China Says It's Closing in on Thorium Nuclear Reactor | Hacker News Reader

China Says It's Closing in on Thorium Nuclear Reactor

spectrum.ieee.org

163 pointsHoasi93 comments

I have been doing my best to find critical information on the viability of Thorium based nuclear reactors (because they sound too good to be true).

Everyone sings their praises, but what engineering challenges are there and are those engineering challenges large enough to discourage their development/adoption?

The biggest thing I have found is that the salt solution for Thorium reactors is quite corrosive and that is challenging to contain.

It generally sounds really promising - even the Wiki page for thorium MSR sings its praises.

Why wouldn't it work? Why isn't the world throwing shit-loads of money at this? Is China enlightened or is this some kind of meme-ware technology they fell for (or are trying to convince others to waste their money on)?

Here's a well cited perspective, written by one of HN's own active commenters:

https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html

Has anyone seen AcidBurn recently? They've been notably absent for some time. They used to appear in essentially any HN forum with nuclear. I miss their expert insight.

I'm around. I thought there were just fewer nuclear articles going around! I guess I missed some.

Haha well I've just made a habit of searching for you if there's a nuclear thread. Good to see you around.

Thanks for sharing this

I should add this to the page linked, but another excellent resource to kind of help answer your question is the paper the Oak Ridge National Lab folks put together as they lost funding for the molten salt breeder reactor program in the early 1970s: ORNL-5018 -- Program plan for development of molten-salt breeder reactors[1]. This basically is them saying: "ok folks, we're wrapping up for now but when you inevitably pick up this work, here's what you have in front of you."

Though a lot of time has passed since it was written, it's still largely relevant.

[1] https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4227904

Good write up from a great guy. IIRC the author of that page, Nick Touran, works (worked?) for one of the Nuclear Startups that Gates funded. Met him and had a few drinks once, guy knows his stuff.

Hm, reading that, it doesn't seem to disprove or actually illuminate that much IMO:

Misconception #1: I assume this is listed first because it is the biggest reason Thorium reactors weren't pursued? But really most MSR people seem to view it as political, and the bullet points in "Misconception #1" only underline that.

Misconception #2: Almost all MSR presentations seem to assume a fissile "ignition" supply of uranium, that isn't hidden. And it seems to dovetail with the political opposition, since the regulatory agencies will block the supply of fissile uranium to start an MSR with. So this point seems to again highlight artificial/bureaucratic blockades.

Miconception #3: Well, ok, this seems to be a decent answer based on the fundamentals of the science and engineering.

Misconception #4: This seems to ignore the fact that a very very small amount of uranium is naturally fissile, while the Thorium all breeds to fissile. It also spouts off about seawater extraction, which hasn't happened AFAIK. This answer seems very misleading.

Plus, the fact the author is from a competing design (a pebble design I believe, and one of the reasons pebble designs seem to exist is because of the prohibition on research labs from booting up a liquid reactor).

I do agree the unknowns are the vessel degradation from the salts, but materials engineers these days are just so amazingly good.

It just seems frustrating that the overarching influence of regulatory agency stubbornness and lobbying influence of solid fuel rod reprocessors and other fuel makers (who have a monopoly on nuclear fuel production I believe due to the regulatory agencies) is evident in this article.

If it is true that China gets breeder/thorium/liquid reactors going, it all doesn't matter. The US will be a decade behind, and with the anti-nuclear opinions of the US voting populace, that will afford the entrenched interests cover to keep suppressing nuclear.

I suppose it doesn't matter right now. Solar/Wind/Battery is improving so quickly you can't forecast/target a price/budget for a reactor design that is invariably 5-10 years out.

It matters geopolitically speaking in a big way, since any significant improvements to nuclear reactors built by China will have corresponding potential for improvement in their nuclear powered submarines and their future aircraft carriers which are being designed around a similar electric power heavy design philosophy as the US Navy’s Gerald Ford class, with the Chinese Type 004 aircraft carriers being designed as “full size” nuclear powered carriers using electromagnetic catapults to their launch aircraft.

Extant CANDU reactors can utilize Thorium fuel too. [1] I believe India is planning to utilize them in this way. [2]

[1] https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20823329

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

I think they plan to use the PFBR (Stage II) to produce U-Th MOX and fuel the AHWR with it. However both reactors are far from complete.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_...

Existing energy industry is too entrenched in current technology to innovate? Widely publicized nuclear energy disasters prevents popular support? I don't know but this guy seems pretty smart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EFfxMx6WJs

> The biggest thing I have found is that the salt solution for Thorium reactors is quite corrosive and that is challenging to contain.

If you can figure out the molten salt problem you can replace the nuclear reactor with concentrated solar thermal and get solar baseload power without having to worry about meltdowns for way less than the cost of a nuke plant.

The salt in MSRs has different requirements from that in solar thermal systems, so there's not really a connection. Also, solar thermal is pretty much a dead technology now; PV (and batteries) killed it.

Still way more viable than thorium nuclear reactors.

What about filling the radiation chamber with solar cells that could convert the wave energy into electricity? Something similar to this [0] but scaled way way up.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6byi-RFrgtU

Nuclear reactors are complex beasts. Very complex. For example, here's [1] the webpage with NRC's safety evaluation documents for NuScale's small modular reactors. Dozens of documents, totaling more than one thousand pages. In many cases, there are years of work behind a single paragraph. Here's [2] an example where the NRC replies to some concerns raised by some advisory committee regarding some potential scenarios where the reactor may turn unsafe because of some boron technicality:

  >>4.Operator recovery actions raise the possibility of an influx of deborated water into  the core, which may result in recriticality, return to power, and the potential for  core damage.    Staff Response: In the staff’s SER for Chapter 19, dated July 17, 2020,  (ADAMS Accession No. ML20196L734), the staff identified two post-event  recovery scenarios that could pose a challenge to reactivity control. The first  scenario is recovery from a non-LOCA extended decay heat removal system  (DHRS) cooling condition which can occur following initiating events such as  general transients and losses of off-site power. The second scenario is recovery  from a LOCA ECCS cooling condition which can occur following initiating events  such as breaks in the primary coolant lines. The staff notes that either action to  inject would likely be governed by plant-specific procedures; however, such  procedures are not required at the design certification stage and have not been  developed. The staff evaluated the potential core damage risk for the two  scenarios. For reasons discussed in the SER which are supported by two  papers developed by the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research (RES) (ADAMS  Accession Nos. ML20191A069 and ML20205L317), the staff concludes that  enough margin exists such that these recovery scenarios are unlikely to lead to  core damage based on the physical effects of fluid mixing, reactivity feedback  mechanisms, and associated time constants. Based on the SER and the two  RES papers, the staff found that there is reasonable assurance that there are no  known significant risk contributors that are unaccounted for and that the identified  risk insights are acceptable to support the uses of probabilistic risk assessment  (PRA) at the design stage.

My point is: there are plenty of corner cases, maybe thousands, and in many of these corner cases the outcome can be either a nuclear boom, or at least a Chernobyl or Fukushima scenario. They are low probability but high danger scenarios, so you need to spend a lot of time (and research money) to either rule out each corner case, or to develop foolproof mitigants.

When people say that this or that reactor design is inherently safe, they are talking about first order effects. When the NRC goes into all the details, things always get a bit more complex.

Edit: by the way, nuclear fission reactors can be supercritical (all current commercial ones), or subcritical (those need an external source of neutrons or protons, such as an accelerator). Only subcritical reactors [3] can be truly pasively safe. There are concepts of subcritical reactors that use Thorium as a fuel, but that's not what China is trying here. China is trying a classical Thorium reactor, where Thorium is used to breed fissile Uranium (not the classical U-235, but rather the isotopes U-232 and U-233), and that Uranium in turn proceeds to undergo the (supercritical) fission chain reaction.

[1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2002/ML20023A318.html

[2] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2023/ML20231A598.pdf

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcritical_reactor

Here's a useful slide deck from ORNL (2017):

https://gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/MoltenSaltReactor/Module2-Ov...

Note page 23! Almost all the 137Cs ends up outside of the core, due to sparging of precursors. "Over 40% of [fission products] leave core"

Lots of other issues, particularly with radiation damage and corrosion of reactor structural elements. Unlike in a solid fuel reactor, there is fission going on right at the boundary of the salt. In a LWR, there is a layer of water between the fuel and the reactor structure to provide shielding. There will be non-fuel components of a MSR that are not lifetime components, but will have to be swapped out due to degradation. Some MSR designs are proposing to just swap out the entire reactor vessel because of this.

China built the world’s largest high speed rail network (24,000 miles of tracks) and the first rails were laid down in 2007.

If you think they can’t do this in 9 years, you haven’t been paying attention.

Nuclear is far from the best source of electricity, but it is far less damaging to the environment than coal or NG if handled and designed properly. If countries can work together to put them in places that protect from major earthquakes or other natural disasters then I think we can get some decent movement on reduce GHG emissions from power plants.

How long does it take to plan and build a nuclear plant? At the rate solar, wind and energy storage are improving, will it be worth the wait? Solar has dropped in price by more than 80% in the past 10 years.

Present-day reactors, a long time. Small modular reactors built in factories or shipyards could be pretty quick. Some of those designs are MSRs like China's reactor.

Compare the EROEI on solar (~10) vs nuclear (~100), and LFTR (~1200 maybe...) in particular, there is no comparison. In the future we will need far more electrical energy, it's not enough to just replace what we currently have. Also if we want to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, we will need a tremendous amount of power.

Problem is, we might not be able to build them fast enough.

China is currently the leader in deployment of nuclear power, but even there wind power overtook it in terms of GWh delivered in 2013 and the difference was been widening ever since.

Similarly within a decade solar went from delivering 1% of the energy nuclear did, to 70%. At this rate it will close the gap before 2025.

If there is a will, there is a way. The US invented the nuclear bomb in just a few years with the Manhattan project.

The biggest obstacle has been the anti-science FUD spread largely by environmental groups.

No, the biggest obstacles has been the gross economic failure of nuclear. The claims it would be cheap were always lies, although the boosters increasingly desperately blame anyone else they can.

It's seems it would suffice to have enough nuclear power to keep the grid going when the sun is down and the wind isn't blowing. You could then have a zero-carbon system. You'd need designs that you can turn on and off easily. Maybe a bit of battery storage to handle transitions smoothly.

It's a fair point, but we just don't know yet, which it is important for research to continue. From an intuitive sense though, I think our economic growth and our standard of living is tied to energy costs, and being tied to a low EROEI system means to me that it will limit our potential since a larger % of the economy must be devoted to building/replacing them rather than doing other things.

Unfortunately a lot of nuclear plants went offline and very few were built in the last 20 years. As they aged they were deemed to much of a risk and shut down. If they had continued to have been built then Solar would not have gained so much, but there was too much push back on nuclear after the Fukushima incident.

https://www.powermag.com/taiwan-shuts-another-reactor-as-par...

You need to qualify a few statements there.

Total electricity consumption peaked in Western nations over a decade ago and has basically been flat or dropping since [1][2]. So when you say, "In the future, we will need far more electrical energy" it's missing ... "in the developing world." Which, personally, is not my first choice for where to put nuclear reactors.

Second, we don't actually need to use a bunch of electricity to remove carbon from the atmosphere - I'm not sure what technology you're referring to there. The easiest way to do it is by growing as many trees as we can, which doesn't really take power at all aside from the initial planting.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

We definitely should plant more trees, but the idea that it is the solution to removing carbon I think has been pretty debunked at this point. Between increase in forrest fires, lack of rainfall, lack of available and viable land to grow trees and other issues, it just is not even close to the whole solution.

Actually farming carbon consuming crops and then burying them instead of harvesting them is a probable/workable solution under research. Soil Sequestration.

Done properly, it has benefits as read from this balanced article: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/carbon-sequestration-farms-...

Biomass for CO2 sequestration is garbage -- it uses far too much land and sequesters far too little CO2.

I am a massive LFTR stan, but we have to recognize that, EROEI aside, the total economics of nuclear aren't competitive in the current regulatory framework in the US versus alternative energy. I agree that theoretically those EROEI figures are correct/achievable, but PWR/LWR has so poisoned the brand of fission that we can't get those right now.

We'll need a stable price target (and maybe paranoia of the Chinese) to get LFTR and better reactor design actually economical and the necessary political reforms.

EROEI of 100 is not 10x better than an EROEI of 10, though. There is diminishing returns on EROEI. Relevant figure could be "net energy delivered" (or some such) that goes from .9 to .99, a 10% improvement.

Also, I believe the EROEI of 10 for solar is for PV operated in Europe. But there's no reason to put the solar-powered PV factories in relatively bad locations like Europe.

Large reactors currently take at least 10 years to construct. The new small reactors are estimated to take at least 2-5 years.

These plants offer continuous power with minimal maintenance. Renewable equipment needs to be replaced and repaired at a higher frequency. They will also need storage and grid upgrades to stand as a direct replacement. They absolutely have a place in the energy profile. But, nuclear provides a type of base power that cannot be easily or cost efficiently accomplished by renewable technologies. We need to take advantage of the pros and mitigate the cons of each technology.

> nuclear provides a type of base power that cannot be easily or cost efficiently accomplished by renewable technologies

I'm pro nuclear, but the numbers I'm seeing say this statement isn't true. The UK is currently building a new nuclear power station, being called the most expensive nuclear power station in the world by the media. It has a strike price (guarantee wholesale rate) of £90/MWh[0], where as offshore wind has a strike price of £40/MWh[1], and will probably get cheaper.

I understand this isn't the whole picture, as wind energy isn't a constant supply, but the UK is well placed to transition to a smart grid to adjust a large amount of demand dynamically (a lot of homes have electric heating which was designed to be switched on remotely 'off peak' [2]).

I wouldn't say the UK is against nuclear, and this plant is being built by the French multinational EDF - they have some experience building and running nuclear power stations. So why is it so expensive? Where are all these cheap nuclear power stations?

[0] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Strike_price_deal_for_...

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-record-low-uk-offshore-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7

Big = expensive. We are talking about two EPR 1600 MWe gen3 reactors here. The parent is talking about SMRs, small modular reactors.

"The plant, which has a projected lifetime of 60 years, has an estimated construction cost of between £19.6 billion and £20.3 billion"

"Financing of the project is still to be finalised, but the construction costs will be paid for by the mainly state-owned EDF of France and Chinese state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN)"

"In September 2019, further costs were identified that bring the estimated total to £22.9 billion, and may further delay operations. The involvement of state-owned CGN was also questioned after it was sanctioned by the United States government for espionage."

"The European Commission has previously estimated £24.5 billion, including financing costs during construction"

So, an additional £2.6bn (~13%) cost overrun and geopolitics involving China. The EU estimation is +£4.2 bn. There were also competions ahead of schedule despite the pandemic, so it's not all that bad [1].

UK offshore wind also has a capacity factor of <40% [2]. Wind will also be sold cheaper, because when wind blows all over Europe, everyone wants to sell their wind generated electricity. For these reasons comparing the wholesale rates is kind of short sighted. I'm not picking one over of the other, but stressing that a balanced energy mix needs both. The UK's geographic position also enables the usage of offshore tidal plants. They just launched one of the biggest tidal plants recently, the Orbital O2 [3].

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station
  2. https://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors
  3. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-57991351

One nice thing about a molten salt reactor like China is building is that the dangerous fission products are chemically bound in the salt. If some external event breaks the reactor wide open, the salt cools and you just have radioactive rocks there on the site, instead of a radioactive cloud over a large region.

Look, I want to agree and I'm neither a geologist nor a nuclear scientist but I think you're fantasising if you think there will be no particulate, dispersed matter. The salt mix even if the lower temp melting mixtures is 200°C or more above ambient. It will explode on contact with moisture. There will be clouds of burning materials.

If you say LESS dispersed radiation? Sure. None... sorry not chemically or mechanically or hydraulically or meteorologically plausible.

The elephants foot degrades over time into dust. Radiation causes stress fractures in solids, crystalline structure disturbs. It's going to "decay" in the non radiative sense of the word.

Btw I am pro nuke, in Hypothesis. In my economy (oz) it would have been ideal 30 years ago. Now, with zero power nukes (only one medical manufacturer with a dido type swimming pool reactor) the build out is probably economically infeasible after lawsuit attack, compared to solar, wind and battery. But I remain hopeful of this new stuff, and the PBMR

Actually, one safety feature of an MSR is a "salt plug" that melts at a higher temperature.

When the plug melts, the contents of the reactor flow into a boron containment.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030645491...

If its design allows it to somehow avoid a BLEVE [0] from whatever fluid it uses to move energy from the reactor to the generator being suddenly liberated.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_liquid_expanding_vapor...

There are plenty of volatile fission products in a molten salt reactor. For example, at MSRE, a large fraction of the iodine went completely missing and no one to this day knows where it went. Capable and redundant containment systems are absolutely necessary in these reactors.

Fusion electricity is what will provide humanity with energy for centuries to come. It'll be available very soon and until then it does not really matter whether we will use nuclear or coal. We just need a final push for 50-100 years and energy issue will be solved once and forever. All the environment issues will be dealt with, when we will have a free energy and better technologies. Spending too much effort on cleaning environment now is not wise.

Fusion will neither be available soon, nor is it likely to be competitive if ever it does arrive.

> Nuclear is far from the best source of electricity

Just to be clear, this is a universal statement. The issue is that there are many factors to consider. There's cost, storage, total output, CO2 and waste production, physical footprint, environmental factors, local resources, and many other parameters that need to be considered when determining what _combination_ of energy sources should be used for an area. I believe that often people abstract these variables out and only concentrate on cost and a secondary factor that supports their point for the specific conversation. We should not be naive and recognize that these are extremely complex systems with equally complex solutions that require significant amounts of nuance to accurately discuss.

That would be awesome, but unfortunately the CCP have proven to us that we can't trust their word.

They say they’re 9 years away. That’s a long enough date that I’d be skeptical of any government that was giving a prediction for nearly a decade out.

That’s far enough away to be essentially meaningless because nobody will remember the claim.

This. Is there any organization on earth - government, corporation, whatever - with even a mediocre track record for commercial-scale deployment of (fairly) radical new nuclear power technologies?

> That would be awesome, but unfortunately the CCP has proven to us that we can't trust their word. Over and over again.

IMHO, claims like this from them should be believed 100%, because to do otherwise invites complacency.

this also isn't the type of thing that governments tend to lie about. it's not like a scenario where a contractor overpromises and underdelivers and government media has to do damage control. they're also not announcing some new leap in scientific understanding. it's old science.

> this also isn't the type of thing that governments tend to lie about

This is the sort of thing governments lie about, IME - big, sensational achievements that enhance their status.

maybe in movies. governments mostly tend to lie about things they did badly, not about long-term accomplishments that can be fairly easily measured against their previous record, currently level of expertise, etc.

> maybe in movies

No, I said "IME". Don't try to dismiss other people.

I think some citations and evidence are generally preferable to broad sweeping statements prefixed with "in my experience" - I'm not saying you're wrong but you've given me no reason to believe.

I agree, though it seems hard to find evidence that would support this as a general trend (not just a few examples). It would require finding existing research, I think.

However, the dismissive response also has no evidence.

For the time being, I am going to dismiss you until you provide some actual evidence to support your claim.

Lies about industrial progress? About industrial capacity? That is exactly the sort of thing that China has lied about in the past. There is a great video of Putin laughing as a minister talks about all the pork they export to indonesia. These sorts of lies are normal for such nations. Nobody takes them too seriously, especially those telling them.

if by "sort of thing" you mean anything related to industry, then maybe you're right. but this is a claim about a particular technology, not a claim about aggregate capacity. if you're using russia as a point of comparison, this is maybe the one area where it might not be to your advantage, since one of the few things russia excels at is producing and selling nuclear technology. people might not take russia's claims about pig exports too seriously, but people do take seriously their nuclear claims (such as announcements about nuclear icebreakers, or whatever).

> “These sorts of lies are normal for such nations”

“I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

-Mike Pompeo, former CIA director and U.S Secretary of State [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/6RmEsPE7iq0?t=9

> teleSur is funded in whole or in part by several governments of Latin America.

Didn’t know that was a thing.

It's the sort of claim thats fairly meaningless to the average person, but becomes meaningful and embarrassing if its exposed as vaporware (and the sort of person that's more impressed by this than any other announcement about power stations is the sort of person that's really interested in the detail of how it'll work).

During the Cold War the US and USSR made all sorts of tendentious claims about the superiority of their socioeconomic systems, their military prowess and mendacious things the other side was supposed to be doing and denied all sorts of things they actually did, but they didn't try to lie their way to the front of the Space Race.

> It's the sort of claim thats fairly meaningless to the average person,

We're talking about it, aren't we? I've also seen this news on Reddit. Propaganda doesn't have to be a one size fits all. Targeting armchair experts and tech enthusiasts can still be useful. The point is that people are talking about how awesome your country is. Real or fake, I'd call this news story a success for China.

I'm not saying this technology is vaporware or not, I don't know. I'm just saying that the argument I'm responding to isn't great. I'd also like to mention that propaganda doesn't even imply that something is fake. Sputnik was real and also a great propaganda machine because it got people talking about it but so were other niche things like Russian Chess players and Russian mathematicians. We have international math competitions, you think those aren't used by propagandists? The average person cares nothing about a math competition.

> but becomes meaningful and embarrassing if its exposed as vaporware

I’d argue that almost no claim like this is even remembered, let alone becomes ‘embarrassing’.

On the other hand when people see them it definitely creates the propaganda or marketing value of China being ‘ahead’ in some way.

I'm next door to them. They are really good at spinning stories to their people. However embarrassing.

Recent flood, one of the state media headlined an outright lie that US govt states that China earned respect from around the globe through its flood rescue effort. Lied about the amount of rainfall and the capabilities of their dams. Some TV news station just never show flood footage. Any challenge to the effort is branded as foreign influence.

For story like this if turned out to be vapor, the blame would be easily placed in thousands of places but themselves.

It would be incredibly stupid, at many levels, to lie about something that is so public and scientifically scrutable. There's almost no benefit, at a national level, to lying about this, and when the world eventually learns of the lie, which it would quite quickly, China would be the laughing stock of the scientific world, which is the opposite of what the CCP wants.

So no, this is not a lie, because it would be both obviously stupid, and obviously not in the best interest of China to do that; not even an amazingly shitty and disorganized government would be that stupid, and the Chinese government is quite coherent, and very good at acting I it's own interests.

unfortunately the CCP has proven to us that we can't trust their word. Over and over again

Blaming others, deflection, and dishonesty is a common tactic used by every nation.

Remember when the blackout in 2003 was caused by Canada?

"Canadian officials insisted a massive blackout Thursday across the Northeast and parts of Canada originated in the United States, though U.S. power workers denied that and American officials blamed Canada."

Remember how the 9/11 terrorists also came from Canada? Canada doesn't control entry to the US, and they never came via Canada at all but this was often quoted in the media, as a deflection.

"Not one 9/11 terrorist entered the United States via Canada"

> CCP has proven to us that we can't trust their word. Over and over again.

Are you able to substantiate that claim?

> Are you able to substantiate that claim?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/18/china-covid-19-killed-h...

It is widely known that when the new coronavirus emerged in December 2019, the Chinese government downplayed the pandemic threat for several critical weeks. Less commonly known is those same authorities deliberately sacrificed health workers to maintain their lies.

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) calculated cover-up enabled the coronavirus to go global. By silencing doctors, Beijing not only fueled this pandemic but also compromised the world’s ability to spot the next one.

And before you downvote ^^ consider reading this page https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/foreign-policy/

> In review, Foreign Policy covers news related to foreign affairs with minimal bias. Headlines are generally free from loaded words, though at times moderate such as this: Bernie Sanders Still Doesn’t Pass the Commander-in-Chief Test (anti-progressive) and this Trump Doesn’t Want to Play Peacemaker (anti-Trump). Both articles use proper sourcing. In general, Foreign Policy leans slightly right in their news coverage but balanced in reporting and well-sourced.

This is hilarious. I wonder if there's a political group that benefits from attacking both these positions.

Are you implying a specific group?

yeah, the old clintonites, the sinemas, maybe you can toss mitt romney in there. they're the most powerful political bloc currently, if you're new to politics

Basically the entire national security mainstream.

If you consider "america should be the number one power and do whatever it takes to stay that way" to be an unbiased and neutral statement, then sure, Foreign Policy is unbiased.

I wouldn't go to them for a viewpoint inclusive of American rivals, though.

ok, so is it correct that you're suggesting that mediabiasfactcheck is giving a better rating to FP in order to benefit those groups? Sorry if i'm seeming indirect, but i'm still trying to piece together your actual point

Maybe these will help

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

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

Our government wasn’t any better.

January 20th, 2020: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

February 11th, 2020: “In our country, we only have, basically, 12 cases and most of those people are recovering and some cases fully recovered. So it’s actually less.”

February 26th, 2020: “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

March 10th, 2020: “This was unexpected. … And it hit the world. And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

True, those were rather blatant lies, but also obvious lies. In the US, at least the lies of the government are easily exposed. In China, that's a lot harder.

Blaming China is pointless: Western countries had control of their borders and did not act.

Taiwan started its lockdown procedures on people entering from China on December 31st, 2019.

Taiwan knew what was happening, and all governments should have had similar knowledge - they certainly should not have been waiting for China to tell WHO or whatever other lame argument that article makes.

I am sick of the same boring cliché arguments being trotted out about how we think China should act: how we act is what matters.

Sorry, off topic I know.

I agree that the fault also lies with other countries for letting the virus in so easily. But the grandparent poster asked for an example where the CCP lied and I obliged.

The full story there is the local authorities lied initially, then the feds found out and fired them while slamming the red alert button. Mayor of Wuhan and Governor of Hubei sacked in the aftermath. This all happened MONTHS before the virus hit the US.

The CCP is 100 million people.

Yeah the problem Is the CCP itself with its incentive structure, not the "bad apples"

The whole country is structured so that verification by foreigners is next to impossible:

Foreign journalists cannot freely report from within the country. If the government does not like your reporting, you are forced to leave the country.

Information controls ensure that communication with China & the western world is controlled and subject to scrutiny. People in China cannot legally access most foreign news, or communicate with foreigners on social media. You cannot even access hackernews legally in China!

This creates an environment where it's extremely hard to actually vet any information about China, as there is such a strong communications barrier. Both for professional journalists and regular civilians. There is this immense culture of secrecy and information control that does not exist on the same scale anywhere else in the world.

Unsurprisingly this creates a situation where people distrust the words of the Chinese government. They have created this apparatus that prevents foreigners from verifying Chinese information.

My thinking is that for major projects they mostly deliver against our intuition. What are the counter examples which are over and over again?

Thank goodness China’s energy policy is not contingent on whether or not tpmx of Hackernews believes them or not.

Reading the article, there aren’t huge scientific problems building these reactors. So, if there’s government support, it seems likely to me these will be built.

I also think China has proven that it is willing and able to rapidly build infrastructure. That makes me think their timeline can be in the right ballpark, too.

They also seem to have been willing to sacrifice quality for speed in large infrastructure projects, though (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision, https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-40638820090627, https://www.npr.org/2012/08/29/160231137/chinese-blame-faile...)

That’s something I would worry more about (disclaimer: China is huge, so it will have its share of disasters. It also probably will pay more attention to nuclear projects than to bread-and-butter concrete pouring for buildings and roads)

You ought read the article rather than post your own mindless prejudices and mental cliches

Hackernews styles itself of thoughtful discussion

This guy on Twitter named Conrad Knauer [1] who has been diligently following satellite photos and cross-referencing them with the design publications for TMSR-1 that makes it all seem pretty believable. Pretty round-about way to verify things but it's something.

[1] https://twitter.com/ConradKnauer

> Moderator: nuclear graphite

This moderator develops cracks during normal operation as seen in UK's AGR several other designs. And it burns in case of an accident (Windscale, Chernobyl). Since the TMSR-LF1 is an experimental project I also assume that it's a single fluid design? More detailed information on the TMSR-LF1 is quite hard to find but it says that it's based on the original Oak Ridge MSR design.

"Old proposed single fluid designs promising breeding performance tend to have an unsafe positive void coefficient and often assume excessive fuel cleaning to be economic viable."

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

China says a lot of things

This could also be a feint to get DoD money into the technology.

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