The People’s Republic of China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology, it was announced in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) annual conference on Tuesday, January 25. An article in the Wenhui News followed on Wednesday (Google English translation). Chinese researchers also announced this development on the Energy from Thorium Discussion Forum.
Led by Dr. Jiang Mianheng, a graduate of Drexel University in electrical engineering, the thorium MSR efforts aims not only to develop the technology but to secure intellectual property rights to its implementation.
This may be one of the reasons that the Chinese have not joined the international Gen-IV effort for MSR development, since part of that involves technology exchange. Neither the US nor Russia have joined the MSR Gen-IV effort either.
A Chinese delegation led by Dr. Jiang travelled to Oak Ridge National Lab last fall to learn more about MSR technology and told lab leadership of their plans to develop a thorium-fueled MSR.
The Chinese also recognize that a thorium-fueled MSR is best run with uranium-233 fuel, which inevitably contains impurities (uranium-232 and its decay products) that preclude its use in nuclear weapons. Operating an MSR on the “pure” fuel cycle of thorium and uranium-233 means that a breakeven conversion ratio can be achieved, and after being started on uranium-233, only thorium is required for indefinite operation and power generation.
Currently there is no US effort to develop a thorium MSR. Readers of this blog and Charles Barton’s Nuclear Green blog know that there has been a grass-roots effort underway for over five years to change this. The formation of the Thorium Energy Alliance and the International Thorium Energy Organization have been attempts to convince governmental and industrial leaders to carefully consider the potential of thorium in a liquid-fluoride reactor. There have been many international participants in the TEA and IThEO conferences, but none from China.
Chinese energy demand is growing rapidly, and despite the world’s largest campaign of new nuclear construction, the vast majority of Chinese power generation still comes from fossil fuels. China has abundant supplies of coal, but their combustion has led to some of the worst air quality in the world. The ability of thorium MSRs to operate at atmospheric pressure and with simplified safety systems means that these reactors could be built in factories and mass-produced. They could then be shipped to operational sites with standard transportation. Their thorium fuel is compact and inexpensive. Chinese rare-earth miners have been rumored to have been stockpiling thorium from rare-earth mining for years, and if this is true, the Chinese will have hundreds of thousands of years of thorium already mined and available for use.
The Chinese now have the largest national effort to develop thorium molten-salt reactors. Whether other nations will follow is an open question.
The US needs to fund a simple $1 billion a year nuclear program to promote the development of private commercial breeder technologies: LFTR, accelerator breeders, fast reactors, heavy water thorium breeders, traveling wave reactor, etc.
Private companies working on developing such reactors could receive ten million to several hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the Federal government depending on how reasonable and mature their concepts are with the goal of having working reactors within ten years which should allow commercialization of several types of breeder reactors within 20 years.
“A Chinese delegation led by Dr. Jiang travelled to Oak Ridge National Lab last fall to learn more about MSR technology and told lab leadership of their plans to develop a thorium-fueled MSR.”
And how did the ORNL leadership react? Are they not curious about using Thorium?
Civilian energy production aside, given that LFTR proponents think these reactors might prove ideal for small surface warships and perhaps submarines, due to their size, simplicity, efficiency, and low cost, you can bet the Chinese reactors will eventually find their way into Chinese naval vessels.
The potential outcome is a blue-water Chinese navy that is far more nuclear than the US Navy, which could be a game changer.
Selling liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR) as necessary for military parity would be a great way to expedite LFTR technology development in the USA.
I would love to see a nation wide poll of greens to see if they can get behind LFTRs as a way to reduce coal consumption in the USA.
Necessity is the mother of invention etc etc. I almost wish that the US had rolling blackouts already to finally kill off the enviromarxist movement so we could get serious about utilizing our own resources and also bring back nuclear in a big way.
The difference here is not the amount of money poured into a government research project. The difference is the amount of regulation and litigation a similar effort would require in the US. Until we are willing to shut our ears to our own luddites and Cassandras, no amount of billions (borrowed from China, natch) will make us competitive.
Oh, and I like how we graduated the head of the project from a US university. How’s that anti-immigration thing working out for ya?
“Oh, and I like how we graduated the head of the project from a US university. How’s that anti-immigration thing working out for ya?”
No kidding? You mean the guy was here illegally? That’s the only form of immigration I’ve seen any opposition to.
What about Lightbridge? They are working on Thorium reactors.
http://www.ltbridge.com/technologyservices/fueltechnology/thoriumhighgrade
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/next-generation/the-truth-about-thorium-and-nuclear-power?click=pp
Perhaps this isn’t the “innovation” selected by our leader; He will select / fund another. And, when he misses the mark, the next leader will select another innovation to fund. It’s like the reaction cycle of Thorium, but with no useful products at the end, and requires constant [inefficient] fission of the producers and their money.
Good for the Chinese. !
While they are developing an inherently difficult,
dangerous and dirty 20th century technology, the US
can develop the 21st century nuclear technology:
Fusion.
Dr. Nebel, head of the Polywell fusion demonstrator
project, cannot say much, due to security restrictions,
but every interview I have seen, he is grinning like
a burro eating cactus as he reports ‘promising data’.
Anyone want to bet whether the US will be get one of the reactors currently passing through the NRC online before China has a working prototype of their thorium MSR?
The head of the project could have easily taken the courses through the online program they offer. So no immigration issue. LoL. Who can blame them for wanting better for themselves. We seem willing to accept mediocre from our leaders and thats what we get.
re: Oak Ridge reaction to Thorium-based reactors.
Oak Ridge invented and built LFTRs in the 50s. But when budgets got tight it lost out to uranium fuel-cycle reactors that had the added benefit of producing plutonium – back in the days when the cold war required deterring your enemies with tons of stockpiled plutonium.
We don’t need billion dollar investments, just 100 startups playing in this space free of most regulation (save that the owners/operators live nearby). A few percent will be successful (at producing power and other goods – the LFTRs can run hot enough (1000 C) to break water into H and O.) at marginal cost of production that current fossil fuels can’t match (currently about $2 a barrel at the wellhead, and less than one cent a KWH at the demarc).
The big problem with Fusion is that it is mainly a play toy for physicists – instead of something which has been released to engineers to make it work. Sure there are lots of problems to solve in designing a fusion reactor; but there are lots of problems to solve in designing anything of complexity. Engineers are used to designing around problems – physicists aren’t.
If you look at the early computers designed by scientists they are very crude and rudimentary compared to the ones designed by engineers. We have fusion experiments – not practical reactors because we have experimenters designing them – not people who are used to reducing things to practical reality.
The Farnsworth Fusor (the intellectual predecessor of the Polywell) produced more fusion on a desktop than “big fusion” has managed to do with billions of dollars since – of course Dr. Farnsworth was a lot more practical person than most of the “big fusion” people.
Lightbridge is not working on a MSR, but develop thorium solid fuel for regular LWRs. It is still a once-through cycle, and only reduces uranium consumption by 5-10%. TO use thorium efficiently, we need a MSR.
First they steal our stealth tech and now we GIVE them our Thorium tech.
“An Observation”: please stick to discussing reputable peer-reviewed research. Making throwaway statements about dubious ‘alternative scientific’ research does little for your credibility.
“Big fusion” is progressing at a blinding rate: the state-of-the-art in fusion technology, as measured by common figures of merit, easily exceeds Moore’s Law. Modern fusion machines are necessarily expensive one-off affairs because they ARE scientific instruments, laden with dozens of expensive diagnostics, and production machines will certainly be much cheaper — once the key engineering challenges — which are mostly to do with finding materials and configurations which can withstand the phenomenal radiation loads these machines generate — are figured out.
DT Fusion development is “blindingly fast”? Fifty years in development would make a snail seem like an Olympic runner, and current estimates put the arrival of a functioning Fusion power station another 50 years in the future.
Today: No material and structure is known which can
(1) stand the high neutron ?ux under realistic DT fusion conditions,
(2) allows e?cient tritium breeding and extraction,
(3) transfers the produced heat away from the blanket to a “generator”,
(4) reduces unavoidable tritium losses to the environment.
ITER Tritium supply is mainly from CANDU heavy water reactors (shutdown ? 2020-2025?). Accumulated Tritium about 20 Kg (after 30 years), current price 30 Million dollar/Kg “Normal” ?ssion reactors make Tritium 2-3 Kg/year, projected cost 200 Million dollar/Kg.
M. Report. Are you implying that China doesn’t have the scale or the cash to undertake multiple projects at once? Last I checked, it’s the rest of the world (well the West anyways) that is short on cash and dealing with strained/broken budgets.
Why are we even talking about the government funding $1 Billion for a “private” nuclear program. We have the best nuclear program in the world in the U.S. Navy. They use one type of reactor and have not had a serious problem with it since day one of installation in the USS Nautilus. The use of one type of reactor simplifies everything. And, naval reactors are compact in order to fit into submarines and smaller surface combat ships. If any problem arises with one, all others can be corrected with minimum of effort and problem.
Instead of having private companies vying to have their reactors instituted, the US Government should allow the US Navy to install and train in the operation of one type of simplified nuclear reactor system. We should have done this 30 years ago, so we wouldn’t have to worry about Mid-East oil problems.
NoMoreMarxistsInDC – funny you argue for a socialized energy producing system
Anyway, do you know how much these naval reactor costs per MWe? (about 2 _orders_of_magnitude_ more than the commercial reactors..)
The leader of the project is the elder son of former president of China, Jiang Zemin.
Hey for those of you who haven’t been following the fusion advancements and wonder what all the excitement is all about you need to catch up on the latest news. During the nineties the Navy was funding a fusion project headed Dr Bussard a well regarded physicist in nuclear fusion. Their small scale reactor was a success for its scale. The navy commissioned Dr. Nebel to build a second reactor to repeat its success and while they are not saying what the results are they are now moving on to the second phase. This phase is to see if the fusion reactor scales with size putting it in the plus side of energy production. The best part is that we will know this year what the results are from the second phase.
By the way I still love LFTR. If government will just free the american people we’ll build them or whatever solution it’ll take to solve our energy problems.
Sure seems easier than 50,000 sq mi of solar and e-storage!
Perhaps this (and the Chinese ROBOTIC solar PV factory) should be considered our Sputnik moment(s)…
I’m a marxist and an environmentalist. I think LFTR is an excellent idea. I highly doubt that marxists are the biggest force of opposition. I think a lot of people have opposition to nuclear power on the basis of decades of disinformation.
If this isn’t a Sputnik Moment, then I don’t know what is!
If this isn’t a Sputnik Moment, then I don’t know what is.
Oops! Sorry for the repetition. When I came to the website a minute ago, my original comment didn’t show.
India’s thorium power reactor has already gone critical !!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl5DiTPw3dk
what do you people think about this ???
Chinese are working on fusion reactors too…
China claims fusion reactor test a success
Governments hope fusion provides clean, limitless energy source
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15043462/
BEIJING — Scientists on Thursday carried out China’s first successful test of an experimental fusion reactor, powered by the process that fuels the sun, a research institute spokeswoman said.
China, the United States and other governments are pursuing fusion research in hopes that it could become a clean, potentially limitless energy source. Fusion produces little radioactive waste, unlike fission, which powers conventional nuclear reactors.
Beijing is eager for advances, both for national prestige and to reduce its soaring consumption of imported oil and dirty coal.
The test by the government’s Institute of Plasma Physics was carried out on a Tokamak fusion device in the eastern city of Hefei, said Cheng Yan, a spokeswoman at the institute.
Cheng said the test was considered a success because the reactor produced plasma, a hot cloud of supercharged particles. She wouldn’t give other details.
“This represents a step for humankind in the study of nuclear reaction,” she said.
U.S. and other scientists have been experimenting with fusion for decades but it has yet to be developed into a viable energy alternative.
.”I think it is a considerable step ahead for China,” said Karl Heinz Finken, a senior scientist at the Institute for Plasma Physics in Juelich, Germany, who had no role in the Chinese research.
“China is speeding up with the development of nuclear fusion and I think at the moment they are making considerable progress,” he said.
So from now, the development of LFTR, is no longer something that can be influenced by the lobbying of anti-nuclear protesters to governments that either need to appease electors or can be threatened or bought off by multinational energy corporations. China is powerful enough, confident enough and self-interested enough to simply shrug these off.
The West now has a gun to their heads. Get there first or get left behind. That may be uncomfortable but turn out to be just what we need.
@Shubham, India only has major expertise with thorium fast-breeder reactors. This is very different from thorium thermal spectrum/thermal breeder reactors, especially molten salt types such as Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor.
This also means they use very awkward thorium fuel cycles based around thorium and uranium-plutonium solid fuels. It has almost no cross-over to thermal spectrum thorium-uranium-233 fuel cycle.
The only strong reason the Indian thorium initiative was continued due to the blockade by the West of selling nuclear technology to India since it has not signed the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT). However, the US recently lifted their blockade so the immediate need for thorium technology will decrease as external vendors step in to provide “at cost” nuclear power plants and lock in lucrative fuel sales contracts.
China is now widely considered the only country in the world which has a non-trivial commitment to Thorium Molten Salt Reactors.
Ordinary energy is efficiently left under private industry operation because from discovery to first large revenues, usually ten years elapse: This is a good business model.
To the contrary, nuclear energy economic environment differs a lot from the above:
* Very long investment / revenues cycles, typically 40 years, are at full odds with more and more short termist finance behaviour. Shall a CEO propose a massive bnuclear energy investment, he would be fired on the spot for not putting priority to WallStreet stock of his Company and his managers’ stock-options.
* Ecolo-marxist “environmentalists” have no other target than depleting Western world development ambitions from inside, by demolishing any moral value and spreading vastly wrong nuclear fears across population, hoping a poll landslide against nuclear anytime: As the central conductor of this demolish program was in Kremlin during cold war, that Kremlin motivation faded out in 1984, we can conclude that present ecolo-marxists are an active lobby from fossile motivations..
* In some large countries, the elected local juridictions de facto help ecolo-marxists to protect their re-election…
* Those who should have debated against these Middle-Aged belief – the western governments – failed their mission (long term wealth of the Country) by pure short term electoralist covardice, a matter unprecedented in the past ! Imagin present western leaders facing 1941 Hitler & imperial Japan aggressions: Are we sure they would have selected to fight?
* The only existing electricity nuclear programs lay in the few countries having had strong government convictions decades ago. Today, there is not a single strong western government in power, they are all slaves of media polls.
* Political parties work exclusively for their benefits (get in power, hire their guys, become rich and overall leaving unfixed problems to successors…): This is NOT the Democracy we all want)
* China is not a democratic country (as per our standards) and escapes the present no-exit way into which West is engaged. Their leaders do not suffer from twisted media polls, no ecolo-western environmentalists, in other words they have free hands to build the future of China.
* China will massively switch to environmental-clean nuclear energy, good geological waste storage, recycling trans-uranians, keeping their coal for long term chemistry ore.
* Our western societies will do nothing for next 50 years, excepts short term finance profits which will unavoidably lead to a global no-return collpase
Sorry
As an ex GE nuclear engineer who always thoughr the mollten fuel reactor concept was an obvious nobraner, I am glad ro see this finally developing on a commercial track.In 20 years I expect China to be exclusively building this supertor nuclear technology and not current western designs and be the leader in nuclear led green energy solutions.Expect France, Russia, India (in that order) to follow and then much later the US.
Once upon a time, in a city named Stuttgart in a country of Germany, fine ladies and gentlemen about the year 1900 drove around in electric vehicles, utilizing lead-acid accumulators. The vehicles were quiet and clean, and also very elegant. In the USA, whale oil for lamps was beginning to become scarce, and so paraffin oil from the Earth become the solution to the lack of whale oil, so people had lighting in the evenings and at night in their oil lamps. The light oil factions from such Earth oil exploration were a problem and resulted in frequent fires at small oil rigs. One sunny day, an innovative gentle named Henry Ford developed an invention, namely the model-T Ford, which burnt up these light dangerous flammable oil factions. The model-T Fords were initially dirty, unreliable and noisy. Gradually, the electric vehicles disappeared and the automotive industry became dominated by later innovations derived from the model-T Ford. The model-T Ford made the light oil factions valuable by creating a market in which there was demand. Had oil not been plentifully available, the elegant electric automobiles of Stuttgart would have evolved and the World would be driving around in clean quiet electric vehicles with associated infrastructure in place for battery charging.
A parallel can be drawn in respect of conventional Uranium nuclear power and Thorium LFTR. Throium LFTR could have been the workhorse for contemporary energy generation instead of solid-fuel Uranium nuclear systems. However, a spurious event (i.e. Plutonium for nuclear bombs) shaped events in a manner which is sub-optimal in the longer term. Fukushima and Chernobyl should come as pertinent reminders of this.
Thus, like those elegant ladies and gentlemen in Stuttgart riding around in their clean, quiet and elegant electric automobiles, we should embrace the elegance and attractiveness of Thorium LFTR as our future energy companion for transporting us through the labrinth of paths which human civilization can take in the future.
The Princess (i.e. Thorium LFTR) was saved, and everyone lived happily ever after.
The End