[ExI] China building a Thorium molten salt reactor

[efc at disroot.org]

On Sat, 28 Sep 2024, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat wrote:

> China will start building a Thorium-based molten salt reactor in 2025. 
> It is expected to start generating power in 2029-2030.
>
> https://www.neimagazine.com/news/china-to-build-worlds-first-thorium-molten-salt-npp-in-gobi-desert/?cf-view
>
>
> China has announced the construction of a nuclear power plant that will 
> be fuelled by liquid fuel based on molten thorium salt. The Shanghai 
> Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) has been engaged in research in 
> this area since 2011 focusing on liquid fluoride-thorium reactors 
> (LFTRs). The construction of a prototype of a thorium molten salt 
> reactor (TMSR) with a capacity of 2 MW began in September 2018 and was 
> reportedly completed in August 2021. China is seeking to get full 
> intellectual property rights to this technology.
>
> Now China plans to build the world’s first NPP based on molten salt in 
> the Gobi desert. Construction will begin in 2025 with the aim of 
> developing safer and more environmentally friendly nuclear energy. The 
> reactor does not need water for cooling, since it uses liquid salt and 
> carbon dioxide to transfer heat and generate electricity.
>
> In 2022, SINAP received permission from the Ministry of Ecology and 
> Environmental Protection to commission an experimental MTSR. This is the 
> first nuclear molten salt reactor since the United States stopped its 
> molten salt test reactor in 1969. The application for the operation of 
> the experimental reactor was considered in China in June 2023, it was 
> considered to be fully compliant with safety requirements.
>
> The reactor will use fuel enriched in less than 20% U-235, with a 
> thorium reserve of about 50 kg and a conversion factor of about 0.1. 
> FLiBe – a eutectic mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride 
> containing 99.95% lithium-7 will be used, and the fuel will consist of 
> uranium tetrafluoride (UF4).
>
> It is expected that the implementation of the project will begin with 
> some refuelling online and removal of gaseous fission products. However, 
> after 5-8 years, all fuel salts will be disposed of for processing and 
> separation of fission products and secondary actinides for storage. The 
> reactor will launch an ongoing process of processing uranium and thorium 
> salts with the operational separation of fission products and secondary 
> actinoids. If this project is successful, China plans to fully 
> commission a 373 MW reactor by 2030.
>
> ------------------------------------------
>
> I hope that this is a wake up call to the West. NIMBYs be damned; if we 
> don't get started on something similar, then China will be eating our 
> lunch by the end of the next decade. Burning coal to power our Tesla EVs 
> is not a viable alternative.
>
> Stuart LaForge
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>

I agree completely. This is definitely the technology of the near-term 
future. I do hope the west would be able for once, to get sh*t done, and 
to deemphasize identity politics for the moment. ;)