Posted on 11/12/2025 7:28:48 AM PST by Twotone
Our economic realities as Americans are tied directly to energy. But those of us working outside the energy industry must be forgiven for not noticing that in 2022, China began construction on an experimental thorium reactor that requires no water, generates substantially less toxic byproduct, purports and appears be vastly safer than all other reactor designs, and all but eliminates the possibility of meltdown. American citizens should be forgiven for not noticing because in 2022, as you recall, we were suffocating in the various tendrils of psychological operations and captured government.
And when China operationalized the reactor and proved the design, firing it up last month, pulling a positive yield of uranium, Americans were again distracted. Our industries are still captured, corrupted, or sidelined. Our government is still dysfunctional, and it appears we are now, in some very official sense, losing the energy arms race.
The Chinese reactor works. It delivers cheap, abundant, safe, clean energy. Congress is silent. Portions of our mainstream media only serve corporate (often energy sector-tied) interests, so they aren’t going to sound the alarm.
Here’s the kicker regarding the United States’ second-place status in this energy battle: Americans funded the entirety of the original research for the thorium reactor in the 1960s at Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory. This raises major questions about past, present, and future for the energy and tech sectors.
Of the successful test of the thorium reactor in China, the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics stated in a press release, “This marks the first time international experimental data has been obtained after thorium was introduced into a molten salt reactor, making it the only operational molten salt reactor in the world to have successfully incorporated thorium fuel.”
Clickbait headlines have suggested that China outright stole the reactor design. The truth is probably even worse. If you take blood pressure medication, be forewarned: There is malfeasance here, for sure, but the technology wasn’t stolen from either American corporations or Oak Ridge Laboratory. Oak Ridge Laboratory, in concert with the U.S. government, evidently declassified much of the pertinent research, according to researcher Kirk Sorensen.
Sorensen runs the website https://energyfromthorium.com, where portions of the material, now in the public domain, were published. Meanwhile, private American research into what turns out to be a highly feasible and safe energy source has been, at best, scattered and underfunded. What's more, the stultifying (false?) dialectic between environmentalism and first-world living standards has muddied the waters for decades.
Oak Ridge Labs partnered with the Shanghai Applied Physics Institute back in 2015. American research was just simply handed to the Chinese. Meanwhile, we have considerable energy issues in America: prices jumping 10%-20% per year in many states and services often approaching third-world standards in terms of reliability and transparency. We have the highly unstable and contentious AI industry building data centers at a heady pace and signaling orders of magnitude more energy demand in short order. Lastly, we have a contingent of right-aligned Americans squaring up to take on the potential re-industrialization of the country — automobiles, pharmaceuticals, microprocessors, and steel manufacture at all levels could and probably must be re-shored if we as a nation are ever to right the ship.
None of this happens without abundant, cheap energy.
Since the early 2000s, concerns over dwindling cheap oil have confused the public and stymied good-faith efforts to manage the infrastructure, source, and delivery problems that our grand techno-American plans seem to require. Elon Musk's grandfather, Joshua N. Halderman, was involved with M. King Hubbert in the original Technocracy Inc. endeavor, which signaled early alarms about exponential growth meeting finite oil capacity. Elon is a big fan of solar, but one wonders if perhaps now he’d be better off investigating thorium ... if American industry and government can get out of his way, of course.
Bkmk
“A principal source of human misery is the lack of cheap, abundant, safe, clean energy.”
I remember reading long ago that Nuclear power would be too cheap to meter.
the major source of human misery is human greed.
Yet there is a certain quality in quantity back stopped by unchallenged authority. That and the uncertainty about China's true abilities clouds our response. At least Trump acknowledges their threat, but patience is on China's side.
I trust this about as much as I trust Chinese bridge builders.
Agreed, but like with all commie countries and the inherent grift, leads to poor quality control, cost cutting to pay for it, and the unmotivated workforce, that is when their failures will appear
What’s the over/under on years until a nuc disaster in China?
Tofu dregs for the win!
We have built thorium reactors over here although not at ifrastructure scale.
It’s been reported China has stolen over thirty trillion dollars in US intellectual property and Trump is pushing to allow 200,000 more Chinese students into US Colleges and Universities??
bfl
Sounds like a possible Biden slip-up to me, but at least this way we’ll probably get to see any possible potential problems with the thorium setup.
The Chinese also had the benefit of activists in the White House for eight years i.e. Hussein and Joe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.