21 Comments
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Eli Rassi's avatar

Utterly fascinating. This article gave me goose flesh.

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Nexus Six's avatar

I heard the project got cancelled because the corrosion was an insurmountable problem.

A molten salt reactor consists of literal molten salt running through pipes that heat water. There is no material that can beat the corrosion.

The only way China can make use of the tech is if it either a) finds a way to make the constant rebuilding cost effective or b) develops magnetic field plasma tubes for contactless flow.

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STEVE MADISON's avatar

Ceramics?

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Tony P's avatar

I get a disquieting feeling reading stuff like this, along the lines of "If something sounds too good to be true......"

Also, even if the hype and promise turns out to be real, and this scales up to become a true boon to humanity and the earth, why is it necessarily a "bad thing" that China got there first?

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Ken Kovar's avatar

China actually needs this technology to meet its enormous energy needs without dumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere . It can’t keep burning more coal and it does not have a lot of oil reserves. I hope it succeeds with no adverse impacts that nuclear power traditionally brings. It’s clear that conventional nuclear power plants still can fail disastrously like Chernobyl and Fukushima.

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RNDM31's avatar

China is a ruthless Orwellian police state with ambitions to global hegemony and a serious inferiority complex. That should answer your last question by default.

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James McGarrahan's avatar

Sounds like projection to me

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RNDM31's avatar

Doesn't it get itchy with your head in the sand like that?

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matt's avatar

once again, nuclear power will involve massive amounts of power to cool it. "fuel cycle that cannot be weaponized" my ass, china is already weaponizing control over water in the bramaputra river.

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Hussein Hopper's avatar

1. Competition between states in Asia has been going on for decades. There is nothing “already” about China doing this.

2. There is no connection between this and thorium reactors, except in the fevered minds of those petrified by the rise of China and the decay of the US and it’s enfeebled proxies, of whom you are clearly one.

3. The image of an enfeebled Biden aimlessly wandering around ranting incoherently , oblivious of events around him is a powerful metaphor of current and future state of the US.

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CorporateSerf's avatar

India had planned out and implemented a thorium program due to the sanctions regime for signing npt as a non-nuclear state

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V Baldwin's avatar

Oil companies and their lobbyists would have shut this down in a moment’s notice.

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Jaynee Beach's avatar

Wrong. If it was even remotely viable, oil companies would buy the companies that are developing it.

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V Baldwin's avatar

You are wrong.

It is viable.

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Jaynee Beach's avatar

Seriously, oil companies do not shut down viable alternative energy sources. They buy them (Shell Wind, Chevron/Horizon, Exxon at one point owned a solar company, all of the BigOil companies have fingers in small-reactor nuclear). So many people think the only way to vanquish competition is to shut it down. BigOil has been buying the alternatives for decades.

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V Baldwin's avatar

To shut them down.

You said it. Decades only.

In other words, drill, baby, drill

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Right Of Normie's avatar

This unfortunately will never take off, due to America’s corporate control over energy.

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Simon Errock's avatar

If China are building thorium reactors, how can the US prevent them?

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Right Of Normie's avatar

Oh sorry, I meant in the US. China will have little to no issues implementing this

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Adam Carley's avatar

Skeptical that the author has the background to pronounce so conclusively.

I ran a Deep Research to get a sense of what the wider literature says on this:

https://chatgpt.com/share/682b2e7d-3ad8-8011-a116-3bfb0c0776fb

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Carolus Jcl's avatar

they have one experimental reactor due to come online in 5 years, but wil produce commercial scale reactors to be de-ployed through their economy by 2035?

Everytime I try to drill down on these small scaled reactors arguments, I see numerous claims but little factual backing.

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