President Obama in his recent SOTU address said that “this is our generation’s sputnik moment” referring to the need to use science and technology to develop cheaper clean energy (among other things). It seems the Chinese were listening because last week they announced a focused effort to achieve technological leadership in thorium molten salt reactors.
From EnergyFromThorium
The People’s Republic of China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology, it was announced in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) annual conference on Tuesday, January 25. An article in the Wenhui News followed on Wednesday (Google English translation). Chinese researchers also announced this development on the Energy from Thorium Discussion Forum.
See the Press report (Chinese) below along with partial translation:
http://whb.news365.com.cn/yw/201101/t20110126_2944856.htm
(partial google translation follows)
“Yesterday, as the Chinese Academy of Sciences started the first one of the strategic leader in science and technology projects, “the future of advanced nuclear fission energy – nuclear energy, thorium-based molten salt reactor system” project was officially launched. The scientific goal is to use 20 years or so, developed a new generation of nuclear energy systems, all the technical level reached in the trial and have all intellectual property rights.”
What is a “thorium-based molten salt reactor system”? Please see this previous WUWT post on this technology.
Currently there is no US effort to develop a thorium MSR. Readers of this blog and Charles Barton’s Nuclear Green blog know that there has been a grass-roots effort underway for over five years to change this. The formation of the Thorium Energy Alliance and the International Thorium Energy Organization have been other attempted to convince governmental and industrial leaders to carefully consider the potential of thorium in a liquid-fluoride reactor. There have been many international participants in the TEA and IThEO conferences, but none from China.
Will the US accept the challenge or allow the Chinese to dominate advanced nuclear technology too? Using a technology invented in the US 40 years ago no less!
This isn’t a “Sputnik moment” Mr. President, it’s a “shit or get off the pot” moment for US energy policy. The US excelled at the space race, partly because of the swift kick in the pants that Sputnik provided. Perhaps this announcement will be the embarrassment like Sputnik for the US government that will compel them to finally do something about our energy future besides tilt at windmills.
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Thanks to Charles Hart for the tip and info gathering.
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Roy:
Kipling’s views on non Europeans were rather less flattering than you contend, as the opening stanza of his famous poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’ demonstrates.
“Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.”
And, while your explanation of the meaning of the expression about the sun never setting on the British Empire is literally true, its symbolic meaning (which many Britons took as the literal one as well) clearly refers to world domination for an endless day.
I do agree wholeheartedly with your point about many people’s perception of China being wildly distorted by focusing on a blip (1949 – c1990) in its long and distinguished history. Silly accusations like a few on this thread along the lines that they are primitives who are incapable of creativity or technological accomplishment stem from ignorance and xenophobia.
Underestimating your opponent is rarely a winning strategy.
Dr. Dave says:
January 30, 2011 at 11:29 pm
I encourage all of you who can spare an hour to watch the video I linked to @ur momisugly around 6PM (above). This is probably the best explanation of thorium reactors I’ve ever seen.
I have just finished watching it. Yes it is extremely interesting and well worth the 80 minutes. One question that was not answered was the exact nature of the problem with graphite in the two fluid reactor which, as David Archibald says in his comment, looks the best bet. The problem did not seem to that difficult to overcome but it did cause them to switch to the far more complex single fluid reactor so it is not trivial. However that was 40 years ago, it might be easily soluble now.
David Archibald mentions the probable evolution of this technology to compact and ultraflexible plants built into ships for mobile power generation. This would also extend to mobile desalination plants and might even extend to other energy intensive activities like smelting in order to reduce tranportation costs.
A lot of energy is also lost at the moment through the electical transmission system. It would be a huge bonus for geographically large countries like China and India to build a distributed system of power generation. There would also be the added advantage of using waste heat for community heating. This latter point would make it particularly interesting for Canada, Scandinavia and Russia. It is the inherent safety and scaleability of the two fuel thorium reactors that allow this.
Like most things it is sure to be more difficult to achive all this than it looks on paper. However history tells us that, if the rewards are great enough, a way is normally found. In this case the rewards look enormous and I am not at all surprised that India and China are racing to the finishing line.
The situation reminds me of the 1960s when the transistor was invented. At that time the top ten manufacturers of valves were household names for technology. Not one of them took up the new technology. Half of them went out of business and the others (like Philips where I worked) bought out start up companies like Signetics when they realised their mistake. Similarly no railway company invested in the car.
This is not a justification to jump at every new (or old) idea that comes into fashion but sometimes an idea has to wait for its right time. It seems to me that this technology demands to be looked at. How much money have we poured into Nuclear fusion world wide? I know which one I would give the shorter odds on working in my lifetime.
Many of you in the comments here have it right.
The environmentalist wackos – and they ARE environmentalist wackos – WANT us to have expensive energy. I have personally talked to examples of these people and they’re philosophy revolves roughly around:
1) Hatred of anything Rightwing
2) Hatred of humanity
3) Hatred of civilization
4) Hatred of Democracy
5) Hatred of Capitalism
6) Hatred of civilization
7) Hatred of white males
Essentially, Limbaugh was right years ago when he said the Communists would fade away and re-emerge under the environmentalist banner. And don’t even try to use reason with this kind of mindset. I’ve had them tell me that we shouldn’t have cars, shouldn’t live in homes larger than a few hundred square feet, shouldn’t eat meat, shouldn’t heat our homes, shouldn’t reproduce, etc.
So when you hear Obama talking, know that he’s one of THEM. He hates this country and all it stands for. Sure, he’ll benefit as much as possible from all the resources America has to offer but he’ll denounce them and keep us from enjoying them as much as possible.
Solution? Hammer your representative as much as possible with demands to open up all our natural resources, including nuclear. Vote more Conservatives into power. Not the worthless RINO Republicans, but true Conservatives. They are interested in exploiting American energy resources.
China appears to be a vacuum cleaner for western technology. In france recently 3 Renault senior managers were dismissed for selling vehicule batterie technology to the Chinese. They are sucking it up randomly (apparently) and then assessing it’s potential. You should not forget that there are many, many chinese studying at european and american universities and paying for the privelege.
Don’t worry people, we, the french, will build all the Nuclear Power Stations you need. Just give us the money, he he
Obama is America’s WTF moment.
Steve Koch says:
January 31, 2011 at 2:10 am
My guess is that the Chinese are trying to stampede us into figuring out the intricacies of LFTRs so they can steal the technology from us .
This was a trick the japonese used to pull. I used to make and test high reliability semi-conductors (not all by myself, of course) mostly in GaAs. The Japonese at that time produced a paper claiming massive speed and density. When I read the paper I knew it had to be false but a lot of other researchers starting criticising the Japonese by telling them where they were going wrong et voilà they got all the data they needed to carry out further research, clever eh?
What a laugh, “all intellectual property rights”, so they are basically saying “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is ours”.
Nuclear power production is necessary for continued growth. Our side should be working on it too.
The argument about property rights seems to be a bit premature. I know very little about them but if the US had a reactor up and running, experimental or not, it would be had for anyone to claim property rights on the technology but on parts of a new rector, yes. Secondly, the chinese have been stealing property rights from the west for years without paying and they have not yet signed any agreement to stop.
Don’t believe anyone that tells you we will have fusion energy before your grandkids have grandkids.
Absolutely right. The single biggest problem for fusion in the containment of the plasma. We really have no idea if it is at all possible. The new fusion reactor being built here in france should tell us a great deal because it will potentially be big enough to actually produce a self-sustaining fusion reaction. On verra .
Face it, we’re sunk. We’re the next Haiti.
Unless we’re lucky enough to be taken over by a Pinochet-style dictator who has the guts and the guns to remove the genocidal EPA and the parasitic lawyers.
If you did not take the opportunity to view the video posted by Dr. Dave early in this thread, I encourage you to go back and take a look. I plan to forward a link to that to my congressman and senators in hopes of generating some interest and knowledge of that on Capitol Hill. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for your representatives to see it either.
Most of the brightest Chinese Engineers come to the US for their advanced degrees. Their innovation is coming straight from the U.S. We have plenty of bright kids to pick up the NucEng slack, pretty quickly, but since dumbass Carter killed nukes most of these kids are going into programs where there are jobs, and their are tons of Eng jobs out there.
—
Innovation in engineering just doesn’t come out of China and don’t think for a moment thorium MSR doesn’t require a whole heap of engineering to get to commercial operation.
BHO’s solution to growing our economy? Not an “Ipod moment” where a burst of private entrepreneurial activity creates new products and new wealth, but a burst of central planning that results in a single directed response, a response that created very little new wealth in comparison, and created a lot more jobs dependent upon government rather than a lot of jobs in the independent private sector.
“Sputknik moment” equals another socialist analogue to “Manhattan Project”.
The US overbuilt base load generating capacity in the 1970’s and 1980’s. With the exception of natural gas and windmills us generating capacity has been flat since 1990.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec8_44.pdf
Obama can blather on endlessly about ‘Sputnik’ moments but in the US we don’t need massive amounts of generating capacity anytime soon, the Chinese do, which gives them the advantage of ‘necessity’.
We had a bit of debate on the numbers at Pielke Jr’s place here.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-get-to-80-clean-energy-by-2035.html
To get to Obama’s 80% clean by 2035 if we count natural gas as 50% clean which Obama almost certainly would we only need the equivalent of 150-300 nuclear reactors built by 2035. The Chinese will build 100 nuclear reactors by 2020.
Personally I don’t think 80% clean means 80% CO2 free. I think it means we will be getting 20% of our electric from traditional coal fired capacity in 2035.
Which puts us as needing about new 100 nuclear reactors by 2035.
Applications are already pending before the NRC for about 20 of them.
Tne NuScale and mPower Small Modular reactors are still 5 years away from design certification.
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/new-licensing-files/new-rx-licensing-app-legend.pdf
Pretty much all US nuclear research money is flowing towards the International GenIV Consortium.
http://www.ne.doe.gov/geniv/documents/gen_iv_roadmap.pdf
Unless the American public gets educated and involved in energy, there will be a perpetual energy shortage in this country based on denial (there’s that word) of scientific fact. Wind, Sun, Waves – they make great press, they make lousy dependable energy sources. Nuclear, Coal, Gas, Oil – everything to fear (according to the greens), they make dependable, extensible energy sources.
We all, on this website (excepting the Trolls) know that “Climate Challenges/Change/GW…” has virtually nothing to do with man (I say virtually, because UHI and land re-purposing do contribute to temp changes) and everything to do with our Spaceship Earth and it’s delightful companions in this intergalactic journey.
The pols will continue to manipulate the facts to get and stay re-elected. Obama is just practicing good old Chicago politics, just like Newt Gingrich with his support of Ethanol is playing good old Georgia farm politics. Don’t let party labels get in the way of understanding where the players are coming from, and where they want to take you. Just say NO to all subsidies. The market will do an excellent job if left alone, the problem is to get it left alone. /rant
Dave Springer wrote:
“The Soviet Union is a prime example. They’ve had nuclear expertise equivalent to ours since forever. If it made economic sense they’d do it. They don’t have to deal with greedy capitalists, environmentalist whackos, or public opinion. If it was cheaper than fossil fuel they’d just do it. Yet they didn’t.”
Russian rulers are not completely immune to public opinion. Chernobyl won’t have done the case for nuclear power in Russia much good. Also Russia has abundant supplies of oil, natural gas and coal. Therefore the need to develop nuclear energy there is not yet urgent.
@ur momisugly johanna
Your opinion of Kipling is very superficial. What do you think the two lines you quoted below mean?
“Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need”
At the time that Kipling was writing almost the only wealthy countries in the world were those in Europe plus the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. “The White Man’s Burden” was originally published with the subtitle “the United States and the Philippine Islands.” Perhaps you think the United States should not have taken over the Philippines or Hawaii or Puerto Rico or Alaska or some of the Virgin Islands (or more recently, Afghanistan) but only a very dogmatic left-winger would think that imperialism was wholly bad.
Jeff says:
January 30, 2011 at 5:52 pm
They are playing catch up to the US in this case …
Horses are playing catch up with the quartermile pole when gate opens, but only for half a minute
Thank you China for showing Americans what optimism used to be like. Hopefully enough of my fellow Americans will understand the example you’re setting.
I don’t see the justification for Obama bashing with respect to nuclear power. One of the first acts of his administration was to launch a loan guarantee program for nuclear power reactors.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/obama_administration_to_provide_loan_guarantees_for_nuclear_power/
This is an important aid to the development of nuclear power, because of the time and expense of building reactors and putting them into place. The barriers to construction are local in nature, based on NIMBY, rather than federal.
stephen richards
If you are talking about ITER, don’t get your hopes up. D-T reactors of commercial size and potential, Tokamak, etc., are more likely to be built on the moon before we can afford to build them on earth. Materials embrittle by the neutrons.
The physicists at Princeton essentially proved the physics of it, but look up what they did with it after only a few seconds of actual fusion reaction time.
Besides, tritium must be made from lithium in fission reactors.
If the West where not concerned with maintaining a large nuclear weapons arsenal, the move to more modern GenIV reactors, and developing other new nuclear technologies wouldn’t be taking so long. Until the West relinqueses their toys little progress will be made.
Brian H
It is great to hear private investors are interested. The polywell guy has been saying for years he only needs a few hundred thousand a year to commercialize his devise. That would be cool. I’m guessing it ain’t as easy as he says.
I will remind you that fusion energy is still more than 20 years from being commercially viable, just as it has been for 70 years now. 😉
Missed factors and genius breakthroughs can completely change the game, but so far, I don’t see anything that makes me want to change my prediction of ~15 years ago. I then predicted it would be 100 years before fusion power generation was commercially viable. I’m still not sure I wasn’t being optimistic.
Statements from scientists like Kaku make me wince. Here is an example: http://bigthink.com/ideas/25303
He ends that one by saying fusion is clean. I call such nonsense crap. I again refer to the Princeton reactor. http://www.pppl.gov/news/pages/tftr_removal.html
The clean up was a success. They buried a building in the desert. Not exactly what I call clean. Note that they shut it off in 1997 and began clean up two years later after the radioactivity decayed enough. Again not what I call clean. I cannot find the reference by recollection is that the two-year cooldown was required after less than 30 seconds total of actual fusion reactions. 14MeV neutrons do not play well with others, and nothing we have come up with so far can withstand it for long.
Now I’ve climbed up on my high horse, so feel free to disregard, but I was in the above referenced desert when Princeton was succeeding so well. The physicists and politicians were so flush with success that they zeroed out the rest of the government’s budget for materials research to divert the funds to more physics. NOT! Fortunately cooler heads prevailed, but that is the kind of nonsense involved. The physicists can make grandiose claims like Kaku, but the engineers have to build it, and it has to last long enough and stay safe enough to pay off the investors. The materials are not going to be ready to deal with D-T any time soon, which is why others are talking about other possibilities like pB11.
History will look back and show how the greenie religious movement took the most advanced nation on Earth and turned it into a third world backwater intent on navel gazing while the rest of the world has their eyes on the stars.
I don’t know where you guys think China is going to come up with nuclear reactor expertise. They can’t even produce a reliable nuclear reactor for a submarine yet you think they’re going to lead the world in LFTR? That has absolutely no basis in reality. Conversely the US has had dependable nuclear powered submarines for 50 years and built the only LFTR reactor in the world – a 7.5mw research reactor at ORNL which ran from 1964-1969. Their announcement is utter BS. The only way China will ever build an LFTR is if they steal the technology from someone else. For Pete’s sake they wouldn’t even have nuclear weapons small enough for ballistic missiles, which are far easier to make than nuclear power plants, if they hadn’t stolen the designs from Los Alamos in the 1980’s which was hushed up until 1995. For anyone who missed that story you can read about it in the New York Times here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE5DB153FF935A35750C0A96F958260
BREACH AT LOS ALAMOS: A special report.; China Stole Nuclear Secrets For Bombs, U.S. Aides Say
By JAMES RISEN and JEFF GERTH
Published: March 6, 1999