the same power, they both use the same steam turbine with water as cold source.
- inglor_cz 11mo agoReducing the energy sector to pure business would probably work in the 1990s, but not now, when countries are afraid of strategic dependence on potentially hostile suppliers. Uranium isn't as ubiquitous as, say, natural gas, and stockpiling it comes with a big heap of physical problems. I can definitely see countries spending on more expensive technology if it comes with more energy security.
- littlestymaar 11mo ago> in current market conditions. That is, as long as we don't build more nuclear power plants. If you want to increase nuclear power adoption, then you're not going to stay in “current market conditions” for long.
- culi 11mo agoI mean we're already doing that in many avenues. Solar being the most obvious. The only functioning solar manufacturing plants in the US are Chinese-owned and are only here to take advantage of subsidies. Plenty has been learned by the US/West from copying their approach to agriculture, robotics in factories, mining, drones, etc. Have you seen their electromagnetic catapult technology?? That stuff seems like its from the space-age! There's even plenty of tech that we can't really explain like the all-moving wingtips on the new J-50s. (and yes, I'm avoiding talking about their supersonic cruise missiles)
- hunterpayne 11mo agoLunacy and CCP propaganda
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> soon the west has to copy chinas tech Thorium MSRs don't make sense for the Americas, Europe or Australia. We have plenty of uranium. Nuclear is receiving solid research backing in both America and China. (India is playing too. Austrlia is having an identity crisis.) Our different geologies mean there will probably be one solution for China, India and North Africa, on one hand, and the rest of the world, on the other hand.
- stubish 11mo agoI don't think Australia is having an identity crisis. There won't be research backing from Australia as the Nuclear agenda one party is pushing is essentially a cover story for replacing antique coal plants with gas plants. A genuine Nuclear plan for Australia would include realistic timelines and budgets, and use of other renewables to replace coal plants that are failing today while meeting climate targets. And meeting climate targets is important, because if we don't care about them then coal and gas will remain cheaper than Nuclear for Australia due to having large reserves.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> I don't think Australia is having an identity crisis That was tongue in cheek. It's being indecisive. I guess that's conserved across the Anglosphere.
- hunterpayne 11mo agoThe cost of the fuel is less than 0.1% of the cost of running a NPP. The cost of the fuel has almost nothing to do with the economics of nuclear power. And considering a liquid fueled reactor makes heat in the 900C range and a AP1400 makes heat in the 300C range, they aren't really substitutes for each other. The amount of incorrect information in this thread is truly shocking. For example, you can make synthetic fuel from a LFTR, you can't from a BWR or a PWR. That might be a valuable feature, don't you think.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
- hunterpayne 11mo agoThis is US tech that China is copying. We could have done this at anytime in the last 60 years. The blocker isn't technology, its scientifically uninformed politics.
- gregbot 11mo agoThe blocker is really just cheap Uranium making Thorium unnecessary
- edm0nd 11mo agoThe entire Chinese way is to copy and steal from the West, its the other way around.
- jyscao 11mo agoIn the present day, this is a delusional take.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo agoChina has engaged in industrial espionage on an unprecedented scale. To the extent there is delusion, it's in American spies being slow to returning the favour.
- orangeboats 11mo agoClearly you have not visited China. Try it someday. You _will_ be surprised by some of the technologies there.
- gregbot 11mo agoRickover was breeding with Thorium at Shippingport in the 1950’s. What China did is not new
- boringg 11mo agoNo the West doesn't need this technology given its significant amount of uranium supply. Is it a nice to have - sure. For nuclear the playbook goes - design of technology is in the west. China copycats the reactor and puts it through their deployment engine (see current nuclear deployment). Maybe that changes -- but this doesn't prove that. China pushing the development is fantastic though for the world to give their head a shake and finally get back in the game. MSRs are riding the Oklo hype train and have a long way to go.