Thorium powerplants, nuclear fusion powerplants, solid-state batteries, quantum computing, and TSMC producing chips in the US are news that should be considered speculative until they go into production. There has been plenty of coverage, but little real-world utility or impact from these technologies so far.
China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025
61–70 of 141 posts
Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case of the US, the latest president is a failed businessman who is more concerned about trans people, abortion, and immigrants than progress. According to media I’m supposed to hate China but I don’t hear Xi Jinping spouting nonsense like that.
The entire democratic party is more concerned about trans people, abortion, and immigrants than progress.
Women’s rights, gay and trans rights and human rights were hard fought for. Defending them is progress.
Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on what, China is too successful as it stands? Maybe they need to handicap themselves to appear less threatening? The contribution that the finance people in the US made was to - accurately - identify that if they moved all the investment overseas then the US wouldn't need to work as hard. They were correct. The result has been massive leaps and bounds in Asian prosperity and living standards. Which is good for…
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.
That seems more like a case of "authoritarianism is bad" than "finance people are good".
Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025
#64Well, good. It's a shame nobody else has stepped up to do this first. Maybe China doing it first will help get the ball rolling.
Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That seems more like a case of "authoritarianism is bad" than "finance people are good".
It can happen in democracies too. I can think of a few specific ones off the top of my head.
Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this why China is such a great and technically advanced country?
It is but it has its risks/downsides. Engineers want to build and architecture everything which is why China has shit ton of rail, metros, bridges, etc... but also they don't want to hear anything about costs/ROI/Profitability/PMF or any of that annoying economic speak :) Law is a weird one and maybe I am wrong but I think law leadership is the worst of all. They have no understanding of neither engineering or econom…
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 …
Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025
#67Well, good. It's a shame nobody else has stepped up to do this first. Maybe China doing it first will help get the ball rolling.
I’m pretty sure I first heard about China doing this 15 years ago or so. I guess it just takes a long time to go from project planning to reactor?
Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can hate the Chinese system for how it limits human rights, cracks down harshly on dissent, and stifles many creative outlets. Hating China or the Chinese people, which are like anywhere, generally lovely people, is silly. There's plenty of nonsense coming from the mouth of the Party, but it doesn't make the US news, because it's not aimed at the US. There's also a lot less news overall which discusses and critiq…
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 s…
> the government doesn't control women's bodies.
孩政策
Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025
#69But at what cost?
Authoritarianism isn't cost for building this. The lacking need of progress in this field here is the answer. Stubborn and rigid bureaucratic rules combined with unreasonably tought regulations are the reason why we are not able to innovate as fast as we could.
Lack of environmental regulations or regulations that the party can simply ignore without judicial checks is surely useful also.
Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this why China is such a great and technically advanced country?
It is but it has its risks/downsides. Engineers want to build and architecture everything which is why China has shit ton of rail, metros, bridges, etc... but also they don't want to hear anything about costs/ROI/Profitability/PMF or any of that annoying economic speak :) Law is a weird one and maybe I am wrong but I think law leadership is the worst of all. They have no understanding of neither engineering or econom…
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.