China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025 • Hacker News Board

Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

#81

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Dec 31, 2024, 6:15 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #74

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes uranium more economical, fuel production or some aspect of operation? And if it's the first one, is that just lack of scale for thorium or something else?

Uranium is pretty abundant. The US has a lot, China twice as much, Kazakhstan a lot more, and Australia puts everyone to shame. Thorium isn't ready to be fuel and must be enriched (granted, you need to do this for uranium too but some is naturally in a fissile state). So there's things like breeder reactors that enrich during the cycle but this is challenging and presents other issues such as turning it into weapons…

Isn't thorium also pretty abundant? Judging by this, the US has around six times as much thorium as uranium:

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

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

I've also never really gotten the proliferation concern. I mean, sure, you don't want to sell a breeder reactor to Iran. But why can't you sell one to PG&E? Are we that concerned that California could get the bomb?

Plus, isn't the proliferation thing supposed to be one of the advantages of thorium, since you can't feasibly make a bomb out of the uranium-233 it gets bred into?

Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

#82

Post by mullingitover » Tue, Dec 31, 2024, 6:16 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #49

missedthecue wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US could probably use a few engineers, but on the other hand I think the CCP could use a few finance people.

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…

> 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.

Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

#83

Post by CharlesLau » Tue, Dec 31, 2024, 6:25 AM UTC

ethbr1 wrote: post #50

CharlesLau wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is mainly due to China's strong sense of crisis regarding energy supply. If it had as abundant fossil fuel resources as the United States and Russia, it likely wouldn't have invested so heavily in diversifying its energy sources. The development and support of new energy vehicles can also be largely attributed to this.

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...

Heavy dependence on coal has led to severe environmental pollution. As winter approaches and cold fronts sweep down from the north, increased heating needs drive up thermal power generation, releasing more pollutants into the air. During periods of stagnant weather with no wind or rain, smog settles over the sprawling plains, triggering both public health concerns and mounting pressure on the government to address the issue and explore alternative energy sources.

Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

#84

Post by adrian_b » Tue, Dec 31, 2024, 7:29 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #74

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes uranium more economical, fuel production or some aspect of operation? And if it's the first one, is that just lack of scale for thorium or something else?

Uranium is pretty abundant. The US has a lot, China twice as much, Kazakhstan a lot more, and Australia puts everyone to shame. Thorium isn't ready to be fuel and must be enriched (granted, you need to do this for uranium too but some is naturally in a fissile state). So there's things like breeder reactors that enrich during the cycle but this is challenging and presents other issues such as turning it into weapons…

Thorium is more abundant than uranium and as said in the article China already has huge amounts of extracted thorium as a waste product from the extraction of rare-earth metals.

Thorium must not be enriched and it cannot be enriched like uranium, because it has only one isotope with a long life, thorium 232, which is the only natural isotope.

Natural thorium is not usable as a fission fuel, but it can be transformed into uranium 233, which is a fission fuel, by another nuclear reactor.

The extraction of uranium 233 from thorium has nothing to do with uranium isotopic enrichment. It is a process orders of magnitude simpler, because it is just a normal separation of distinct chemical elements.

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.

Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

#85

Post by maxglute » Tue, Dec 31, 2024, 7:55 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #79

missedthecue wrote: post #58

Earlier 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.

> sending a lot of their best companies abroad in search of capital. which is fine, because china's method is one where they (the CCP) retains ultimate control despite foreign financing - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/variable-interest-entit... basically, this legal entity has not been 100% "legal" and undisputed in the chinese legal system - it's vague, and deliberately left so. It allows the CCP any reason t…

>CCP don't want the citizenry to have easy and low cost access to capital markets

It's more like like PRC is still a developing country with substantial amount of poor people and little social safety/welfare net. CCP doesn't want people, especially the poor, who mostly skew old, had/has absolutely retarded financial literacy except savings, to investment (gamble) their nest egg. Trading in the 2000s when stock market was bananas. Mass speculation / herd mentality / scams. Government had to intervene so folks didn't lose their shit with no fall back.

Stockmarket is easy to invest in for ordinary citizens, IMO that's why it's being controlled / profitability (and losses) mitigaged. Reality is if you have mostly retail (individual) investors vs institutional, and individuals = a billion superstious traders is recipe for market volatility, which is net bad. People think professional financiers are the answer, but IMO that's just goign to self select for financiers who knows how to play to the masses.

Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

#86

Post by chii » Tue, Dec 31, 2024, 8:26 AM UTC

maxglute wrote: post #85

chii wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sending a lot of their best companies abroad in search of capital. which is fine, because china's method is one where they (the CCP) retains ultimate control despite foreign financing - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/variable-interest-entit... basically, this legal entity has not been 100% "legal" and undisputed in the chinese legal system - it's vague, and deliberately left so. It allows the CCP any reason t…

>CCP don't want the citizenry to have easy and low cost access to capital markets It's more like like PRC is still a developing country with substantial amount of poor people and little social safety/welfare net. CCP doesn't want people, especially the poor, who mostly skew old, had/has absolutely retarded financial literacy except savings, to investment (gamble) their nest egg. Trading in the 2000s when stock market…

> investment (gamble) their nest egg.

investment, done according to well known economic theories (such as market index investing), is not like gambling. People who do gamble (like wallstreetbets style) might lose, but i don't believe most people, if they're allowed a bit of education, will do that. The degenerate gamblers will always gamble anyway.

> Stockmarket is easy to invest in for ordinary citizens

try investing in foreign companies/indices - you will find that ordinary citizens cannot easily do it. They'd have to do it via a HK broker, or have sufficent capital to have a private banker. There's also a lot of capital flow restrictions (that i'm not too privy to, but it's there). Sure it might be easy to invest in the chinese shanghai index as a chinese citizen, but that's too concentrated and is akin to gambling.

Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

#87

Post by irid » Tue, Dec 31, 2024, 8:32 AM UTC

salgernon wrote: post #62

booleandilemma wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds good except the direction in which that last one has been pushed now puts it in direct conflict with the first two. So it's no longer progress.

Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

#88

Post by maxglute » Tue, Dec 31, 2024, 8:34 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #86

maxglute wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>CCP don't want the citizenry to have easy and low cost access to capital markets It's more like like PRC is still a developing country with substantial amount of poor people and little social safety/welfare net. CCP doesn't want people, especially the poor, who mostly skew old, had/has absolutely retarded financial literacy except savings, to investment (gamble) their nest egg. Trading in the 2000s when stock market…

> investment (gamble) their nest egg. investment, done according to well known economic theories (such as market index investing), is not like gambling. People who do gamble (like wallstreetbets style) might lose, but i don't believe most people, if they're allowed a bit of education, will do that. The degenerate gamblers will always gamble anyway. > Stockmarket is easy to invest in for ordinary citizens try investin…

>if they're allowed a bit of education

PRC had like 3-10% tertiary education in 90s-00s. IMO the masses are not going to absorb a bit of education. They'll still speculate, bandwagon etc if there's money to be made. It's not so much degenerate gambling as degenerate heresay malinvestment not thinking they're gambling when they actually are. A shares in the 00s was basically a casino, but investors thought they could beat the house because latest XYZ tip. % of educated in society much higher now, but problem is uneducated still around and retiring, i.e. potentially even worse casino reopens.

>investing in foreign companies/indices

No this is definitely controlled out of capital flight concerns. Since the cohorot who would benefit from this are the top quantile, whose capita CCP definitely wants to control.

Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

#89

Post by lazide » Tue, Dec 31, 2024, 9:03 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #75

jvanderbot wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 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. /s In all seriousness, I think they were referring to getting everyone else's proverbial balls rolling.

"China's energy independence will threaten our national security!" -- trump, probably...

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.

Re: China to Build Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor in 2025

#90

Post by lazide » Tue, Dec 31, 2024, 9:05 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #81

godelski wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uranium is pretty abundant. The US has a lot, China twice as much, Kazakhstan a lot more, and Australia puts everyone to shame. Thorium isn't ready to be fuel and must be enriched (granted, you need to do this for uranium too but some is naturally in a fissile state). So there's things like breeder reactors that enrich during the cycle but this is challenging and presents other issues such as turning it into weapons…

Isn't thorium also pretty abundant? Judging by this, the US has around six times as much thorium as uranium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_thorium_r... I've also never really gotten the proliferation concern. I mean, sure, you don't want to sell a breeder reactor to Iran. But why can't you sell one to PG&E? Are we that concerned that…

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.