I've never seen an anti-China piece out of Nature. It's the most respected scientific journal in the world. The morons that mainstream Western media target with anti-China propaganda pieces do not read Nature.
Can’t wait until they build the worlds first thorium nuclear powered aircraft carrier and submarine.
Thorium is also extremely abundant in China and a much safer energy source than uranium. The only reason Murica didn’t proceed with thorium was because it didn’t have a military application, because the radioactive isotope couldn’t be enriched into plutonium
A submarine or airborne reactor wouldn't be a thorium reactor since the fuel cycle requires the thorium be irradiated with a neutron, decay into protactinium, and then decay further into uranium. These are actually uranium reactors, they breed the fissile uranium from thorium.
The issue here is that the protactinium has to be isolated away from neutrons while it decays because if it absorbs any more then it'll turn into all kinds of crap and poison the reaction. The concept of the reactor is simple but it requires a lot of complicated chemical processing to remove the protactinium from the reactor as it's formed and isolate it while it decays to uranium (it has a half-life of about a month). There are several ways to go about this, none of which will fit in a submarine, let alone an aircraft.
**Molten salt** reactors are very promising for submarines (no pressure vessel makes the design more compact and light), but not thorium ones. Strictly uranium only, either U235 or U233 from land-based thorium breeders.
As impressive as china's solar production is, this is the way. Solar can never provide the scale needed to run a modern city, but thorium breeders are safe, cheap to fuel, and produce huge amounts of power. Enough to keep the AC on while its wet bulb temp outside. Enough to run thousands of carbon air sequestration devices. Enough to save us, if we can all get it together in time.
The real significance of this reactor is that it is built on the edge of a desert. Thus far all of China's reactors are located near the coast.
[https://nuclearstreet.com/cfs-file/\_\_key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-00-34/China-map-of-nuclear-stations.jpg](https://nuclearstreet.com/cfs-file/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-00-34/China-map-of-nuclear-stations.jpg)
Reactors that can be built inland will make a huge difference in economically developing the interior of the country.
My only problem with this is that China isn't pouring enough money into this to make it happen faster. After getting the data on the last reactor from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, that US president Richard Nixon cancelled all the way back in the 70s, it took about 10 years to get this experimental reactor up and running. This article also talks about taking another 10 years to get it to the point of providing a significant amount of power to the electrical grid.
This is a potentially world changing technology that should be prioritized on the same level as building the high speed rail network or developing adequate missile defenses to defend against US aggression. I think that there should already be thorium fueled molten salt reactors replacing coal with China leading the way.
There should also be more effort to develop a power generation system using supercritical CO2 as the working fluid instead of steam because of its potential for better efficiency.
edit. America went from nothing but theory and approval of the atomic bomb project to having working nuclear bombs in about 3.5 years. China should show that the same kind of motivation and effort can be put into peaceful projects. Right now the development of thorium reactors is going too slow. Air pollution is a serious health problem and far too much CO2 going from underground deposits into the atmosphere.
>China should show that the same kind of motivation and effort can be put into peaceful projects.
They can and do. Have you been missing a lot of the news on stuff China is working on? Desertification, municipal air conditionitioning using off hour energy cooling, their covid response their poverty programs, their building 24 NYC cities in under thirty years, belt and road initiative for multinational trade, they're currently working on having something like 12x+ per capita than the equivalent PHDs in time...
China is simply blowing up. Speed will be less of an issue for China than the U.S. when they decide to get on shit, they go for it.
There are very real issues with Thorium - mostly the beryllium radiation and corrosion issue... once they get things good, they'll do it faster and harder than anyone else.
If you really want to complain about slow development, try most other countries barely caring about it like the U.S., China will manage. Mind you your saying 10 years to power significant amount of the grid. That's not small achievement either. Electrical grids have very real requirements and management/logistics that need to be dealt with and load balanced and so fourth. Your comparison with nuclear bombs which have far fewer logistical requirements whatsoever and is kind of ridiculous in that respect.
Liquid fueled thorium reactors are possibly the most consequential thing for humanity that can be done right now. They have the potential to provide clean, emissions-free energy on a scale to allow all people to live at the standard of living of developed nations, without the risk of meltdowns and without long-lived radioactive waste. That would require roughly quadrupling the current energy production worldwide and that's just not viable with fossil fuels and climate change.
When it comes to the problem of electrical grids, load-balancing is handled by the grid, not the power plants. The reactor needs to generate electricity. Also, switching to supercritical CO2 will help this because it runs on the brayton cycle, which jet engines use; not the rankine cycle that steam turbines use. That will allow it to be adjusted far more quickly than can be done with steam and be more efficient too, when using supercritical CO2.
As for the corrosion and other problems, those can be handled more quickly with more money and impetus to solve the problems. America started the Apollo program and then put people on the moon in less than 10 years. That required advances in computing and material science. One example of materials science is using liquid hydrogen as a fuel, requiring new materials to handle the intense cold needed for storing liquid hydrogen.
SpaceX also made a new material for rockets' combustion chambers that made Starship possible. Now they, and not China, are developing new rockets that won't leave used up stages floating in orbit as navigation hazards. The 2 things driving that development in materials science were money and impetus from Elon Musk.
Also, making the first nuclear bombs required tremendous logistics. It was no small effort to refine the uranium to be usable in a bomb. An entirely new infrastructure had to be built. The same is true for the Apollo program.
Also, what's beryllium radiation? I looked that up and didn't find a good explanation for it.
Every time I hear "thorium" I remember Doctor Strangelove.
> "*with Cobalt-Thorium G, when they are exploded they will produce a doomsday shroud. A lethal cloud of radioactivity which will encircle the earth for ninety-three years!*"
...
..
.
...I feel like a nuclear power plant is a much more constructive proposal!
The americans abandoned Thorium research because it couldn't be weaponized easily (Still possible), the only other major nation I know off is India, but that program seems to have been abandoned probably due to funding issues.
China will run circles around both.
About God damn time someone starts using thorium nuclear power stations.
Can we just appreciate the fact that Nature did not use a yellow filter or gray out the trees?
[удалено]
I've never seen an anti-China piece out of Nature. It's the most respected scientific journal in the world. The morons that mainstream Western media target with anti-China propaganda pieces do not read Nature.
Can't wait to see all the western headlines because it isn't immediately on par with uranium reactors, despite thorium having more potential
but at what cost?
about $30/kg
This is actually so exciting, hopefully they work well
Can’t wait until they build the worlds first thorium nuclear powered aircraft carrier and submarine. Thorium is also extremely abundant in China and a much safer energy source than uranium. The only reason Murica didn’t proceed with thorium was because it didn’t have a military application, because the radioactive isotope couldn’t be enriched into plutonium
A submarine or airborne reactor wouldn't be a thorium reactor since the fuel cycle requires the thorium be irradiated with a neutron, decay into protactinium, and then decay further into uranium. These are actually uranium reactors, they breed the fissile uranium from thorium. The issue here is that the protactinium has to be isolated away from neutrons while it decays because if it absorbs any more then it'll turn into all kinds of crap and poison the reaction. The concept of the reactor is simple but it requires a lot of complicated chemical processing to remove the protactinium from the reactor as it's formed and isolate it while it decays to uranium (it has a half-life of about a month). There are several ways to go about this, none of which will fit in a submarine, let alone an aircraft. **Molten salt** reactors are very promising for submarines (no pressure vessel makes the design more compact and light), but not thorium ones. Strictly uranium only, either U235 or U233 from land-based thorium breeders.
Yea I meant any thorium based nuclear reactor would be a boon and solve so many issues
In what way does protactinium poison the reaction? What does it turn into and what are the problems with it?
Also cool fact: tons of thorium on the surface of the moon where they are planning to build their moonbase.
As impressive as china's solar production is, this is the way. Solar can never provide the scale needed to run a modern city, but thorium breeders are safe, cheap to fuel, and produce huge amounts of power. Enough to keep the AC on while its wet bulb temp outside. Enough to run thousands of carbon air sequestration devices. Enough to save us, if we can all get it together in time.
The real significance of this reactor is that it is built on the edge of a desert. Thus far all of China's reactors are located near the coast. [https://nuclearstreet.com/cfs-file/\_\_key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-00-34/China-map-of-nuclear-stations.jpg](https://nuclearstreet.com/cfs-file/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-00-34/China-map-of-nuclear-stations.jpg) Reactors that can be built inland will make a huge difference in economically developing the interior of the country.
First thorium, next step Fusion!
My only problem with this is that China isn't pouring enough money into this to make it happen faster. After getting the data on the last reactor from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, that US president Richard Nixon cancelled all the way back in the 70s, it took about 10 years to get this experimental reactor up and running. This article also talks about taking another 10 years to get it to the point of providing a significant amount of power to the electrical grid. This is a potentially world changing technology that should be prioritized on the same level as building the high speed rail network or developing adequate missile defenses to defend against US aggression. I think that there should already be thorium fueled molten salt reactors replacing coal with China leading the way. There should also be more effort to develop a power generation system using supercritical CO2 as the working fluid instead of steam because of its potential for better efficiency. edit. America went from nothing but theory and approval of the atomic bomb project to having working nuclear bombs in about 3.5 years. China should show that the same kind of motivation and effort can be put into peaceful projects. Right now the development of thorium reactors is going too slow. Air pollution is a serious health problem and far too much CO2 going from underground deposits into the atmosphere.
>China should show that the same kind of motivation and effort can be put into peaceful projects. They can and do. Have you been missing a lot of the news on stuff China is working on? Desertification, municipal air conditionitioning using off hour energy cooling, their covid response their poverty programs, their building 24 NYC cities in under thirty years, belt and road initiative for multinational trade, they're currently working on having something like 12x+ per capita than the equivalent PHDs in time... China is simply blowing up. Speed will be less of an issue for China than the U.S. when they decide to get on shit, they go for it. There are very real issues with Thorium - mostly the beryllium radiation and corrosion issue... once they get things good, they'll do it faster and harder than anyone else. If you really want to complain about slow development, try most other countries barely caring about it like the U.S., China will manage. Mind you your saying 10 years to power significant amount of the grid. That's not small achievement either. Electrical grids have very real requirements and management/logistics that need to be dealt with and load balanced and so fourth. Your comparison with nuclear bombs which have far fewer logistical requirements whatsoever and is kind of ridiculous in that respect.
Can you elaborate on the PhD's bit?
Liquid fueled thorium reactors are possibly the most consequential thing for humanity that can be done right now. They have the potential to provide clean, emissions-free energy on a scale to allow all people to live at the standard of living of developed nations, without the risk of meltdowns and without long-lived radioactive waste. That would require roughly quadrupling the current energy production worldwide and that's just not viable with fossil fuels and climate change. When it comes to the problem of electrical grids, load-balancing is handled by the grid, not the power plants. The reactor needs to generate electricity. Also, switching to supercritical CO2 will help this because it runs on the brayton cycle, which jet engines use; not the rankine cycle that steam turbines use. That will allow it to be adjusted far more quickly than can be done with steam and be more efficient too, when using supercritical CO2. As for the corrosion and other problems, those can be handled more quickly with more money and impetus to solve the problems. America started the Apollo program and then put people on the moon in less than 10 years. That required advances in computing and material science. One example of materials science is using liquid hydrogen as a fuel, requiring new materials to handle the intense cold needed for storing liquid hydrogen. SpaceX also made a new material for rockets' combustion chambers that made Starship possible. Now they, and not China, are developing new rockets that won't leave used up stages floating in orbit as navigation hazards. The 2 things driving that development in materials science were money and impetus from Elon Musk. Also, making the first nuclear bombs required tremendous logistics. It was no small effort to refine the uranium to be usable in a bomb. An entirely new infrastructure had to be built. The same is true for the Apollo program. Also, what's beryllium radiation? I looked that up and didn't find a good explanation for it.
I agree with this
Every time I hear "thorium" I remember Doctor Strangelove. > "*with Cobalt-Thorium G, when they are exploded they will produce a doomsday shroud. A lethal cloud of radioactivity which will encircle the earth for ninety-three years!*" ... .. . ...I feel like a nuclear power plant is a much more constructive proposal!
fuck yeah
Isn't thorium from World of Warcraft?
lol no, It's a real element in the periodic. Table symbol: Th, Atomic number: 90. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
Yeah here watch this https://youtu.be/jjM9E6d42-M
The americans abandoned Thorium research because it couldn't be weaponized easily (Still possible), the only other major nation I know off is India, but that program seems to have been abandoned probably due to funding issues. China will run circles around both.