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

The presidental candidate from a few years back, Andrew Yang, even championed thorium reactors in the US, and now here we are.
- Andrew Yang also championed hiring a management consulting firm to identify areas of inefficiency in the federal workforce and cut 15–20% of current government workers, assigning KPIs and sunset clauses to all Congressional legislation, and assigning AI life coaches with Oprah's voice to people in need of marriage counseling.
  So, a very mixed bag of ideas. Few of them had a serious implementation behind them. Yang loved to noodle, but failed to explain where the novel technologies and extra-constitutional authorities would come from.
  
  Cant find anything in there thats worse than today tho.

America going full sour grapes right now. "We weren't the first to develop this technology so obviously the technology sucks and is not viable."
- The funny part is that the US was the first to study this technology back in the day, but it was abandoned since thorium has no military application.

Cool, but I am more excited about the French maintaining a fusion reaction for over twenty minutes.
- China's way ahead there as well https://charmingscience.com/chinas-artificial-sun-sets-nuclear-fusion-record-runs-1006-seconds-at-180-millionf/
- They maintained it, but I think it was energy negative.
- Maintaining fusion reaction is not news. The main issue right now is material science to make reactors last and be efficient at the same time. Because well known materials today either last but poison the reaction, or fade away quickly.
  
  Maintaining fusion reaction is a very recent news and it's solly to claim otherwise.

Not to worry anyone. I am sure the free market will do much better soon. Investors love to put money in risky projects and not wait for the government to tell them what to do after all /s

I remember reading somewhere that the US started work on Thorium reactors in the 60s and 70s, but abandoned work for reasons. China picked up on that old work.
- “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.
  American scientists pioneered molten salt reactor technology – including building a small test reactor in the 1960s – but the project was shelved in favour of uranium-based systems.
  “The US left its research publicly available, waiting for the right successor,” Xu was quoted as saying. “We were that successor.”
  From the article
- The reasons being that the US empire wants to enrich weapons grade plutonium and that US and EU nuclear buildouts are threats.

The reactor is reportedly designed to sustainably generate 2 megawatts of thermal power.
Anyone know how the power density compares to a conventional uranium PWR? In other words, are these machines substantially smaller or larger than a PWR for the same output?
- I only really know about this danish company. but they usually claim to be able to build a thorium reactor in a standard sized shipping container.
  I may remember wrong, but IIRC they can run on the spent fuel from conventional nuclear reactors, since there's still an incredible amount of energy left in it.
  There is apparently also litterally no chance for a meltdown because it will simply shut down.
  So even if we say they're only able to produce half the amount of power that a conventional nuclear plant can do with the same footprint. It'll still be easier to find the space for them, they'll be better waste-wise, and also be a lot safer.
- The linked PDF (page 14) has a few diagrams that can help infer vessel size, and the Wikipedia page for TSMR-LF1 also includes a decent floor plan and links to satellite images. Looks like a typical research reactor footprint, which means it may scale to be similar to existing LWRs at higher power. https://esfr-smart.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/S53_1_Paul_Gauthe_Overview_MSR_Gauthe.pdf
  For reference, a typical PWR may be ~3000 MWth.
  
  Thanks for the info!
- A 2Mw diesel is too big for a regular truck. But not as big as a small house. My prior data center drew 4Mw. My current data center (AI-oriened) draws 30Mw.
  
  so it's an achievement if we consider it a prototype, rather than a large scale power plant?