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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."
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.
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.
There is something seriously wrong with those people:
Trump administration is banning the federal health agency from using seven words or phrases in any official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.
The words are: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
Soon expressions like "Russian influence" and "buying election manipulation services with pocket money from the father-in-law" are banned as well. Isn't entitlement just a normal word in budgets, taxation and compensation package contracts? And how might one research fetus health without mentioning the word fetus? Or research seasonal flu within the vulnerable parts of the population without using the word vulnerable? Maybe they just call them unmentionables and then create vaccination programs for those unmentionables.
When you let a salt cooled reactor shut down, the salt solidifies and you're fucked. Now it's time to take it apart and cleanup.
That's how these experiments usually end. How they ended for the USA, France and Japan. Good luck to China, seriously, good luck to them, not snark.
The commercial shipping world isn't known for it's record of scrupulous preventive maintenance and professionalism below decks. Much of it is known for the opposite.
Bunker oil is dirtier, more sulpher, more soot. Same CO2, more or less. The particulates are, if anything, countering the warming. The seas are huge and not densely filled with shipping. Pollution from ocean going shipping is low on sensible priority lists. 'All costs are opportunity costs!'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Low = around 150 degrees C, not room temperature. Still needs a heating system to keep the reactor from "freezing up."
There are metals that are liquid at room temperature. Mercury is heavy and nasty to work with -- dissolves metal piping as well as being toxic. So is gallium.
There are sodium potassium alloys that are also liquid at room temperature, but they react explosively with water, making them amusing to work with.
I've read the original WaPo report on this *carefully*, and at present the effect is limited to budgetary documents that are being sent to Congress. It does not affect working scientists or epidemiologists... yet. So my interpretation is that while we should expect policy and research priorities to change, the ban on the seven dirty words at the CDC isn't evidence of that. At present it seems to be more about how the agency presents itself to Congress.
It's interesting that "evidence-based" and "science-based" should be thrown into the ban-bin with "fetus" and "transgender" as terms that are likely to cause an unfavorable Congressional reaction.
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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.
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
Low = around 150 degrees C, not room temperature.
The eutectic has a melting point of 123.5 C. An unmentioned problem with lead-bismuth cooling is the volatile and extremely toxic polonium that is continuously produced by neutron bombardment of the bismuth.
The coolant doesn't need high pressure to keep it from flashing to vapor, and it doesn't explode on contact with water - both good things - but polonium release is a severe hazard.
But hey! Free polonium! (Free except for the cost of the purging system to remove it.)
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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/...
The GOP recognizes that such word bans will now be essential, since they are essentially ending funding for prevention of the spread of Zika Virus and other mosquito vectored diseases. The last thing they want to have is someone quoting the terms "science-based" or "evidence based", or "fetus" in government documents that demonstrate that the failure to mitigate the deleterious effects of these diseases in arguing against the Trump administration's anti-science based positions that are likely to kill thousands in the decades to come, particularly now that with global warming is expanding vector ranges of tropical diseases northward at an astounding clip.
If the evangelicals ever figured out that Zika will probably kill more of the "unborn" than abortions in the decades to come, it would have a devastating effect on his base. Better to ban the word, than let the truth come out from their perspective.