Posted on 05/20/2011 1:58:22 PM PDT by ckilmer
China shows a world lead in clean nuclear energy Friday, 29 April 2011 By Gerry Grove-White
Earlier this year the Chinese Academy of Science announced plans to finance the development of a programme to develop Thorium Fuelled Molten Salt Reactors (TFMSR). This is the first of four “strategic leader in science and technology projects” that the Chinese Academy of Science will be supporting.
The Head of the Chinese TFMSR programme is Dr Jiang Mianheng, Graduate of Drexel University, with a PhD in electrical engineering. His father Jiang Zemin, was the former President of the People's Republic of China from 1993 to 2003. This gives an indication of the importance the Chinese Leadership attach to the thorium reactor programme.
This is a clear and important endorsement of the benefits of the TFMSR namely:-
Excellent nuclear and passive safety features, Greatly improved proliferation resistance, Significantly reduced high active waste production, Excellent resource utilisation as a result of the very high burn-up achieved, Overall economics that offer the prospect of being competitive with coal.
The decision clearly demonstrates China’s commitment to developing the TFMSR as a major energy source for the future. One can only applaud this far sighted decision by the Chinese Academy of Science.
The Academy stated that -“The scientific goal is to develop a new generation of nuclear energy systems [and to achieve commercial] use [in] 20 years or so. We intend to complete the technological research needed for this system and to assert intellectual property rights to this technology”.
Whist the announcement refers to a 20 year programme, rapid progress can be expected in the next 5 years towards a demonstration plant.
This programme will place China at the forefront of development of truly competitive nuclear power suitable for large scale power production as well as supporting desalination, hydrogen production, and other high temperature chemical processing, due to the safe, clean and cost-efficient characteristics of thorium energy. The TFMSR programme will see China leading the world in the development and application of high temperature materials, and quite probably the use of the Brayton power generating cycle.
It is tempting to speculate about how other countries may react to what many observers see as “a Sputnik moment”, to borrow President Obama’s phrase.
President Obama in his recent State of the Union speech pursued the Sputnik analogy when he stated that “We're telling America's scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we'll fund the Apollo projects of our time”. He goes on to say “Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all”.
So can we expect to see the Chinese announcement catalyse the countries and researchers who have been working on TFMSR’s for years to put together a team to deliver a second TFMSR programme?
Given the intellectual capital developed 50 years ago by the talented Team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, under the leadership of the visionary Dr Alvin M Weinberg , it would be surprising if a Team were not assembled and funded to deliver a second TFMSR programme.
This represents a “golden opportunity” for Australia to join an international consortium to develop what, in the opinion of many scientists and nuclear engineers, represents the most promising of the Generation 4 reactor systems. If Australia were to do this, then it would have available a nuclear reactor technology that has high enough temperatures to power hydrogen production and a host of other high temperature chemical processes with no resultant carbon emissions. In addition it would develop a world leading position in high temperature material and metallurgy.
Competition is good for the overall development and deployment of TFMSR technology, given the various technological options that are available.
The World requires TFMSR to meet the challenge of clean energy production in the coming years. The Chinese announcement is a great step forward, which many observers over the years have been arguing for. The coming months may well see further similar announcements around the world.
The question is will Australia be able to grasp the opportunity that the development of a TFMSR represents, or will we be buying our reactors and other high temperature technologies from China in 15 to 20 years time?
You will not see new nuclear reactors in the US in our lifetimes.
We are IDIOTS for not pursuing Thorium reactors. IDIOTS. 35+ years of this crap and we still don’t get it.
Perhaps we can export our Sierra Club, EPA, Earth First, National Resources Defense Council, Concerned Scientists for America, etc to China. Tell them that China is a more fertile field for their protests.
Either they will hamstring China until we can catch up in the clean Nuclear power field or China will send the lot of them to re-education camps.
Either way, they will be out of our hair!
Would the Chinese mind if we shipped the West Wing Clown show of felon-cretins to live within the the reactor walls to use as moderators (absorbs radiation)?
Cool!
Let’s do a switcheroo and copy them for a change
Absolutely we bury the stuff now,instead of using it and instead use Uranium as the sole fuel, Imbeciles!
• “Giving society cheap, abundant energy . . . would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Paul Ehrlich
The oiliest things in that cartoon are the Congress critters who are talking.
Meanwhile - thanks to succeeding generations of luddites - the U.S. concept of “energy independence” is undertaking a “strenuous examination” if its aging 1st/2nd generation LW dinosaurs for their “safety”.......
Ponder for a moment if we were, today, well underway in a program of construction of small, efficient nuclear plants built in a factory setting with all its advantages of process control, security and standardization. Lacking the large size and large environmental footprint they would be numerous, sited near demand, hence reducing the need for - and consequent vulnerability of a vast grid system to natural or man-made events - with the added fillup of the safety of redundancy added to the efficiency gains of short-distance transmission.
Nuclear power, (which has as yet been proven to hvew killed anyone in the U.S.) , has, (and continues to be) obstructed, thwarted and sabotaged (by fair means and foul), in order to hamstring the American economy. >PS
Using nuclear technology,means you have to upgrade the technology as much as possible so you can put the aging plants out of their misery.
Okay, put your tinfoil hats on.
And reflect, for a moment, that with the development of small thorium reactors becoming cheaper and more efficient and more developed by the day, that the Greenies and the oil companies might feel very threatened.
And that, as a result, the Fukushima nuclear powerplant disaster would be something that they would greatly welcome.
You may remove your tinfoil hats now.
Cheap, clean energy is the greatest threat to these NGOs ever, but they won’t admit it. Cheap clean energy is the basis for economic growth, and economic growth is what these groups hate most, as growth leads to secondary population growth and environmental damage, in their view.
Bingo!
I can uarantee that it will not ever produce one watt of power unless LOTS of environut restrictions are removed.
Building it is one thing.
We have lots and lots of useless buildings standing unused.
Letting it actually be used is another.
Keep in mind there are windfarms that never have had the hub brakes released and so sit useless not producing a darn thing, a waste of money and resources all in the name of ‘green’.
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