At LiveScience Ben Turner reports that the Chinese are preparing to deploy a test molten salt reactor:
The molten-salt nuclear reactor, which runs on liquid thorium rather than uranium, is expected to be safer than traditional reactors because the molten salt cools and solidifies quickly when exposed to the air, insulating the thorium, so that any potential leak would spill much less radiation into the surrounding environment compared with leaks from traditional reactors.
The prototype reactor is expected to be completed next month, with the first tests beginning as early as September. This will pave the way for the building of the first commercial reactor, slated for construction by 2030.
Here’s a good quote:
“Small-scale reactors have significant advantages in terms of efficiency, flexibility and economy,” Yan Rui, a physics professor at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, and colleagues wrote in a paper about the project published July 15 in the journal Nuclear Techniques. “They can play a key role in the future transition to clean energy. It is expected that small-scale reactors will be widely deployed in the next few years.”
The article is a bit misleading, however. Molten salt reactors have been around since the 1960s. They’re not new. One that’s used commercially would be new, however, and there are several U. S. companies just about as far along as the Chinese effort is characterized to be.
The main impediments here are government regulation, litigation, and priorities. We can litigate, regulate, and bicker ourselves to death.
“The main impediments here are government regulation, litigation, and priorities.”
And if you look underneath that, you find that advocacy of other “solutions” facilitates the taxation of carbon, which is everywhere, and demanding limitations on growth.
“Small-scale reactors have significant advantages in terms of efficiency, flexibility and economy,â€
Efficiency and flexibility aside, they most certainly do NOT have any advantage in economy. Due to economies of scale, the electricity from small reactors is necessarily more expensive than that from large reactors.
The economy of scale exponent is about 0.7 for most industrial processes, so each doubling in size reduces the cost of the electricity (or product) by about 20%. (Doubling the size of a process increases the total cost by about 60%, so the unit cost of the larger process is only 80% of that of the smaller process.)
Of course, the smaller process has lower capital costs, and it might (but not necessarily) have lower operating costs, but output is lower by definition, and the unit cost must be higher.
There is not a scientist on the planet, and there never has been, who understands anything about economics, and that goes double for engineering economics. Tell a scientist there is iron in the asteroid belt or gold in the ocean, and he will dream up schemes to collect them, schemes that would bankrupt the world’s economy. Unexpectedly.
The principal source of thorium in the US is New Hampshire granite. I suppose we could strip mine NH.
“The main impediments here are government regulation, litigation, and priorities. ”
So this is what kept China from doing this until now?
Steve
I have no idea what kept China from doing it. Until rather recently it was a poor country. Maybe they didn’t have the spare capital to devote to it.
China is a different country than the U. S. Barriers here and barriers there are completely different.
Two points
On scale — the proponents of small reactors are making an analogy to mainframe vs personal computers in the 1970’s. Mainframes had orders of magnitude more computing power (and in operation, much more efficient then PC’s), but PC’s due to their low initial cost, were ordered in much greater quantities that it had decisive scaling advantages in production. With nuclear power today — the biggest issue is the construction cost, with so few built a plant is essentially a one-off design. The hope is modular nuclear plants can be produced from a factory line.
Second point; I have followed the Chinese efforts at thorium for sometime. The timeline for the Chinese Thorium plant is roughly in line with their plans from 2012.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/son-of-chinas-ex-president-thorium-will-help-shape-countrys-energy-future/
“the head of the TMSR development team, told the conference that China had pushed back its target completion date for a small test reactor from 2017 to 2020.”.
I believe the main barriers the Chinese had was the solution space was relatively unexplored, and answer issues the American proof of concept plant had not solved. The Chinese have been proceeding with all due urgency. Maybe the question is not why its taken the Chinese so long; but how far behind is the US — it is a difference in kind to have something constructed vs just plans on paper.
Some other factoids —
The Chinese effort is led by Jiang Mianheng — the son of the President who is a nuclear physicist. If Alvin Weinberg was Alvin Eisenhower, thorium plants probably would have been given more consideration.
The US gave China all its know-how on thorium and molten salt back in 2010, in less tense times. The thinking was it was better that the Chinese develop the technology then let it sit dead in Oak Ridge for 40 years. Can a real prototype plant finally revive interest here?
Becoming more than clear China is the future. Patriotism aside, it’s a much more functional society.
Command economies are always impressive. From the outside. Until they aren’t. Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union were the future in the 1930s.
“I believe the main barriers the Chinese had was the solution space was relatively unexplored, and answer issues the American proof of concept plant had not solved. The Chinese have been proceeding with all due urgency. Maybe the question is not why its taken the Chinese so long; but how far behind is the US — it is a difference in kind to have something constructed vs just plans on paper.”
This is not really possible. Dave said that we have lots of experience with small reactors. The only thing holding us back is regulations and litigation.
Steve