China Discovers 60,000-Year Supply of Thorium

Last week, the media reported that China had discovered 1 million tons of thorium – enough of the nuclear fuel to power the country for 60,000 years. How big is this news really? Let’s take a look.

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#science #sciencenews #china #nuclear

[danielbuckman]

I think that with the technological breakthroughs we've had since the 1960s it's highly probable they can build dependable molten salt reactors. The plausibility of a molten salt reactor is much higher than the possibility of a fusion reactor. If they pull this off I will be impressed.

[williamlloyd]

Thorium based energy is a worthy goal for China that could benefit the entire world. Hope it’s successful

[adeemuff]

10-ish years ago, a Russian nuclear physicist Igor Ostretsov gave multiple interviews about thorium and its potential in nuclear energy.
He deplored the existence of lobbyists for uranium-only who prevented research of thorium capabilities.
Also, according to him, thorium can't be weaponized, so the interest from state military is low.

[stevechance]

"Thorium is bad" said every Uranium mine owner. Then they said, "Let's have our lobbyist payoff some Congressmen to block Thorium in the US".

[dirgsuite]

Chinese scientists have completed a major breakthrough in clean energy by reloading fresh fuel into a working thorium molten salt reactor.They did this while the reactor continued running, marking a significant step forward in the global push to use thorium as a safer and more abundant alternative to uranium in nuclear power.The milestone was revealed at a closed-door meeting on April 8 at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), where project chief scientist Xu Hongjie shared the news with colleagues.

[mitrabuddhi]

Dear Sabine,

I recently read your book existencial physics and found it incredibly insightful. In response to your interview with Roger Penrose and the content you shared in your book, I wanted to address a specific point regarding Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) theory. You mentioned that "the universe is cyclic, going from expansion to contraction and into a new Big Bang infinitely often". However, it's important to clarify that in Penrose's CCC theory, there is no actual contraction phase. Instead, the expansion of one eon seamlessly transitions into the Big Bang of the next eon.

This subtle distinction is crucial for understanding the cyclical nature of the universe as proposed by Penrose. It challenges the traditional oscillating universe model where cycles of expansion and contraction alternate. The CCC theory offers a unique perspective on cosmic evolution, emphasizing continuity rather than periodic collapse and rebirth.

Thank you for your contributions to these fascinating discussions. Your work continues to inspire deeper exploration into the mysteries of the cosmos and consciousness.

Best regards,
Mostafa

[caldodge]

The amount of usable Thorium available is around 300 times as great as the Uranium isotope used for nuclear power

[RecoveringTheorist]

Please let at least one thorium reactor be called "Oakenshield."

[MrKittyGyat]

The thorium research was abruptly ended in the US because of politics and stupidity. Not because there were difficulties in achieving an engineering solution for it.

[briannewman]

Molten salt has been successfully used in metal heat treatment for many decades.
Transferring knowledge and technology from the metal heat treatment industry to the power generation industry could be useful rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

[Rohan]

There is an interesting alternative to molten salt. A company in Sweden called Blykalla is currently building a test reactor with lead as the coolent. Similar to salt it has a high boiling point, but is less corrosive than salt.
Blykalla translates roughly to lead coolant.

[SkypowerwithKarl]

Thorium is all over the place. The problem is, energy companies don’t want it to happen because it’ll greatly reduce their profits. The uranium industry killed thorium reactors back in the 70’s and right now energy companies are lobbying to fund the fusion folly because they know that it’ll always be 20 years away. If they had spent 1/4 of the fusion money on metallurgy for molten salt reactors, right now we would be living in the time plentiful cheap and safe energy.

[calvinminer]

It's wild how much China keeps going from strength to strength, making a mockery of the right-wing rabidly anti CCP commentators, many of whom are Silicon Valley VCs like Clamath, who are constantly pronouncing the "collapse" of the Chinese economy, govt, and/or society. Also funny they were boosting the far-right Modi govt in India as a good "capitalist" alternative to China's "communism", and the Modi govt just announced they're giving up industrialization that can compete with China, the big $10 Billion program was a straight failure.

Meanwhile, Trump's assault on Chinese people and free speech is beginning a brain-drain of Chinese scientists and students back to China, where they'll continue accelerating Chinese development beating the USA.

[grahamsmith]

They can also build a bunch Thorium-229m clocks and test whether any or all of the fundamental constants are not constant at all.

[KNIGHT-F]

China just keeps winning!!!
Good job China!

[KrystianKarbowski-khpd]

Both thorium and uranium can use almost all fuel this is called breeding. So slight mistake. In thorium breeders you transmutate it to U233 in uranium breeders you get Pu239
And both need to start U235
Thorium might be slithly more efficient than U in breading because it has better neutron absorbtion in thermal spectrum while U238 works better with fast neutrons that are less efficient splitting U235.

[niklace]

1:30 this is wrong. This is the fact that thorium must be used in fast breeder reactors that makes it efficient. But you can build fast breeder reactors with uranium too

[seancollins]

Silicone carbide sintered piping, easy to produce at scale, adequately corrosion and temperature resistant. We have this material now. We can also use magnetic driven pumps with no motor parts in the salt.

[Toe_Merchant]

Saying a large deposit of Thorium is an infinite source of energy, is like saying sunlight in the Sahara is an infinite source of energy. I mean I guess that's correct technically, but there are obvious limits in harvesting that energy.

[blinkingmanchannel]

Thanks, as always!♥️

Lately, I have started thinking in terms of (a) energy for transportation... and (b) secondarily for everything else. (I'll skip the history survey.)

I'm following your channel (with lots of side reading, of course) and I keep thinking we can do some housekeeping to sort our modern knowledge silos a bit. One video ago, you discussed the overlap of chemistry, physics and math...(?) and I keep thinking it's (1) food, shelter and clothing, (2) transportation/logistics, (3) electrons instead of combustion, and (4) protein engineering... We are close. (Are we close? I hope we're close!)

If we can avoid blowing things up for another generation, I think we might solve basic scarcity. We'll still need to deal with how to do universal education that can deliver all this info, but ... I feel like we really need to focus now, to get through the eye of this needle in front of us...! 🫣

Keep going please. I'm noticing that you are one of the main lenses through which I'm looking when I really want to see.