China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

Well, at some non trivial level it’s also true.

The petrodollar and the US’s central role in protecting/enabling it is great for US national security.

... I feel like I'm missing something here.

Any nation with effectively unlimited energy will develop directed energy weaponry.

Yup.

The big issue with Thorium is it isn’t fissile at first, and requires an existing nuclear reactor and careful fuel management to actually be usable in a reactor.

>A declassified 1966 memo from the US nuclear program stated that uranium-233 has been shown to be highly satisfactory as a weapons material (wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-233#Weapon_material)

  > Isn't thorium also pretty abundant?

Yes. Even more so! But that doesn't mean it's easy to get. Everything has to be processed at the end of the day.

The reason I brought up uranium is that it is easier to fissile. So sure, there's more thorium but it requires more processing. Why use it when we aren't concerned about uranium access? Uranium is already "cheap". (We could get into an analogy with different types of oil if that helps. Like why the US produces so much, exports it, then buys a different type)

  > I've also never really gotten the proliferation concern.

There's two issues here:

1) sure, the US doesn't care if California gets a bomb, but Russia and China sure do.

2) Breeder reactors are reactors that make higher elements.

Discussion of thorium are often extremely over simplified. Proliferation always ALWAYS must involve international relationships. When we get into that the logic changes. You need to consider a lot of higher order effects/connections since everything is always being used as leverage for other things.

Breeding is also a very complicated topic. Just like enrichment. Look at the Iran deal. They can do enrichment but only do much, right?[0]. Often fine because it's hard to scale and generally noticeable. But the same is true for breeding. Instead of turning one atom into a different isotope (e.g U238 -> U235) you change an atom to a different atom (e.g. Th233 -> Pa233 -> U233). This all happens in the reactor. It's hard to separate but hard to track. You can also keep breeding (fast reactor = more/high energy neutrons), where do you think plutonium comes from? The reason it is better for proliferation concerns is it increases the difficulty. At worst, you need to start earlier. But what I wanted to combat is the misinformation that thorium __can't __ be used for proliferation, making it safe for.., idk, Iran? It's good to add more barriers.

I'll also add waste. This is often discussed too. This is again fraught with nuance. We can dramatically reduce waste but we don't. There just isn't much of it and doing more fission is less economical. That is, unless you don't have lots of uranium laying around. That's the case with France, so they "recycle" their waste and in the process this dramatically reduces it. You can fit over 50 years of waste in a Costco and they do. You also can use similar technologies as thorium would need with uranium and still reduce waste. So that points us back to the opening: yes, thorium is abundant, but why go through all that effort when we got plenty of uranium which is cheap and efficient?

I recommend poking around AcidBurn's website. He has a lot of good information and I think he's written well in a way that's fairly approachable (it is nuclear, it's by default not approachable and easy to think you understand much more than you do. If you went through a physics degree this is often a confusing class taken at the upper level).

[0] When they broke the agreement and made more they suspiciously only made a small amount more which would take a long time to get enough for weapons. But they were also loud. Great strategy because public gets afraid, it's a threat, but they also signal that they're willing you deal but want to renegotiate (only experts would know this though). The interesting part is how their best weapon was our own fear and ignorance.

You're right that thorium can't be enriched because there's only one isotope. It needs to be bred to Uranium-233 to work. However, breeding has been more expensive and costly than enrichment, and this is the crux of why thorium use wasn't expanded in the past. To breed thorium to uranium-233, you need a breeder reactor, and you need a chemical separation facility. Together, these are more expensive to build and operate than a centrifuge and simpler non-breeder reactor.

In this sense, I disagree that the process is orders of magnitude simpler. I'd argue that it's the opposite!

The idea that thorium-derived material can't be easily used to make nuclear explosives is an unfortunately persistent myth. You can easily make very nice weapons material from thorium. As the Livermore weapons designers once said:

"If today's weapons were based on U-233, [we] would have no interest in switching to plutonium" [1]

[1] https://www.osti.gov/biblio/79078

> This is actually the reason why thorium reactors have been avoided, because it has been considered that it is too easy to separate the uranium 233 from the fuel, which can be used for making nuclear weapons.

This is absolutely not the reason thorium reactors have been avoided at all.

The reality is that uranium enrichment infrastructure existed and fuel isn't a huge part of the cost.

Most of the funding happened in the early days and they were of course using uranium, people back then figured that uranium would run out and were interested in breedres. But pretty quickly, uranium was found to be pretty common.

Uranium is also just better unless you are doing a thorium thermal breeder. And that design only really works well with a pretty complex reactor setup that most people were simply not interested in.

  > Thorium is more abundant than uranium

I don't disagree. What I said is that uranium is __also__ abundant.

  > Thorium must not be enriched and it cannot be enriched like uranium

You're right. I was trying to use language that people would generally understand. Mixing breeding and enriching. They are quite similar words, differing in protons. Enrich = changing isotope (adding/subtracting neutrons), breeding = changing atoms (adding/subtracting protons). I thought this would be fine, sorry. Yes, you are right.

  > The extraction of uranium 233 from thorium ... is a process orders of magnitude simpler

You are oversimplifying things. There's plenty of "simple chemical separation processes" that are very expensive. And sure, you can get 233 from this and use it for weapons but you still want some other elements if you're going to build a weapon. There's a lot to this and acidburn would be the better person to explain all that nuance.

I mean learning for learnings sake is more surprising then learning for a purpose.

"full steam ahead on wind and solar" the only two generation strategies that don't involve steam ;)

One day they might be able to sell ready made thorium reactors. That would be big business.

Straits of Malacca is a red herring. The strait is the shortest route from Persian Gulf to China. But there are other routes through Indonesia, or could take detour around Indonesia or even Australia. The US Navy can block anywhere.

Also, there are supertankers bigger than Malaccamax, the largest ships than can use the strait. The Chinamax and Capesize ships are bigger.

China has something like 35 years of coal reserves, based on current estimates and assuming mining holds flat.

Given the ~50% of their energy mix that's coal [0], that becomes a fix-it-ASAP problem for their economy.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-energy-source-sub?c...

Nah.. it doesn't work that way.

True Innovation comes from the heart, and most mainland Chinese have lost touch of their hearts - you can even see that foreshadowed in ài the character for Love (爱/愛)。The simplified version just pretended the heart 心 is not in the center of it..

You may have step-by-step progress in China, like going from 110 to 111.

But there have never been and will never be any 0 to 1 kind of innovation in China.. maybe at most gimmicks and copying orchestrated by the Beijing State itself.

> A stark contrast to what we have evolved in the US. Innovate and then use the profits of innovation to buy legislation that eliminates competition.

This sort of stands in contrast to reality, where the US has sustained insane and constant innovation for a vast stretch of time.

What are you on... I am not interested in the political slinging that both the west and china deploy large capital in.

I just think it is funny

lol, abortion is perfectly legal in China, the government doesn't control women's bodies.

Certain policies are more set and less up to discussion after a period of experimentation. Political system in China is more geared towards not letting human or interest groups desires reflected in national policies. Instead, national policies reflect the common good and common sense. And political system helps to unify common sense, values, individual knowledge. There is healthy level of diversity, but also a necessary level of unity to prevent extreme polarization, left and right fighting.

For example, no prostitutions, human trafficking, surrogacy, so women from disadvantaged communities are not taken advantage of after decades of that happening in Qing and ROC era. Instead, they are given opportunity to have a proper education, such as in STEM. And they have the opportunity to work in 5G, AI, semiconductors, EVs, batteries, medicine, which interestingly, USA government doesn't want Chinese citizens to work on. U accuse China has no human rights, but China moved from the country with the worst women's rights to one amongst the highest amongst East Asian countries. In my view, women's societal standing in China is equal or higher than South Korea and Japan. And leaps better than India, the largest "democracy" and country closest to China's level 100 years ago.

No drugs, harsh on drug trade, production. So disadvantaged communities are not exploited by drug dealers. We will not let what is happening in the US with fentanyl crisis happen to us. U accuse China caused US"s fentanyl crisis because we make the drugs. Lol, so if we make the drug then why don't we have fentanyl crisis? Shouldn't be its much easier to sell and traffic it where it is produced? Drug issue is a demand problem, there is a demand in the US, no matter how much you squash the supply, people will find a way to make it. U need to end it at the demand side.

Climate policy is set now, no debate on some company can get lax air pollution policies to help their bottom line. Economic policy is free market, center right, but with basic social safety net in health care, pensions, poverty, high level of social safety net in education, security, crime levels.

We worked hard to lower the price of solar panels, so the world has an alternative energy source in age of global warming. Yet, u accuse us of evil intent to dominate and overcapacity and now expanding hydrocarbon production. So, is global warming not an issue anymore? Or was global warming a narrative used to attack China? The reason we worked hard on lower price of solar is in a perfect free market, solar has to compete with coal and natural gas. And it takes technology and innovation to reduce cost. Cost reduction is a good thing, Moorse law is also cost reduction, if we don't have cost reduction, we will still be using Pentium 3s. So, sorry a lot of solar companies went down, because they can't compete on technology, supply chain, and manufacturing. Ur competitor is not Chinese solar companies, ur competitor is cheap coal and gas. Unless ur solar industry is banking on government subsidies for the rest of their lives. But wait, I thought the west is against government subsidies.

U say Chinese government stifles many creative outlets. When Chinese people work on, dream and create 5G, tiktok, DJI, EVs, solar panels, batteries, semiconductors, AI, phone apps, games, USA is attempting to kill them all, taking away Chinese people's freedom, rights to survival, development and dream. So Chinese people can only do certain things approved by US government? The only thing we approved to do is to overthrow our own government? Or civil war in our country? Or have our country broken into many pieces? Everyone has the right to pursuit of happiness, not Chinese people according to USA.

And how interesting the West is stifling Chinese speech by saying their Chinese propaganda? Speech is "free" if it agrees with West narrative, it is propaganda when it does not.

I used to admire the USA, but not these days. When Chinese people are doing better, being empowered, USA 's response is to attack, oppress, sabotage Chinese people's livelihood. Instead of "it's nice to see good human progress", "we have trade and commerce disputes, but let's resolve that by making the pie bigger for everyone". Tesla and Apple can sell their products without government led market and non-market obstruction, let me know if I can buy a BYD or Huawei in the USA. And US import tariffs of Chinese goods is now much higher than the reverse.

USA accuse us stealing your jobs, no, your own companies shipped these jobs overseas, you should ask your own companies, not attacking some mom and dad working in factories to support their kids in another country. USA is already the richest country on Earth, your problem is most of your wealth is concentrated on top 1%, instead of distributing your wealth better, or help the people in need, you attack regular mom and dads' livelihoods in another country, making them not able bring food for their families. And most people cheer for this and think it is moral? Great values you got there.

Women’s rights, gay and trans rights and human rights were hard fought for. Defending them is progress.

Claiming a political party cares too much about human rights is an interesting complaint...

You can use “he” as a pronoun for Trump, he won’t be offended and your writing will be clearer.

Based on China constantly handicapping their capital markets with boneheaded decisions. Their stock market is a wreck sending a lot of their best companies abroad in search of capital.

> but probably not the sort of strategy that the US wanted to adopt

only after having enjoyed the lowered cost goods and such. But there's a price to everything, always. And if you're not paying that price up front, it's gonna come to roost at some point.

> There is a pretty good chance that China implodes because of the authoritarian and bureaucratic streak their government has.

i dont think so. China's gov't has been stable enough for long enough, that the people it is governing over don't feel the need to overthrow them. And i don't see any trigger for this either - the average wealth and wellbeing of the chinese citizen has only grown better over the decades. Even now, where there's an economic slowdown, you don't have people starving in the streets.

It is merely wishful thinking that the west's media want to push, that there's a governance problem in china.

> Typically countries are supposed to promote the interests of the people living inside the borders instead of build up competitors

Maybe the optimal solution isn’t always doing a Prisoner’s Dilemma betrayal of the competitor.

Everything needs balance at the end.

It is the mix. Not the pure … obviously when nearly all leaders are engineers you have a problem. But if some are not, and others learn. Even for a lawyer leader group, they can learn or have a whole institution that is effectveky independent from them.

It is the mix. And whether you listen and learn. In spite of your ideology or policies. Btw is trump a lawyer …

Engineers have no trouble crafting a solution that fits within a given budget.

The real problem, with all of it, is surplus. What happens to the resources you didn't actually have to spend, once an efficient solution has been engineered?

If you let engineers decide, they spend it on over-engineering. If you can do it for ten million but there is a billion dollars in the budget, you can also do it for a billion dollars and then square away lots of implausible edge cases and improve materials efficiency by a sliver etc. But this is wasteful because those things have diminishing returns or a poor cost/benefit ratio and you ended up spending a hundred times more than was necessary for a couple of percent improvement in the result.

If you let politicians decide, they spend it on cronies. This is wasteful, because obviously.

What you have do is to figure out how to make the surplus end up back in the hands of the taxpayer without letting any of these resource parasites get their hands on it.

Now for the real reason, voters dont want to.

There are all sorts of technical solutions to those problems already on the drawing board. Even transuranic waste can be "burned" with neutrons leaving only the fission products (half-life of say 30 years, so 300 years is a 1000x reduction; 600 years is a million times reduction, basically harmless at that point). Molten salt reactors could in theory solve both problems at once at low cost. If we can build them.

I just think there's so much promise it's worth putting some time into it. Definitely a more likely payoff than fusion research.

> ...I don't think the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) is doing a bad job...

"He has a master's from Yale Divinity School and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies from Valparaiso University."

Christopher Hanson, current chair of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_T._Hanson

He's one of the better ones as he isn't actively trying to block new reactors going up. There are some gems on the other Chairperson wiki pages like "called for a global ban on nuclear power" (Gregory Jaczko if you want to look it up).

Which part of the linked article do you dispute?