[HN Gopher] China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium...
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China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from thorium
https://archive.is/DQpXM
https://www.stdaily.com/web/English/2025-11/17/content_43298...
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 156 points
Date : 2025-11-22 17:49 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scmp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scmp.com)
| T-A wrote:
| A better explanation of the significance:
|
| https://www.stdaily.com/web/English/2025-11/17/content_43298...
| cubefox wrote:
| > Now, the research team is conducting systematic studies on
| the key scientific issues related to adding thorium, and aims
| to completethe construction of a 100-megawatt TMSR
| demonstration project, and begin operation by 2035.
|
| For comparison: A commercial nuclear power plant is 1 gigawatt,
| a 10x difference. I assume this would be the next step.
| allenrb wrote:
| The typical 1 gigawatt rating for a nuclear power reactor is
| measuring electrical output. Given the various
| inefficiencies, the actual reactor output (as heat) is
| something like 3x that amount. Whereas a research reactor
| will be quoted as thermal output.
|
| That to say, a typical commercial reactor might be 30x the
| power of a 100 MW research device.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! We've put that link in the toptext as well.
| jonplackett wrote:
| 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?
| T-A wrote:
| Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-
| based_nuclear_power#Hi...
| jbverschoor wrote:
| 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
| dmix wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| China has many capital controls but generally supports
| industrial activity in the state interest; the US does
| the opposite.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Historical experiments with alternative fuel cycles, not
| serious development attempts. A serious development attempt
| happened in India though.
| lunar-whitey wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Thorium can be used to make weapons via the breeding cycle.
| It's much less convenient and straightforward than
| uranium/plutonium, but it is possible.
| lunar-whitey wrote:
| Theoretically, perhaps, but I don't think anyone with a
| serious interest in weapons would pursue it. From a
| nonproliferation perspective, I'd guess the infrastructure
| necessary to remove contaminants from uranium bred through
| the thorium cycle would be costly and difficult to conceal.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Multiple countries have detonated nuclear bombs using
| U-233 derived from thorium reactors! [0] Practically I
| agree with you that thorium is proliferation resistant
| and if someone is bomb hungry they won't prioritize it,
| but if you want to set up the bomb and all you have is
| thorium... The infrastructure wouldn't necessarily be
| significantly larger or worse than conventional
| enrichment.
|
| 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-233
| lunar-whitey wrote:
| Seems presence of U-232 is more manageable than I
| thought.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Breeding 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 wrote:
| Emphasis on current market conditions. Relations with uranium
| mining countries and environmental opposition to uranium
| mining could shift conditions.
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| They'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 wrote:
| They 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 wrote:
| "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... [2] https://ember-energy.org/latest-
| updates/global-solar-install...
| culi wrote:
| It'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
|
| Seems to me like it's more of a story of corruption than
| of over-regulation
| dalyons wrote:
| france 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-conne... [2] https://www.world-nuclear-
| news.org/articles/edf-announces-hi...
| arcticbull wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Capex 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.
| culi wrote:
| China 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 wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| Bell 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.
| adrian_b wrote:
| They 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 wrote:
| Nuclear 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _other advantages of the molten salt design, like not
| needing a lot of cooling water_
|
| This advantage is conserved by _all_ non-water moderated
| reactor designs.
| dmix wrote:
| It 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
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| Nuclear 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 wrote:
| Reducing 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I 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)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The notable thing here is that it's a molten salt reactor design,
| where the fuel is dissolved in a molten salt (FLiBe). This allows
| online continuous processing of the fuel, unlike with solid fuel
| rods sealed inside a pressure vessel.
|
| This unlocks a lot of options for the fuel cycle, including the
| use of thorium.
|
| This work builds on a previous molten salt reactor experiment at
| Oak Ridge, decades ago. There's a whole lore about MSRs.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _notable thing here is that it 's a molten salt reactor
| design_
|
| Notable, but not unique. The unique bit is it burns thorium.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It breeds thorium to fissionable uranium from a starting
| fissionable uranium starter fuel. It doesn't directly use
| thorium for fuel.
|
| What people need to understand about the cycle efficiency is
| that when you mine uranium, the fissionable part of uranium
| (U-235) is only 1% of that uranium, the rest is
| nonfissionable U-238.
|
| Thorium is about twice as abundant as Uranium (all isotopes).
| The MSR uses Thorium to create U-233, a fissionable but not
| naturally occurring Uranium isotope.
|
| So the "unlimited energy aspect" is that about 200-300x more
| breedable Thorium exists than fissionable U-235.
|
| A MSR nation could also try to breed U-238 into plutonium,
| which would provide another 100x more breeding stock,
| although LFTR never talked about U-238 breeding. IIRC the
| plutonium may be difficult to handle because of gamma rays,
| but I don't recall exactly.
|
| While I don't have confidence that even LFTR/MSR reactors can
| get economical enough to challenge gas peakers, it may be
| possible to make truly price-competitive MSR electricity with
| the right modular design. I wish the Chinese the best of
| luck, because if they do it will spur the rest of the world
| to adopt this about-as-clean-and-safe-as-it-gets nuclear
| design.
| rhoads wrote:
| That's what you learn playing factorio
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Thorium is about twice as abundant as Uranium_
|
| China has thorium, and while less than others [1], it's
| better than they do with uranium [2].
|
| > _it may be possible to make truly price-competitive MSR
| electricity with the right modular design_
|
| Yes. But probably not in the near term with thorium. This
| isn't designed to be cheaper. It's designed to be more
| available to China than being dependent on Russian
| deposits.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/492031a
|
| [2] https://www-
| pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1800.pdf
| fmajid wrote:
| Not really, the US bred several tons of U-233 from thorium in
| the 60s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
| bilsbie wrote:
| What absorbs the neutrons then?
| lazide wrote:
| The thorium cycle is generally neutron negative.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _thorium cycle is generally neutron negative_
|
| Source for the fuel cycle?
|
| Thorium 232 -> 233 is neutron negative. But after that you
| get all kinds of nonsense.
| lazide wrote:
| Thorium 232 is _the_ thorium in the cycle yes. And all
| kinds of nonsense is correct for the daughter products.
| But in general, to actually use do anything with thorium
| you need excess neutrons.
|
| Even the daughter uranium 233 only produces on average
| 2.48 neutrons per fission, so it's very difficult even in
| a combined lifecycle process to have enough - thorium
| doesn't produce uranium 233 immediately (takes almost 30
| days), neutron capture with that low a ratio requires a
| LOT of thorium, which is going to mostly just suck up all
| neutrons and you won't have any extra for addition
| uranium 233 fissions, etc.
|
| It's quite difficult (impossible?)to have actually work
| without a source of a large amount of additional
| neutrons.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _to actually use do anything with thorium you need
| excess neutrons_
|
| Unless 100% of those neutrons is being absorbed by the
| thorium, this means you'll have neutron flux at the
| boundary. Which, for a liquid moderator, means all the
| pipes and tanks and pumps.
| pfdietz wrote:
| MSRs have some attractive features, but they also have
| significant drawbacks.
|
| The most pressing is that fissionable material is spread
| throughout the fluid, so fission and decay of fission products
| is occurring right up to the edge of the fluid. The walls and
| pipes containing the molten salt, and anything dipped into the
| salt, are exposed to unmoderated neutrons. One can shield using
| (say) graphite, but then damage to that (and soaking up of
| radioactive materials) become issues.
|
| The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment at Oak Ridge was near the
| end of its radiation exposure lifetime when the program ended.
|
| Contrast this to light water reactors. These are designed so
| that no lifetime component sees unmoderated neutrons. There's a
| thick barrier of water between the fissioning fuel and the
| reactor vessel wall and the support structures for the fuel
| bundles. The bundles themselves are exposed, but they are
| replaced for refueling and are not lifetime components.
| cyberax wrote:
| To add to this, even with the shielding provided by water in
| light water reactors, the neutron exposure is _the_ limiting
| factor for the reactor vessel.
|
| The metric to look for is called "DPA" (displacements per
| atom), the number of neutron collisions that a material can
| tolerate before losing enough structural integrity to fall
| below the acceptable limits. The best modern reactor steels
| are at 150-180 DPA.
|
| And a lot of potentially cool reactors like TWR (travelling
| wave reactor) end up being logistically impossible because
| lifetime-limited components will be exposed to multiple
| hundreds of DPAs.
| api wrote:
| We have basically limitless carbon free energy with the tech we
| have now: solar, wind, batteries, fission breeders, large power
| grids that can move power around cheaply, etc. Put all those
| together and we have incredible energy abundance.
|
| We also have the ability to electrify most transport except maybe
| long haul trucking and long haul aviation. Aviation (ALL
| aviation) accounts for less than 5% of global CO2 emissions,
| which means we could leave that alone and cut elsewhere until we
| have batteries and other infrastructure good enough for that.
|
| Build all this out and it'll be cheaper and more scalable than
| what we currently have.
|
| We in the USA choose to stick with ancient technology because we
| have a sunk cost and an existing political power structure built
| around it. Meanwhile China is eating our lunch. Make America
| Great Again! By... pretending it's 1945 and trying to LARP the
| previous century.
|
| Classic innovators' dilemma at the national level.
| HPsquared wrote:
| If grid energy was cheap enough, synthetic fuel for aircraft
| and trucks would be competitive.
| nickserv wrote:
| > We in the USA choose to stick with ancient technology because
| we have a sunk cost and an existing political power structure
| built around it.
|
| Yes, and also vast oil and gas reserves China doesn't have.
|
| Also there is strong public fear and dislike of nuclear power.
|
| In countries where there are no or little fossil fuels it is
| mainly this public opinion which has crippled the nuclear
| industry. Germany is a prime example.
|
| Public opinion is obviously much less important in China.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Public opinion is obviously much less important in China.
|
| That really isn't true. The reason Shanghai didn't expand
| their maglev to Hangzhou is because residents were worried
| about electrical magnetic radiation, which I don't think is
| really a thing. Nuclear took a long time to get started in
| China because people thought the government to be inept and
| corrupt, an image that has only recently faded away in the
| last decade. Without free elections, public opinion is
| actually much more important if you want to avoid
| economically destructive riots.
|
| But this all happens in back rooms, the legal system isn't
| very relevant, so if you have an issue but it isn't a very
| popular one, you don't really have any recourse. For example,
| niche environmental issues, or ones that aren't widely
| recognized yet as dangerous...
| tehjoker wrote:
| Public opinion here appears to count for nearly jack squat so
| I don't buy this explanation at all.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| "Public opinion is obviously much less important in China."
|
| In the US public opinion doesn't really matter either. It's
| the oligarchs' opinions that matter
| fragmede wrote:
| > We in the USA choose to stick with ancient technology because
| we have a sunk cost and an existing political power structure
| built around it.
|
| You don't want to discount the cultural attachment people have
| to what their parents did and their childhood.
| thenobsta wrote:
| I'd love to see as much electrification as possible.
|
| On the aviation note, sadly, aviation bats higher than its C02
| accounting. Contrails add another 1-2% on top of contribution
| from it's C02 emissions. It's entirely avoidable and could be
| resolved at relatively low cost.
|
| https://contrails.org/faq/#how-are-contrails-contributing-to...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| China has distracted the USA energy focus by dumping cheap solar
| panels here while continuing to develop advanced nuclear
| generation capabilities at home.
| ragebol wrote:
| China is simply betting on all horses: solar, wind, thorium,
| batteries, coal even, anything to not buy foreign oil and be as
| independent, self-sufficient as possible. Seems like it's
| working too
| DougN7 wrote:
| Seems like a wise thing to do too.
| ragebol wrote:
| Yup.. Happens to align somewhat with climate goals too,
| luckily for the rest of us. Once solar+batteries becomes
| the cheapest form of generation, the coal usage should also
| drop, if that isn't already the case
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Once solar+batteries becomes the cheapest form of
| generation, the coal usage should also drop_
|
| Marginal versus bulk. It can make sense, economically, to
| keep building coal plants even if solar is cheaper if
| you're building solar as fast as you can and still need
| more power.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| How exactly has it distracted the U.S?
|
| I don't see the U.S rushing to adopt either renewables or
| nuclear. We're just increasing our fossil fuel burning (natural
| gas).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I don 't see the U.S rushing to adopt either renewables or
| nuclear. We're just increasing our fossil fuel burning
| (natural gas)_
|
| This is wrong. Natural gas is falling from 42% of U.S.
| electricity generation in '23 and '24 to 40% in '25E and '26E
| [1]. Renewables, meanwhile, keep marching from 23% ('24) to
| 24% ('25E) and 26% ('26E). (Nuclear falls from 19% ('24) to
| 18% ('25E and '26E).
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/
| deadbabe wrote:
| China is far better at long term societal planning. Ultimately, I
| expect they will be the ones who can solve the climate crisis,
| after being one of the biggest contributors to the problem.
| cubefox wrote:
| Actually by far the biggest, in terms of total greenhouse
| emissions (30% of the world). Though other countries emit a lot
| more per capita.
| fmajid wrote:
| Sure, but most of that is from industrial production, and
| really should be debited on importing nations' CO2 accounts.
| Whereas in the US transportation, heating and construction
| are the main consumers.
| lossolo wrote:
| > after being one of the biggest contributors to the problem.
|
| How many "Made in China" products do you have at home right
| now? Who is contributing to the problem?
| SilverElfin wrote:
| This type of progress shows China is capable of moving from an
| economy that's build on labor arbitrage or copying others to
| genuine innovation. It's also further evidence of the extreme
| competence of the CCP in governance, which I feel should be
| acknowledged despite their authoritarian negatives.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "extreme competence of the CCP in governance"
|
| I don't think it makes sense to extrapolate from one particular
| technical field to governance in general.
|
| The US managed to defeat both Nazi Germany and Japan plus
| develop nuclear weapons, all in 1941-5. Was it a proof of
| extreme competence of the US government _in general_? The some
| government tolerated abuse of blacks and forced segregation in
| the South, I would call it a serious governance failure.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Yea but afaik China doesn't have that kind of issue. They do
| have an issue with anticommunists but I'm not sympathetic to
| their cause.
| graemep wrote:
| They very much d have that sort of issue and worse. Uighurs
| and other minorities, treatment of gays....
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _This type of progress shows China is capable of moving from
| an economy that's build on labor arbitrage or copying others to
| genuine innovation_
|
| China has been genuinely innovating in manufacturing techniques
| for decades. If anything, that ingenunuity peaked when Xi began
| his term, and has been degrading as his dictatorial tendencies
| needlessly hamstrung Chinese industry.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I wonder if people would think China copied this from the West.
| jmyeet wrote:
| A detailed explanation of the Thorium Fuel Cycle [1].
|
| I'm glad China is doing this even though I'm skeptical about
| nuclear power ever being commercially viable. At least they're
| trying different things.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IqcRl849R0
| hit8run wrote:
| Meanwhile Germany just decommissioned its last nuclear reactors.
| Given the challenges of baseload renewable generation, it's
| frustrating to watch working infrastructure being dismantled
| while we're still heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| By all the doomerism about German and nuclear there is at least
| Wendelstein 7-x doing frontier work. It's fine to get rid of
| legacy nuclear if there is a feasible bridge ahead.
| p2detar wrote:
| Not sure what the point of this comment is. China has its
| equivalent EAST, France has ITER. Countries can do both
| fission and fusion research. To me the problem isn't that
| Germany closed some legacy reactors, but that too little is
| done into looking into alternative designs.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Comparing those old conventional reactors to MSR is not
| suitable at all. And they were not fully functional past their
| expiry date.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Comparing those old conventional reactors to MSR is not
| suitable at all_
|
| It is given we're talking about perceptions. I see no
| evidence Germany's Greens are suddently rational when it
| comes to modern reactor designs, of which MSRs are one.
| AngryData wrote:
| To be fair, a lot of nuclear reactors around the world should
| be shut down just due to age and outdated designs. However they
| should also be being replaced with modern reactors, which few
| people have, which makes shutting them down while we are still
| largely utilizing fossil fuel power and chemical plants really
| dumb.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Before anybody gets too excited, it's better to understand what
| exactly happened.
|
| China ran an experimental reactor that achieved _some_ conversion
| of thorium into uranium. More precisely, the conversion ratio was
| 0.1 [1]. This means that for each new fissile atom generated from
| thorium (i.e. uranium-233) 10 atoms have been burned from the
| original fissile inventory.
|
| Now, conversion happens in every nuclear reactor. Some new
| fissile material (generally Pu-239) is generated out of "fertile
| material" (generally U-238). And, surprisingly, that conversion
| ratio is quite high: 0.6 for pressurized light water reactors and
| 0.8 for pressurized heavy water reactors [2].
|
| What China has achieved therefore is well below what is business
| as usual in regular reactors. The only novelty is that the
| breeding used thorium, rather than uranium.
|
| Is this useless? No, it is not. In principle increasing the
| conversion ratio from 0.1 to something higher than 1.0 should be
| doable. But then, going from 0.8 in heavy water reactors to more
| than 1.0 should be even easier. Why don't people do it already?
| Because the investment needed to do all the research is quite
| significant, and the profits that can be derived from that are
| quite uncertain and overall the risk adjusted return on
| investment is not justified. If you are a state, you can ignore
| that. If China continues the research in thorium breeding, and
| eventually an economically profitable thorium breeder reactor
| comes out of that, the entire world will benefit. But the best
| case scenario is that this would be three decades in the future.
|
| [1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chinese-msr-
| achi...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Conversion_rat...
| jandrese wrote:
| Fundamentally the problem is that Uranium is so damn energy
| dense and abundant enough that there's little need to set up
| these complicated recycling systems. If we start to run out of
| Uranium then this technology starts to look appealing, but in
| the modern day it just doesn't make economic sense.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Uranium is so damn energy dense and abundant enough that
| there 's little need to set up these complicated recycling
| systems_
|
| Uranium is abundant, but not homogenously so [1]. (China has
| some. But not a lot. And it's bound up expensively. And it's
| by their population centres.)
|
| For the Americas, Europe, Australia, southern Africa and
| Eastern Mediterranean, burning uranium makes sense. For
| China, it trades the Strait of Malacca for dependence on
| Russia and Central Asia.
|
| [1] https://www-
| pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1800.pdf
| cyberax wrote:
| Uranium can be stockpiled for years in advance, relatively
| easily. Enough to tide over a small war while you're
| setting up domestic production. And China should have
| enough low-grade ores for that.
| wiz21c wrote:
| and we still don't know where to store the trash. Thorium
| seems better (but my knowledge is close to zero here, I must
| admit:-) )
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we still don 't know where to store the trash_
|
| We really do. Nuclear waste is less toxic than plenty of
| trash we just bury. And calling it "waste" is a bit
| reductive, given it almost certainly becomes valuable to
| reprocess within another century or two.
| jgehring wrote:
| There's not _that_ much Uranium actually that 's economically
| sensible to extract. The NEA says in their 2024 report on
| Uranium [1]:
|
| > Considering both the low and high nuclear capacity
| scenarios to 2050 presented in this edition, and assuming
| their 2050 capacity is maintained for the rest of the
| century, the quantities of uranium required by the global
| fleet - based on the current once-through fuel cycle - would
| likely surpass the currently identified uranium resource base
| in the highest cost category before the 2110s.
|
| Their "high" scenario assumes having a bit more than double
| of today's capacity by 2050; today we have about 4-5% supply
| from nuclear energy worldwide.
|
| [1] https://www.oecd-
| nea.org/jcms/pl_103179/uranium-2024-resourc...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Out of curioosity, do they forecast at what point it
| becomes cheaper to breed than mine?
| pdpi wrote:
| My understanding is that reactors will use that plutonium just
| fine, so the energy you get from a fresh fuel rod is almost
| exclusively from uranium fission but, as time goes on, an
| increasingly large share is from plutonium fission.
|
| In principle, using Thorium would give you the energy from
| Thorium fission, then Uranium fission, then plutonium fission,
| which is pretty cool. However, I suspect you might hit an issue
| here where such a low conversion rate would make the reactor go
| sub-critical.
| inshard wrote:
| Thorium is abundant in Sri Lanka's mineral sands. Mined with
| dredgers at shallow depths 10-100m off the western coast.
| perihelions wrote:
| This post is just an excerpt--it's the first 4 paragraphs of a
| 29-paragraph article,
|
| https://archive.is/DQpXM ( _" China reaches energy independence
| milestone by 'breeding' uranium from thorium"_-SCMP)
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! - since you've found a readable link, I've swapped
| https://humanprogress.org/china-reaches-energy-milestone-by-...
| out for the original source at the top, and put the archive
| link in the top text.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| There's a danish company building modular container sized molten
| salt reactors.
|
| https://www.copenhagenatomics.com/
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