China’s Jiangxi to build a fusion-fission reactor

Asia Times ^

[marktwain]

Not much more than vaporware...

[Nateman]

In the Sun a proton proton collision is the first step in the production of Helium. It is also the limiting step because this collision has to happen a trillion billion times before a single particle in the next step is successful. Clearly this reactor won’t be using ordinary Hydrogen.

[No name given]

Just like Doc Ock.

[chajin]

You can go fusion, I’m goin’ fission

[FarCenter]

Typically deuterium or tritium is used in fusion experiments. Deuterium is extracted from water. Tritium is made in fission reactors by neutron activation of lithium 6.

[Flint]

I imagine that they have stolen enough technology from us to make it quite a successful project.

[noiseman]

100 megawatts? A conventional fission reactor typically produces ten times that amount.

[Nateman]

Deuterium is 0.0145% of the Hydrogen population. Your average proton will bounce around for over a billion years in the suns core before it becomes Deuterium . Once it succeeds in becoming Deuterium it only lasts a few seconds before it becomes something else. Because of this I find it amazing that most of the Deuterium in the Universe was made in the Big Bang .

[Nateman]

100 Megawatts is about what nuclear subs have. Our Carriers generate about 500 Megawatts per reactor.

[baclava]

Windmills are a very lucrative r&d business?

[FarCenter]

Most of the 60 under construction are over 1000 MWe. However, there are a number of small ones. They are probably prototypes or research reactors.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx

[VTenigma]

What could possibly go wrong? By the way it’s only thirty years off.

[verum ago]

100 megawatts? A conventional fission reactor typically produces ten times that amount.

Yeah, that is a hell of a lot of money to spend for 100 MW, especially in a country that has no compunction about burning coal and vastly lower building costs and red tape for such things than the US.

My gut reaction is : what are they up to?

To pull a wild guess out of my tailpipe, I'd say it's some sort of disguised breeder reactor for weapons material or some other exotic thing.

[verum ago]

replied to myself to add*:

and this supposedly some random provincial government doing this? In a country where even small companies have to have government approval for their activities (see: communism)?!

Yeah, something's up here.




I love FR, but good Lord is it behind the times. I'm not a member of a single other forum that doesn't allow editing.

[marktwain]

Yeah, something's up here.

Propaganda vaporware, or some official's pet project to put money in a place he can access it.

[FarCenter]

Jiangxi province has a population of 45 million. That’s a little more than California.

[norwaypinesavage]

That’s an interesting plan. Just make sure that you are a long-long way away from it when they first try it out.