Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

China Will Spend $3.3 Billion to Research Molten Salt Nuclear-Powered Drones (scmp.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the spicing-things-up dept.

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."

12 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Meanwhite... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Meanwhite... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Meanwhite... by hey! · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    3. Re:Meanwhite... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We need a happy medium

      Part of what is occurring now is because of the anything that works effort of destroying Obama. It is so much easier to find someone to blame than it is to actually fix something. The racism and such that was appealed to was not new, but the flames were fanned and are still being fanned. Intellectualism is now considered a very bad thing. The great people succeeded on guts and greatness, right?

      I have no idea on how to get elections won by the best candidate. Right now it looks like they are going to be won by the least hated, with it bouncing back and forth. Of course the republican hypocrisy in the current tax bill is staggering. The dems should run commercials pointing out how much debt they are adding on for our kids and their kids.

      As far as China researching nuclear reactors, well, why not, as long as they take reasonable care. I'm not sure I want flying nuclear reactors in any form, but they certainly have a right to research.

      Actually the United States credit should get the threat of a major downgrade if they pass this tax crap, and actually get it. That may be how China could help. They could threaten to not buy our debt.

      The current tax bill is basically a hit of crack. It may accelerate things, but there is gonna be one hell of a crash sooner or later. From what I can tell they are timing it so it blows to hell when a Dem will likely be in power. That way they can blame the dem for causing it all and the uniformed will buy it, again.

      I rather think a few of China's nuclear drones would make for a smaller catastrophe.

    4. Re:Meanwhite... by turkeyfish · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  2. The US has been down this road before... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:Clever Move by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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'
  4. Re:Clever Move by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  5. Why the US rejected the idea. by gurps_npc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Why the US rejected the idea. by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Informative

      actually, thorium reactor does create U-233 which has been used in weapons, but also contains U-232 which causes the problems of high gamma ray emission and hence argument that the the U-233 would be too radiactive to easily handle, and also that it would make near-critial masses unstable with risk of predetonation....but there are now ways the two could be separated, for example by laser. So certainly a government with deep enough wallets to have a thorium reactor program (russia, india, china) could also make bombs from one.

  6. Re:Clever Move by careysub · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  7. This is more than just salt as a coolant by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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/...