China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country
(www.economist.com)
from naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca to world@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 08:02
https://lemmy.ca/post/10488266
from naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca to world@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 08:02
https://lemmy.ca/post/10488266
#world
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also the only one with the balls to build a TMS prototype reactor đȘ
Good to see them building on America's work in prototype molten salt reactors.
exactly, itâs such a shame this research wasnât continued at the time.
It wasnât viable at the time, makes sense theyâd focus on exploring other avenues.
Remains to be seen if itâs viable today as well mind you.
from the very same source you provided:
Viable as in theory it worked.
Not viable as in this makes economic sense to continue with in comparison to other avenues.
Yeah, why wonât anybody else flush endless amounts of money down the drain for a white elephant? Must be those pesky environmentalists.
wait, are we talking about nuclear fusion?
No, molten salt fission reactors. The technology never worked on a commercial scale and itâs doubtful it ever will. And even if somebody were willing to finance the development, it would take decades to become viable.
your sarcasm detector might be broken.
I guess the chinese think differently - we will see.
The Chinese will keep throwing money at it until it maybe works some day. They donât care about cost.
More countries should adopt a similar philosophy for ways to end global warming.
Sure. But they should use the money for things that have a chance to make a positive impact.
Like?
Have you heard of renewables? Neat stuff.
IDK if you know this, but renewables arenât on their own to cover all of our power needs everywhere.
That nonsense has been debunked so many times. And no matter what, itâs simply physically impossible to build enough nukes quickly enough to have a meaningful impact.
Are we talking about the same thing? Iâm talking about nuclear energy not nukes. And if you are talking about nuclear power plants, in what world do you think itâs impossible to build enough to have a meaningful impact? Each power plant produces a crazy amount of energy. Far more than solar and wind can. Solar and wind by themselves will in no way overtake fossil fuel power plants fast enough. Nuclear energy would be a great replacement until then.
Itâs not a competition. You can and should do both. Putting all your eggs in renewables is just as shortsighted as not using them
We should use the technologies that are proven to work, available today and way way cheaper than anything else.
Yes, and we should continue to develop new technologies and energy systems, you know, the way science and technology progresses. You sound like you would be advocating for steam engines when cars came along
Cant wait for the Plainly Difficult videos on those
Cannot read the full article due to paywall⊠but what is up with that tagline:
What does the fusion problem have to do with fission reactors? They are completely opposite things and fission reactors cannot be converted to fusion ones nor any other way I can see helps with fusion at all⊠Like the tag line seems to be heavily implying. I donât see how these two things are related, and I bet the article does not explain, does it?
Clicks
you see, itâs newkularr
Iâm pretty sure thatâs as far as the writerâs physics education went.
I just hope theyâre not rushing too much like the Soviets, and we get another Chernobyl
As long as they are not using the old dumb Soviet design then itâs literally impossible. The amount of Nuclear fear mongering is insane
I see a lot of chinese made machinery that doesnât meet Australian standards and are often built so poorly they donât last.
I hope the people building these have better quality control.
Oh but of course! What could possibly go wrong?
Chinese manufacturers are quite flexible on pricing and quality - all the stuff is not the cheapest lowest quality stuff. One big problem they have though is that a lot of companies that farm out manufacturing to china do it to lower costs - and so opt for the cheapest things they can, then wonder why what they get back is a pile of crap and sell it on anyway.
If you are willing to pay more then the quality can actually be very good. At lot of things things you think of as good quality are still made in china or at least parts of it are.
I donât worry about Chinese manufacturing capabilities⊠theyâre doing great.
I do worry greatly about the Chinese political system causing preventable (nuclear) accidents through lack of transparency and accountability.
If their reaction to the COVID breakout is symptomatic of systemic issues (I firmly believe it is), then I donât see how anyone can trust the Chinese government to act in the interest of safety.
Those micro-cracks and corrosion issues that caused months of downtime on Belgian and French reactors respectively, that would have caused rolling blackouts in both instances if those winters had been cold? Pretty sure in China thatâd be âcarry on comradeâ.
EDIT: Oh and I forgot about the 3 gorges dam. In case anyone still doubts that the Chinese government does not factor in safety, at all.
Mainland China still struggles with ultra-high precision engineering to this day. They still canât make a turbofan engine that matches the efficiency and power/weight ratio of either Russian or Western designs, despite the fact that many of their âindigenousâ designs are simply reverse-engineered copies. Hell, they only recently started successfully mass-producing good-quality ballpoint pens (which are actually deceptively difficult to manufacture at scale).
Edit: Not to mention, trying to capture and use at least some of Taiwanâs semiconductor foundries is very definitely one of the unstated justifications they have for claiming sovereignty over Taiwan, and for making plans to invade and fully subjugate the island.
Considering that the CCP seems to lean HARD into the Soviet idea of saving face at all costs just to try to look good, I would not be terribly surprised if some sort of Chernobyl- thing happens at some point, because thatâs the exact mentality that led to Chernobyl and the RBMK reactor design becoming a problem in the first place.
Tofu dreg nuclear reactors. I did not have that on my Bingo card.
Ahh, this old chestnut.
Itâs because the people importing the cheap Chinese stuff are importing cheap stuff from China because they want to make as much profit as possible. Chinaâs been the worldâs factory for 50 years now, donât think they havenât figured out how to do things on their own?
FFS almost their whole population was lifted out of poverty and were racing them to have the best chip manufacturing process. They have a space station.
Turns out there is a long-term effect to giving all your factory tech and IP to another country: it becomes institutional knowledge, and eventually they start seeing improvements on their own, and they garner enough expertise to not only strike out on their own but compete.
The capitalists sold your future for yachts. Like, literally.
I mean yes, theyâve stolen a lot of IP. Much of it was not transferred legally. They have a state run industrial and commercial spying program and have for decades - just like Russia.
What OP is actually referring to is the lack of industrial oversight and the Chinese penchant for using substandard material like steel and lying about it to charge a higher price while providing an inferior good.
Look up âtofu dregâ construction.
Itâs not western capitalists getting rich off this, itâs unscrupulous Chinese factory owners and industry magnates.
Itâs also not just an export problem.
And also corruption. Itâs so rampant in China. So even if there are laws or standards, they can be ineffective due to bribery.
Even if it built with the same disregard as the Chernobyl plant, and thereâs âan occasional meltdownâ⊠itâs still actually better than building coal power plant in terms of lives lost per TWh of power generated.
Nuclear is not the future. Investment should be in green energies only, there is no point in repeating the mistakes of the past.
Nuclear is a good middle step to full renewable, itâs not the end goal. Thereâs not enough storage capacity right now for energy usage at night, which is where nuclear can fill the gap until efficient energy storage can be achieved.
I wonder what kind of storage solutions we could have today if we were investing as much into it as into nuclear fusion and fissionâŠ
There is a lot of investment in energy storage solutions. Everyone knows how critically important energy storage is for our climate change present and future, and whoever develops the best and most scalable solution first will make billions of dollars.
Nuclear fission doesnât get that much investment afaik due to overblown radiation fears, while safe cold fusion is the real end goal of energy generation and deserves more investment than it gets now.
Uh I read somewhere that âcold fusionâ was just an error in the simulations/calculations
Got a source? Iâm genuinely curious about that, since I know cold fusion has been long considered the holy grail of energy generation. I just want to hope that it isnât mere science fiction now :(
Mate?
Nuclear takes forever to build, we could pump out a million storage solutions before enough nuclear was built.
Nuclear is the complete opposite of a middle ground.
China built 37 of them in the last 10 years according to the article. It doesnât take forever, it just takes foresight and planning, which most of the Western world lacks beyond the next quarter profits lol.
The baseline capacity nuclear provides can get evolving countries like China out of the fossil fuel phase, which is critically important. I donât know what your problem is with nuclear, itâs been a relatively safe and stable form of energy generation thatâs far better than any fossil fuel.
Edit: and I just read the top comment in the thread that theyâre building a fuckton of coal plants too. Damn it.
What storage solution are you thinking of.
Nuclear is 100% the future. It provides the highest energy density (i.e. it produces the most kwh/square mile), and is also the safest and most environmentally friendly form of power generation we have right now. The downside is the amount of time it takes to bring reactors online. Make no mistake, the time cost is a feature, not a bug. There are phenomenally stringent requirements and QC checks that must be met in order to ensure public and environmental safety. However, this also means that nuclear is not the solution right now. What we should be doing is constructing wind, solar, tidal, etc. plants to transition away from fossil fuels in the immediate future, while simultaneously beginning construction on nuclear plants, so we can eventually transition to those.
I guess i'd rather have them waste their money on low CO2 nuclear than on coal. But in reality, I would like them to not waste their money (and time) and build renewables.
Wish granted
Luke warm take from someone who didnât even think to search the internet for 1 microsecond.
Yesterday there was literally an article about how China was building more coal power plants than anyone else.
Theyâve got a lot of people and need a huge amount of electricity.
Edit: here it is
reuters.com/âŠ/chinas-coal-country-full-steam-aheaâŠ
If built to Chinese standards they will melt down within a decade.
Knowing something behind this, China bought a version of the nuclear power plant that the US built in Georgia. However, instead of only building four plants, theyâve added a few zeros to that number. So they have a Western engineered and construction tested design that they are cloning all over the place, driving down price.
They might fuck up on construction material supply chains, but they are at least implementing the strategy for cheap nuclear power.
Iâm sure this wont backfire in the future.
No you see, itâs backfire to the future.
Nuclear reactors Tofu dreg edition.
The problem with China is that they are okay with bad standards and bad safety. Also corruption and lies are a thing in China.
When Fukushima got the yes to put the water in ocean, China was screaming and fear mongering Even though they put tons of waste in the ocean without any precautions.
I donât trust them to do it right way because they are short-sighted.
ITT: People who forgot China has been a nuclear power for 6 decades and has run nuclear plants fine ever since