China Takes Lead In Race for Clean Nuclear Power

[conworldus]

Solomon, the point is that the U.S halted the research decades ago and has no intention to restart it.

 

[conworldus]

Firstly no one invited you, you simply gate crashed with stupid Indian stories that we don't even care about. Who's the one always comparing themselves with Chinese? If you want people to take you and your country seriously then start acting like an adult.

Words to glorify your country means nothing when the best you can do is to troll. Learn to back up your claims with credible sources. Whether you like it or not, China beat you guys to this one, just like how we put a man into space before you guys, so live with it.

The Indian members are confusing thorium solid fuel with thorium molten salt.

 

[CardSharp]

Solomon, the point is that the U.S halted the research decades ago and has no intention to restart it.

They faced a major technological barrier and were unable to proceed. That barrier being how to make this guy STFU.

 

[cloneman]

They do, they're just pretending not to! There are Chinese who work on U.S. commercial and U.S. government nuclear projects and the Chinese gov't solicits U.S. companies for reactor designs and checks out declassified projects for old research. But some of these same Chinese have claimed to my face, "We Chinese do it all ourselves!" The non-Chinese whose experience, guidance, and intellectual labor make their own accomplishments possible is not something these Chinese care to discuss much.

Not the truth.The Chinese govement awards foreign experts for their contributions every year.The foreign experts are talked and highly praised.

Chinese PM Wenjia bao meets with the foreign experts who are awarded the 2010 friendship prize.
Viedio goes here:????????????????

 

[marshall]

Research into Thorium tech slumped worldwide because of readily available Uranium. France, Russia, USA shut down their research reactors (only India continued because of Uranium shortage+sanctions)

Edit: Apparently China is low on Uranium reserves too, hmmmm

China produces large quantities of Thorium as a byproduct of refining rare earth elements. A few years back, China began stockpiling this Thorium. At the time, it was speculated that they were probably going to begin research in solid fueled Thorium reactors as India does.

 

[marshall]

Why is China pursuing a Thorium based fuel cycle ? (doesn't it have lots of Uranium in inner Mongolia ?).

For India it makes sense, for China ?

A thorium fueled MSR (Molten Salt Reactor) has the potential to make China energy independent which is not possible with a solid fueled Thorium reactor of the type researched by India. If it works, it will literally be a panacea with no significant disadvantages...

• practically no radioactive waste
• minuscule nuclear waste decays in less than 300 years
• burns well over 200 times more efficient than typical gen 2/3 uranium nuclear plants
• produces insignificant amounts of plutonium
• thorium fuel readily available via rare-earth processing (China produces 97% volume of rare earths)
• thorium is economically extractible fuel source able to supply entire world for many many thousands of years at USA level of energy consumption
• self-regulating nuclear reaction (meltdown impossible)
• closed nuclear fuel cycle (allows simple design)
• simple plant design conducive to mass production
• construction cost should comparable to coal fired power plant
• cheaper to produce power than coal fired power plants

Chances are high that it will succeed. If it does, we are talking about nuclear reactors cheap enough to compete with coal plants but with operational costs that dwarf coal plant operation costs. In other words, energy would be so cheap that no country would be able to compete with China, not that many can now.

On top of this, the operating temperatures in a thorium MSR is around 1000 celsius. This is hotter than regular uranium reactors and is hot enough to split water molecules into their oxygen+hydrogen components, assuming you want to make fuel from hydrogen or use these for your chemical industries. This could also be used for economical sea water desalinization and cheap garbage incineration.

These would make coal plants uncompetitive, yes coal plants the cheapest power plants around today. That means no more air pollution. With so much available electricity and probably hydrogen, most cars would probably be electric or hydrogen powered. Insignificant amounts of nuclear waste, nuclear waste that decays completely in 300 years instead of what is basically forever for regular uranium reactors. Again less pollution, cleaner, greener, healthier. Burns hundreds of times more efficiently than uranium so the available thorium fuel would last for many hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. Everybody beginning to grasp how important this can become?

It is literally a panacea. If no serious technical issues pop up, then we can look forward to the disappearance of oil wars, vulnerable shipping lanes where a country can sanction another from energy, etc. This has the potential for a quiet peaceful revolution.

 

[somebozo]

@marshall
thankyou for the details.

@Solmon2
busted trolling again!

 

[AerospaceEngineer]

Wow in 20 years time even the USA has to import nuclear reactors from china , Good news for china and pakistan , bad news for india

Why do you have to bring India into this?