Why China’s Thorium Fueled Nuclear Reactor Could Revolutionise Atomic Energy Industry

[Beast]

 

[kankan326]

When China published its carbon emission reduction plan. We all believe the plan will be fulfilled. When Biden gave a promise on the same issue. We all doubt US would keep its promise for 4 years.

China is a predictable and reliable country. US is not. China's political system is better than US democracy.

 

[Beast]

This nuclear reactor is significant , cos it dont used a lot of water. It can be build on inner land unlike current nuclear reactor which needs plenty of water for cooling.

Therefore it can reduced the need for natural gas or coal for power generating.

 

[Song Hong]

Main problem to solve is the use of flouride compound which shortens the life of the containment chamber.

 

[Viet]

China experimental reactor is a 50y old copy of an experimental US reactor. Thorium waste is radioactive half life is 500y. How can the technology help us in a bright future?

 

[Song Hong]

China experimental reactor is a 50y old copy of an experimental US reactor. Thorium waste is radioactive half life is 500y. How can the technology help us in a bright future?

US can't solve fluoride corrosion problems and give it up. Else this technology will be wonderful

 

[dingyibvs]

China experimental reactor is a 50y old copy of an experimental US reactor. Thorium waste is radioactive half life is 500y. How can the technology help us in a bright future?

Sadly for Mother Earth the US never really built on the MSRE as some of the issues encountered during the experiment may be resolvable by now.

Thorium is actually a relatively minor part of this technology, the real advancement is in liquid fueled molten salt reactor. There are numerous HUGE advantages, and I'll talk about some of them.

A big potential point of failure for current reactors is the sheer amount of water required to cool them. The reactor that blew up at Chernobyl for example required 12 million gallons of water per hour. If the water pumps fail, the reactor will get too hot and melt down and explode. It was during a test of pump failure that the reactor blew up. At Fukushima the tsunami knocked out the back-up water pumps, causing the reactor to melt down.

The water in the primary cooling loop (different body of water) also has to be pressurized to ~70-150x atmospheric pressure, which makes containment quite difficult, large, and costly. They do so in order to raise the water's boiling temperature from 100C to ~400C. A MSR OTOH can be operated at ~1-2 Bars since the boiling point at normal atmospheric pressure is already >1000C. It also doesn't need additional water to keep cool because it's hot enough that advanced air-cooling techniques is enough. This means that a MSR is much safer and can be built much more cheaply and compactly as well as away from water sources, which also means away from population centers since people usually live near water.

There are numerous other advantages, but those I just mentioned are the revolutionary advances.

The main issue though, is how the heck can we keep 600+C (typical operating temp in a MSR) molten salt from damaging everything it touches for 40+ years, the typical lifespan of a nuclear reactor? I don't know the answer to that. Supposedly materials advances over the past 50+ years might have made it possible, but we'll have to see.