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China Will Spend $3.3 Billion to Research Molten Salt Nuclear-Powered Drones (scmp.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader WindBourne tipped us off to some news from The South China Morning Post:
China is to spend 22 billion yuan (US$3.3 billion) trying to perfect a form of technology largely discarded in the cold war which could produce a safer but more powerful form of nuclear energy. The cash is to develop two "molten salt" reactors in the Gobi Desert in northern China. Researchers hope that if they can solve a number of technical problems the reactors will lead to a range of applications, including nuclear-powered warships and drones. The technology, in theory, can create more heat and power than existing forms of nuclear reactors that use uranium, while producing only one thousandth of the radioactive waste. It also has the advantage for China of using thorium as its main fuel. China has some of the world's largest reserves of the metal...
The reactors use molten salt rather than water as a coolant, allowing them to create temperatures of over 800 degrees Celsius, nearly three times the heat produced by a commercial nuclear plant fuelled with uranium. The superhot air has the potential to drive turbines and jet engines and in theory keep a bomber flying at supersonic speed for days.
One Beijing researcher says these drones "would serve as a platform for surveillance, communication or weapon delivery to deter nuclear and other threats from hostile countries." He asked not to be named, but provided one more advantage for a nuclear-powered drone flying at high-altitudes over the ocean.
"It will also have more public acceptance. If an accident happens, it crashes into the sea."
The reactors use molten salt rather than water as a coolant, allowing them to create temperatures of over 800 degrees Celsius, nearly three times the heat produced by a commercial nuclear plant fuelled with uranium. The superhot air has the potential to drive turbines and jet engines and in theory keep a bomber flying at supersonic speed for days.
One Beijing researcher says these drones "would serve as a platform for surveillance, communication or weapon delivery to deter nuclear and other threats from hostile countries." He asked not to be named, but provided one more advantage for a nuclear-powered drone flying at high-altitudes over the ocean.
"It will also have more public acceptance. If an accident happens, it crashes into the sea."
They can now take air superiority over the South China Sea and if any of the other countries with claims to the area shoot the drone down, they're the bad guys for causing an ecological disaster.
Darren Bane
"It will also have more public acceptance. If an accident happens, it crashes into the sea."
Until it doesn't.
While China is exerting its technical superiority, here in the US, the regime in power has banned the use of the phrases, "science-based" and "evidence-based" from government-funded scientific organizations.
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
We are so fucked.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Wasn't that a significant unsolved problem with these reactor designs?
Project Pluto, a nuclear-powered cruise missile popping out H-bombs like Pez. One of the "advantages" of the thing was the radioactive exhaust from its air-cooled reactor, also known as "halitosis" -- it was a weapon in itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Molten salt is probably better than direct-cycle air-cooled, but it will still be an ecological disaster if it crashes into the sea. Also, why bother vs satellites and solar or fuel-powered drones (for surveillance) and conventional missiles (for attacking things).
Conventional hardware (ex solar) might not be able to stay in flight for as long, but a country can make more of them for a fraction of the cost of nuclear-powered drones.
I'm waiting for us to come out with Fallout 4 nuclear powered cars.
The Ford Nucleon was a real concept car...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Also, nuclear-powered (radiothermal generator) pacemakers were installed in the 1970s - some are still in use today. It might seem like a joke, but that was extremely reliable tech and saved the patient more surgeries to replace batteries or the pacemaker in the future...
https://uk.reuters.com/article...
Hopefully in 50-100 years we will be using renewable power everywhere, and dirty tech like coal and nuclear, while they had their day, are unnecessary. Molten salt is a big reduction in waste, but the fuel is still dangerous and the waste not easily managed.
Climate change is real. Solar has a low capacity factor(20>-30%), and storage is not viable. There is a reason a super majority of scientist support nuclear power.
Storage might be viable in future -- look up pumped-storage hydro, or even flywheel batteries. Ideally, we'd also have a high-voltage superconductive DC link from Asia to the US via the Bering Strait and one from Africa to the Americas via Recife, Brazil. If the world's grids are turned into a "supergrid", one could move renewable power from where it's being produced at a given time to where it's needed.
Start learning mandarin #freedumbs, your time is past.
"It will also have more public acceptance. If an accident happens, it crashes into the sea."
Do you want Gojira? Because this is how you get Gojira.
If the glide ratio is high enough that they can ensure it always crashes into the sea, they must only be talking about computer crashes or fuel outages.
If that is the case, then they can... given the glide ratio and a mechanical altimeter, make it launch a parachute once it's passed the coast line so that it can fall gracefully and not destroy any tankers or oil rigs or boats.
"The reactors use molten salt rather than water as a coolant, allowing them to create temperatures of over 800 degrees Celsius, nearly three times the heat produced by a commercial nuclear plant fuelled with uranium."
Really? My stove is as hot as a commercial nuclear plant?
It does not create weapons grade radioactive materials. If you have a thorium based nuclear reactor you end up with low amounts of radioactive waste and can not build nuclear bombs. If you use the more traditional nuclear power plants, you get all this fun stuff that can be used to build a nuclear bomb.
The USA wanted nuclear bombs, so we ignored this technology.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If I only had a million dollars, I could have sex with two chicks at one time...
Everything is easy, if you just assume the solution.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Storage absolutely is viable, or at least on the cusp of being so. The the economics of storing renewable energy is different from the economics of storing non-renewable energy. Even if you lost 90% of the solar energy you tried to store, it's energy you got for free. As long as the cost of conversion and storage is low enough, waste isn't critical. That wouldn't be true of energy you generate from stuff you have to buy, like oil.
I read a few years ago about a group experimenting with photovoltaic housepaint. Its conversion rate was abysmal, but if they could get the price down low enough it wouldn't matter because you've got to paint the house anyway.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
it crashes where people live.
Do I hear molten salt nuclear reactors and hot air in one sentence? H2O steam the energy transfer medium in every nuclear reactor heat-to-electricity turbine-based convertor.
Betting the planet on a speculative technology that isn't quite there yet would not seem to be tremendously sensible.
In contrast we could build nuclear plants (using half-century old designs, even) that would work, and by any reasonable standard would deserve to be called "clean".
But let's go back to our regular scheduled anti-nuclear fear-mongering. It's not like frying the planet is anything to worry about.
The United States did some work on the idea of nuclear powered military aircraft way back when-- it was always a pretty whacked idea. Like, part of the design involved shielding just the pilot compartment and spewing radiation to the rear and the sides (thus discouraging pursuit aircraft! Win-win!). They got as far as building a gigagntic "hot-cell" to park the thing in so it could be worked on without killing yourself.
As Freeman Dyson once put it, ideas like this might be most charitably be regarded as welfare programs for engineers and scientists.
Are they telling themselves that if they're drones they won't need any shielding at all? And that they'll use remote manipulators to do cargo-handling and maintenance work?
I don't have anything against research in molten-salt reactors though, and I guess if you need to say "drones" to sell a project, we might politely look the other way. (Why not motlen-salt mobile smart phones?)
I would just sit on the couch and do absolutely nothing...
That can be had, much, much cheaper. Hookers aren't $500k a pop.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The headline should be:
From the summary:
Then the clickbait:
Substitute 'could' for 'will'. They could also lead to nuclear powered homes, cars and ponies, but they won't.
It's a trap! The important part of the story is that China is working on a (relatively) safer form of nuclear power, but everyone is caught up in the trap, "Oh Noes, Nuclear Powered Drones! Oh My!"
Idiots!
That can be had, much, much cheaper. Hookers aren't $500k a pop.
It is the money that gives you the stamina and the super-versatile genitalia. It is not simply a matter of getting two chicks!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
speculative
There is nothing speculative with storage.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Fuck those chinks, thats a serious threat against Humanity.
Goddammit, this is Amerika!!!
Land of the Free and home of the poor, and a few rich bastards.
And we're gonna build a fleet of molten saltwater nuclear powered sharks with frickin' LASERS, mothafucka.
We'll kick their skinny yellow asses all over town.
Climate change is real. Solar has a low capacity factor(20>-30%), and storage is not viable.
Not a problem. Solar is becoming cheap enough that even with the extra capacity required it is still economical. And there is also wind, even cheaper, which blows at night. And storage is viable right now. Pumped water storage is a commercially viable proven technology. And with the nearly century old technology of high voltage DC power lines (no, they do not have to be "superconductive") the power can be shipped from where ever it is generated to where ever the demand or storage sites are, and likewise from storage to demand.
There is a reason a super majority of scientist support nuclear power.
Too bad the capitalists who build power plants for profit consider it a bad investment. Not so renewable power. The hard-nosed businessmen have spoken. The age of nuclear power plants has passed.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Flying nuclear reactors are never a clever idea. Fukushima produced detectable nuclear contamination across the entire Pacific ocean due to a leak. How much worse will it be if the containment vessel shatters due to a high speed impact? Plus, even if they spend most of their time over the ocean they have to land somewhere and a crash on land will cause a lot of contamination. The technology is interesting but let's hope they are clever and stick to land and sea-based applications.
Too bad the capitalists who build power plants for profit consider it a bad investment. Not so renewable power. The hard-nosed businessmen have spoken. The age of nuclear power plants has passed.
So where is all that base load power going to come from then? Storage isn't even in the ballpark right now. Where are those 50 TWhs of power are going to come from? We have to get base load from fossil fuels today and for likely the next several decades mostly due to your poorly informed objections to nuclear power.
The main speaker for the Sierra Club on the topic of nuclear power for 20 years didn't know what background radiation was. As a result, we have to keep those coal fired plants online for another 20 years to make up for it. Considering the coal ash created by those plants is actually more radioactive than nuclear waste, your effect is likely counter to your goal. Please, please, please learn something on the topic of nuclear power before judging it. Its cost and problems largely come from dealing with the people like you and less from the incredibly difficult technical challenges involved which is really quite incredible.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
The SCMP article, being a typical simplified newspaper account, talks only about using molten salt as a reactor coolant. Salt is already used for heat transfer in many industrial processes, including solar thermal plants like Ivanpah, because of its high specific heat (heat absorption per unit mass) combined with its much higher boiling point than water. This would mean a more compact reactor that operates at ambient pressure.
But this research is a lot more advanced than that. The designs being investigated use fuel dissolved in the coolant, with graphite rods as a moderator, the opposite arrangement from existing commercial designs. This allows a greater range of fuels, including thorium and spent fuel from current reactors. Some of the designs being investigated are breeders, producing fissile fuel from U-238 and thorium.
China did not think of this design first; the US did, and ran a test reactor for years at ORNL. Now a science-friendly country will carry on where we left off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Storage is already viable, as Musk recently demonstrated in both Australia and in Puerto Rico. Not only viable, but extremely cost effective, not to mention saving the costs of environmental cleanup.
But of course the modern GOP would have us all believe there is no problem living in sh_t, whether it be chemical, nuclear, or sociological, because after all, modern republicans don't need a clean environment in which to thrive.
Yes, but Trump promises to change that by imposing tariffs on non-US made components in order to drive up prices and thereby provide additional subsidy to fossil fuels, by once again making them cost-competitive with alternative power technologies.
Trump gives no though to the fac that tariffs imposed by Smoot-Hawley greatly intensified the Great Depression by throwing hundreds of thousands out of work, just as Trump proposes to do for the US solar industry.
Solar will be incorporated into construction and should eventually become the default roofing material in all places where it can offset a fraction of the power usage of the structures underneath. Wind will become an unsustainable maintenance nightmare as soon as the subsidies for it expire. Few people realize that the nacelle located right behind each set of wind turbine blades is crammed with mechanical gearing, with about the same complexity as an automatic transmission. That's high up on a pole, lashed by weather and in some places by salt spray.
But if we want to get to zero carbon while still having industries and large cities, we will have to go nuclear.
"Base load" is a fancy word for "inflexible production which can't follow demand". Which is exactly what solar and wind power is.
There is absolutely no problem with solar and wind taking over the inflexible power generation. They just need the flexible power generation for when their output doesn't line up with the load. Exactly like nuclear or coal. On the upside, at least they are reasonably easy to throttle on short notice, unlike traditional nuclear, and you never have a gigawatt of wind or solar offline for a few months because of maintenance or safety problems.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Betting the planet on a speculative technology that isn't quite there yet would not seem to be tremendously sensible.
No bet at all. It's no-risk, all-reward, results are practically guaranteed. I mean yeah, the planet COULD be hit by an asteroid, rendering the investment ineffective, but so what?
In contrast we could build nuclear plants (using half-century old designs, even) that would work, and by any reasonable standard would deserve to be called "clean".
There have been numerous delays, flaws, and bankruptcies resulting in all but one single nuclear plant in the US being canceled, and that previous plant was started in the 1970s. Apparently we cannot build them.
But let's go back to our regular scheduled anti-nuclear fear-mongering. It's not like frying the planet is anything to worry about.
No need to fear monger, EVERY PENNY WASTED (and that total is billions) on nuclear power since say, 2005, could have been reinvested in insulation, home construction, light bulbs, cool roofs, window-replacement, and delivered better results. No need to even put money into wind, solar, hydro, tide, or geothermal energy.
The fact is, like it or not, the nuclear demon is not the problem. The nuclear wastrel is.
...and then they lost me.
Molten salt reactor? Interesting! Thorium? Intriguing! Nuclear powered ships? Fascinating!
Nuclear powered drones? Uhhhhhhh... I doubt that. Nuclear powered bombers? I really, REALLY doubt that! "The superhot air has the potential to drive turbines and jet engines..." Sure, and the turbine blades don't weaken or melt because of the Unobtanium in them?
You might, just maybe, with decades of development invested, be able to make a scramjet with such a system. No moving parts. Cooling the exhaust manifolds will be major challenge though.
Regardless, any application to aviation, when shielding the reactor involves heavy materials, just seems like a sci-fi fantasy.
The plant in Australia can only store about 1 hour of electricity. It is not meant for grid-level storage. It is meant for load-balancing. The cost for 2 weeks of storage(which you would need because of something called winter) at current prices would be ~$40 trillion. The US uses almost 4000 TWh annually. Divide that by 365 and you get ~11 TWh. Multiple that by 14(2 weeks) and you get ~150 TWh. Divide that by 100 MWh and multiple that by $25 million (the storage and cost of a tesla battery wear house) and you get a cost of ~$37.5 trillion. The actual cost will be higher because of grid improvements required to utilize this storage(such as new transmission lines). So that gives an estimate of $40 trillion for a mere 2 weeks of storage. That is not economically viable. Not viable and way more expensive then nuclear.
And why do you think nuclear is sh_t? It is the safest energy source we have(yes it is safer then renewables). It is the cleanest energy source we have. I personally think people such as yourself would rather a 100,000,000 million people died from the effects of climate change then prevent it with nuclear power.
You guys always talk a good line. Try not to get the planet fried with your obsessions.
If they turn to their largest drone manufacturer [DJI] to do this then the world is truly fucked.
The point of running nuclear experiments in the Gobi desert is that leaks will not bug the neighborhood.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Time and again Kirk Sorensen sells this nonsense with the claim that real-time enrichment of 233U can be accomplished chemically.
Not a chance. 232U is not produced in blocks, but continuously.
The only way to chemically remove it from the core, thus avoiding Neutron field depletion is constant purge-refine-replace-remelt in the core
It has never worked, and this is why Sorensen et al. never address the issue.
Humanity is definitively reaching the Civilization Bottleneck. Evolution based of natural selection inevitably produces a civilization of competing imperialistic entities, which in combination with advanced nuclear technology creates an "explosive" mixture.
The civilization bottleneck theory explains The Great Silence, why there are no radio or TV signals from other stars. Every natural selection civilization self-destructs itself at a certain stage of political&military competition.
Yellowstone comes quickly to mind. Good luck with no solar for several years.
A remote drone has a much reduced need for shielding.
e.g. a semi-permanent drone patrolling the uninhabited pacific at 2 km high would not need much shielding and could easily even avoid ships and planes closer than a few miles. Hang a few antiship, air-to-air, and antipersonnel missiles on it, and replace much of the blue water surface navy patrols.
2 km distance makes even popping a neutron bomb less hazardous...
You can't run a cargo ship off wind power, and solar power would be too slow. I suppose you could build the train linking America to China via Siberia/Alaska/Canada, and power that with electricity.
More BS, likely from someone trying to get funding for a LFTR in the US. Let's take this bit by bit...
> China is to spend 22 billion yuan (US$3.3 billion) trying to perfect a form of technology largely
> discarded in the cold war
Discarded because a continual stream of reports all concluded that the economics of the concept were worse than existing reactor designs, that the proposed advantages didn't really exist or at least weren't as important as it was implied, and that the remaining development cost was greater than any possible economic outcomes.
And it's not just during the cold war; every so often someone comes along to revive this corpse and someone has to do another study. Here, for instance, is a recent one that was triggered by the recent LFTR "we can do anything!" boosterism:
http://franke.uchicago.edu/bigproblems/BPRO29000-2014/Team10-EnergyFinalPaper.pdf
Here is the important part of their conclusions:
However, these benefits are overshadowed by economic costs, as demonstrated
per our model. Although substation cost-savings are associated with the building of
a LFTR in comparison to a traditional uranium plant, the difference in cost,
given the current industry environment, remains insufficient to justify the creation
of a new LFTR.
> Researchers hope that if they can solve a number of technical problems
Well duh! If we have that magic wand, I want it to make my hair fall back in.
> The technology, in theory, can create more heat and power than existing forms of nuclear
> reactors that use uranium, while producing only one thousandth of the radioactive waste.
Complete baloney.
> China has some of the world's largest reserves of the metal...
It does not, not even close. How did they even come to think this?
India, the US, Austrailia and Canada have the most thorium, *by far*. Those four have more than *everyone else combined*. China isn't even in the top ten.
> The reactors use molten salt rather than water as a coolant, allowing them to create
> temperatures of over 800 degrees Celsius, nearly three times the heat produced
> by a commercial nuclear plant fuelled with uranium.
You don't measure heat in C, you measure temperature in C. The British AGRs operated at 650 degrees Celsius. The person that wrote this release has zero idea what they are talking about, either historically or technically.
In case you're curious about why they mention this, it has to do with how much of the heat being generated in the reactor that you can extract for electricity. This depends on the difference in temperatures on either side of the turbine. The outlet is basically "room temperature" or something close to it, so the only practical way you can improve things is on the inlet side. Water, the typical coolant, doesn't like to go too far beyond about 250; the most common plant in the US is the GE PWR which operates at 275C for instance.
So there's been lots of talk over the years about replacing water with something else with a higher triple point. That something else is normally a gas - CO2 and helium typically - or some sort of oil. And a lot of people tried these variations, including liquid salts, and in every single case they found that the improvements in economics due to higher efficiencies were easily offset by the added complexity of operation. The AGR, the only such design to see widespread use, was an economic disaster. Everyone, and I mean everyone, gave up on these because they were simply too expensive to operate.
But of course, this is a miracle device and the Chinese are supermen, so it will all definitely work no problems this time. :rolleyes:
Three magnitudes of improved efficiency? Let's do it!!!
Aircraft that can stay aloft for days? Let's do it!!
I'm also happy to see China doing further innovation instead of stealing technology from other countries. Good for them to add back to the world.
Good luck guys! Hope you can make it work.
It's only the ocean.. it washes away right?
Fucking chinks. Nuke 'em all.
Sure you can -- it's just slow and labor-intensive...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
> Is an unshielded sodium reactor clean? Only if you keep it way the fuck away from everyone. Myself, I think this is a story about people raising funding for a project by say "drones!", it's not like anyone is really going to do that.
> Is an unshielded sodium reactor clean? Only if you keep it way the fuck away from everyone.
For some reason people only think of in-flight conditions. Not re-arming or maintenance or where they will be launched from.
Myself, I think this is a story about people raising funding for a project by say "drones!", it's not like anyone is really going to do that.
Sorta like low key saber rattling.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You can't run a cargo ship off wind power
Are you sure this has never been done?
You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you?