China Invests Big in Clean and Cheap Energy from Thorium

http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/press-release/china-invests-big-in-clean-and-cheap-energy-from-thorium

by tfy11aro • 8 years ago

117 27 8 years ago

thoriumenergyworld.com

fastbeef• 8 years ago

Wasn’t Bill Gates a strong proponent for (and even investor in?) thorium reactors? Did that pan out?

adventured• 8 years ago

Gates has put a lot of money into TerraPower to develop their traveling wave reactor tech:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor

And routinely works eg with China:

[Nov 2017] "Bill Gates' nuclear firm TerraPower and the China National Nuclear Corporation have signed an agreement to develop a world-first nuclear reactor, using other nuclear reactors' waste"

https://www.smh.com.au/business/bill-gates-and-china-partner...

yazr• 8 years ago

TeraPower is a clever attempt at a fast reactor using uranium/plutonium fuel. We have had various fast reactors (commercial and research) since the 70s. IIRC they tend to be very twitchy, and have proliferation issues.

Thorium reactors, a.k.a LFTR, a.k.a. "hope-ium" are still very much on the drawing board. They have some nice properties (stability, safer, liquid based).

p.s. I am pro renewable. Nuclear will comeback around 2050 when we run out of space...

Animats• 8 years ago

Is there a better source for this than "Thorium Energy World"?

fspeech• 8 years ago

You can try googling "Chinese TMSR Strategic Pioneer Science and Technology Project site:sinap.ac.cn" and "TMSR site:sinap.ac.cn". Or even just "thorium site:sinap.ac.cn".

downrightmike• 8 years ago

These reactors do refine uranium 232. So still making something that is really dangerous. https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium.html

ulkhf• 8 years ago

Given the vast quantities of existing depleted uranium and spent nuclear fuel I feel the molten chloride fast breeder reactor should come first.

soperj• 8 years ago

Can't you just use a Candu reactor for that now?

solarkraft• 8 years ago

Ah, Thorium.

philipkglass2• 8 years ago

AFAICT this article offers no dates, no numbers, and no primary sources. China did announce a thorium research program back in 2011, and continues to publish research, but I don't see any notable recent developments reported on other sites.

The IAEA does not currently list any reactors matching this description in operation or under construction in China:

https://pris.iaea.org/pris/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails....

World Nuclear News does not have any recent stories about Chinese thorium reactors.

Is this article just a rehash of old news? Or has a Chinese thorium reactor achieved criticality recently? Videos of simulations and 3D renderings are a dime a dozen. New reactor concepts are interesting only when someone operates real hardware. China can do so but there's nothing in this article that makes me think it has just done so.

gnusci• 8 years ago

Well, it seems if a MSR will be built, it will be in China

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-...

noobermin• 8 years ago

Perhaps it's a slow...news(?) day at "thoriumenergyworld.com"

tim333• 8 years ago

Something here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chinese-government-invest-bil...

[late 2017] China Academy of Sciences and the government of Gansu Province signed a co-operation agreement to work together on China’s Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) project and to have a demonstration or research reactor built in Gansu Province by 2020.
The total investment was planed to be 22 billion CNY (3 billion USD)

philipkglass2• 8 years ago

Right, some other documents I found indicated that there would be a research reactor scheduled for 2020. But the documents I found about it were from before 2018. I couldn't understand why this story was published in August 2018. There doesn't appear to be anything new happening right now. The next interesting development will be when the research reactor actually starts up, hopefully in 2020.

ChuckMcM• 8 years ago

This is basically translated from the Shanghai Institute of Applied physics (www.sinap.ac.cn) press releases.

It will be interesting if China develops a complete Thorium fuel cycle and the reactor designs to take advantage of it.

China Invests Big in Clean and Cheap Energy from Thorium

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