Comment by defrost
3 months ago
From the latest Information Technology and Innovation Foundation report (June 17, 2024)
Though China built upon a foreign base of technology, it has become the world’s leading proponent of nuclear energy. Chinese firms are well ahead of their Western peers, supported by a whole-of-government strategy that provides extensive financing and systemic coordination.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
* China intends to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction and the average construction timeline for each reactor about seven years, far faster than for most other nations.
* China has commenced operation of the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor, for which China asserts it developed some 90 percent of the technology.
* China is leading in the development and launch of cost-competitive small modular reactors (SMRs). Overall, analysts assess that China likely stands 10 to 15 years ahead of the United States in its ability to deploy fourth-generation nuclear reactors at scale.
* China’s innovation strengths in nuclear power pertain especially to organizational, systemic, and incremental innovation. Many fourth-generation nuclear technologies have been known for years, but China’s state-backed approach excels at fielding them.
* Analysts assess that America and China are likely at par when it comes to efforts to develop nuclear fusion technologies, but warn that China’s demonstrated ability to deploy fission reactors at scale gives it an advantage for when fusion comes online.
* Looking narrowly at scientific publications on nuclear energy, China ranks first in the H-index, a commonly used metric measuring the scholarly impact of journal publications.
* From 2008 to 2023, China’s share of all nuclear patents increased from 1.3 percent to 13.4 percent, and the country leads in the number of nuclear fusion patent applications.
Full report (PDF): https://www2.itif.org/2024-chinese-nuclear-innovation.pdf
In the press: US falling far behind China in nuclear power, report says https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/6/17/us-falling-far-b...
What's a fourth-generation nuclear reactor and what makes it harder to build?
From Wikipedia [1]:
> The GEN IV Forum reframes the reactor safety paradigm, from accepting that nuclear accidents can occur and should be mastered, to eliminating the physical possibility of an accident. Active and passive safety systems would be at least as effective as those of Generation III systems and render the most severe accidents physically impossible.
> Relative to Gen II-III, advantages of Gen IV reactors include:
> * Nuclear waste that remains radioactive for a few centuries instead of millennia
> * 100–300x energy yield from the same amount of nuclear fuel
> * Broader range of fuels, including unencapsulated raw fuels (non-pebble MSR, LFTR).
> * Potential to burn existing nuclear waste and produce electricity: a closed fuel cycle.
> * Improved safety via features such as ambient pressure operation, automatic passive reactor shutdown, and alternate coolants.
Gen IV reactors represent six different technology paths that represent the future of the nuclear industry.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
Its basically just a catch all term that basically means, everything that isn't some form of a pressurized water reactor.
Seems like China also has rather large uranium reserves, unlike many other countries, so it makes a lot of sense for them to go nuclear.
Uranium 235 as a fissile fuel is a very small percentage of the total uranium available (0.720% from the wiki).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium
In order to make reactor fuel, this percentage must be increased, via conversion of the metal to uranium hexafloride gas, which is purified via gas centrifuges.
As opposed to this, thorium does not require difficult purification steps, but it does require a neutron source to start a reaction that converts a small portion of it to uranium 233.
From the uranium 235 purification perspective, uranium is an awkward fuel for commercial use.
I think it's a shame that we don't breed more fuel. The majority of mined Uranium 238 can be made fissile in a breeder reactor (fast neutrons), just like with Thorium. It does require reprocessing, which is a taboo topic due to proliferation concerns.
Plutonium doesn't build up in a breeder reactor, the fast neutrons split it. Our existing light water reactors have a build up of plutonium over time. I guess that's desirable when your objective is bombs.
A lot of the long lived radioisotopes get broken down in a breeder reactor, so the waste degrades to safe levels much quicker (a few hundred years).
The Gates backed reactor (Terrapower) in Wyoming is using fast neutrons.
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> In order to make reactor fuel, this percentage must be increased, via conversion of the metal to uranium hexafloride gas, which is purified via gas centrifuges.
Unless you're using CANDU reactors which can use unenriched uranium (the trade-off is you need heavy water (deuterium, D2O) as a moderator, and producing it is an up-front cost).
Tbf importing uranium is fairly easy and relatively cheap due to the high energy density.
Importing it from where? Russia? Ukraine? China? Australia & Canada are probably viable options for Western nations, but that introduces more dependencies.
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Yeah, and it's also a great way to reduce your energy dependency on certain non-friendly countries... oh wait: https://apnews.com/article/germany-france-russia-nuclear-pow...
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As noted in peer comment uranium is energy dense and relatively little is required.
Also, by global known deposit standards the ore density and ease of mining in parts of Canada, Africa, Australia, Kazakhstan (!!! 43 percent of global uranium production in 2022) dwarf those in most other parts of the world.
For interest, re: Uranium in China, the initial quote here comes from
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
It’s worth noting that Uranium mining uses the same nasty liquid-liquid extraction process used for rare earth metals. That’s why the mountainous locations in China suck - they have to move a lot of rock. A few countries dominate the industry because the vast majority of the world wants nothing to do with the environmental consequences of the toxic corrosive waste.
If push came to shove, many more countries would be able to spin up Uranium mining to replace any sources that fall victim to geopolitics. Since it doesn’t go bad, a relatively small stockpile goes a long way while the industry adjusts.
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