Energy From Thorium Discussion Forum

My father did work in China on nuclear safety in 2009. A general advice that applies in many countries with an indirect communication is that

.. Reality not always what it looks like from outside...

If you look on China from an outside perspective and go for the logic...

The load factor in the electricity generation in China is about 53 - 56% (2016 coal). Many new coal projects are in different stages of completion. That means there is not a big need for new capacities in the next future.

The main nuclear reactors are PWR with a local manufacturing share of about 80%. It is most probably a priority in China to increase the local manufacturing and get away from foreign licences and manufacturers. An independence from licencies makes as well the export of NPP easier.

It is most probably a priority to close the fuel loop, uranium mining, enrichment, manufacturing of fuel elements, waste treatment.


The development of completly new reactor concepts seems to me not the very first priority for China.

There is however significant work going on with the AFCR though - which is an attempt by SNC Lavalin and the Chinese to build a CANDU 6 that is optimised for alternative fuel cycles and includes some of the construction and design innovations of the ACR, although without the light water coolant.

The Chinese need much more energy and are trying everything, including all lines of nuclear power. For immediate needs they are going for PWR which is the leading technology in the world. I feel they may concentrate on salt part before they physically put thorium in reactors. Thorium only needs fissile feed but salt creates material problems. Indians have done theoretical and experimental work on thorium but have not gone to prototype stage. The only experimental reactor using U-233 is an experimental one in India.

Thorium based molten salt reactor could work on a ship or land but not on a drone or any flying vehicle due to its weight. RTG using fission products might be best for unmanned flying objects.

I think the real idea is to power aircraft with synthetic fuels made with cheap MSR reactor energy.

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Hydrous pyrolysis of coal for producing syngas is a century old idea. MSR could be a source of hot steam for direct use. IMSR could be heading in that direction, initially for softening kerogen.

To be honest, if we have cheap electricity from nuclear, forget hot pyrolysis by steam.

Just go to the Huls process and feed pulverized carbonaceous material directly into an electric arc.

Its been done commercially with methane and heavy oils, and at pilot plant scale with pulverised coal.

Products are a wide variety of interesting materials like acetylene and such.

Acetylene will have to be further processed to liquid fuels.

The products of most coal production processes have to go through multiple steps to produce useful product - especially ones that can conform to increasingly tight (for environmental and other reasons) product specifications.

Syngas processes are notoriously expensive to get working - there is a reason the Pearl GTL plant using the middle distillate process cost tens of billions of dollars, and that was without coal gassifiers and ash gassifier plant that will further increase the cost.
(It uses partial oxidation of methane to produce its syngas, which is not feasible with coal as it would not contain enough hydrogen)

Acetylene-to-valuable products technology is well developed, after all prior to the 60s coal (and to a large extent) acetylene was the major route to industrial chemicals.

If we ever go for synthetic liquid fuels in a big way, we should concentrate on low smoke fuels like methanol or ethanol. It might turn out economical in the long run.
We could initially get our syngas from low cost coal, even going for in situ gasification, and then move on to biomass and organic waste.
My interest in hydrous pyrolysis is to use heat energy with the hydrogen source in shape of nuclear steam. Carbide-acetylene route requires electric power with low energy efficiency. Steam to electric power is two thirds or more waste.