‘No quick wins’: China has the world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor

31 comments

1. The US is falling behind in a lot of areas of tech

2. So we are behind this as well? But that fucking moron in the WH wants to bring back coal and destroy our research infrastructure

3. Holy hell, i hope this isn’t bullshit.

4. If it takes Trump’s ego and some kind of stupid rivalry shit to get the US to finally get serious about nuclear then so be it.

5. >Rabbits sometimes make mistakes or grow lazy. That’s when the tortoise seizes its chance,” Xu told the meeting, referring to the US abandoning its molten salt reactor research in the 1970s after initial experiments.

   👍

6. What’s good about thorium? Can someone help me appreciate this news more?

7. Certain people disrespecting China while, again, they appear to be on the bleeding edge of tech, logistics, and large scale projects. No country has progressed as fast as them.

8. have they solved the problem of filtering out the used fuel or do they plan to skip that step and just dump all the radioactive salt somewhere?

9. I did a book report on thorium nuclear reactors back in high school 15 years ago and was mind blown why we weren’t utilizing/researching them more when they have minimal downsides especially when compared to tradition nuclear reactors. China is preparing for the future and the USA is trying to roll back down the hill of progress into the past.

10. My country needs to think and pray harder!

    🙄 

11. America, are you great yet?

12. We fucking invented this, and had a reactor running in the 1960s, but rather than capitalize, it’s yet another technological advancement being ceded to the Chinese.

13. Wow, thorium, at lats. I don’t do paywalls so i won’t see the detials, i asusme it doesn’t turn into plutonium. I loved the Time-Life Science Lbirary asa kid; the book on Matter said thorium cna provide more energy than all the uranium and fossil fuels together

14. I thought India or maybe the UK / other European nation was going to get there first. It’s promising and could lead to local power supplies for cities that won’t have to rely on a grid of wires from a source far away.

15. Drill baby drill!

16. *they claim. They also claimed to find exactly how much gold they needed a few months ago.

17. Wasn’t Andrew Yang talking about Thorium nuclear reactors in the 2020 presidential campaign? Everybody else in that race was against nuclear except I think Corey Booker.

18. What are the differences and difficulties of thorium reactors compared to uranium?

19. Small thing: do we have any third parties confirming this? I’m seeing this mostly from a closed door meeting of Chinese universities. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m skeptical of all state propaganda from authoritarian countries. Yea that includes US and current administration stuff as well.

20. That’s got to feel like splitting the atom for that science team. Motherfuckers might have just saved humanity from climate extinction.

21. Lets See how and if they really solved all the issues and operate it in an even remotely viable way. I won’t hold my breath.

22. I still remember Salmonella’s video on Thorium, and couldn’t get over how easily the energy shortage could be resolved, how we could let Russia rot. And now, if we have a chance at it, of course it’s an authoritarian police state that is catapulting itself into supremacy.

    We deserve it as a species at this point.

23. Well crap…Maybe China is more competent than USA by a lot.

24. Get ready for the huge push from everyone trying to demonize this energy because they don’t have it. Oil and gas is going to be pissed but honestly it’s their own fault for holding us back for so long.

    It’s shameful this even took so long.

25. Oh yeah? Well the US is sending folks from Virginia back to the coal mines! More COAL!

26. What’s the intended use for this reactor in the short term? Is it a proof of concept project or will they be supplying power to their grid with it?

    Asking because I’ve recently seen a few mentions of China having enough thorium to power the country for 60k years.

27. We have enough thorium on the planet to replace the entirety of all our energy needs on the planet with it and power ourselves for 2500 years.

    This should have happened sooner.

28. Huge milestone, but yeah, thorium’s a long game. Still cool to see real progress though.

29. Meanwhile we’re still shoveling coal here.

30. Germans had a thorium reactor in the 80s

31. “You know China was not very fair. We had a terrible trade deal that took all of our thorium and now they have a reactor. If it wasn’t for crooked Biden, we would have beaten China and built the first thorium reactor. But now we’re behind because of the horrible previous administration”

    – Trump probably

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