China is set to fire up the first molten salt thorium reactor to operate in half a century.

[NNadir]

The construction began in 2018 and was scheduled to complete in 2024, but the construction was accelerated and it's ready two years earlier than planned.

Chinese molten-salt reactor cleared for start up

An excerpt of the article:

The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) - part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) - has been given approval by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment to commission an experimental thorium-powered molten-salt reactor, construction of which started in Wuwei city, Gansu province, in September 2018.

In January 2011, CAS launched a CNY3 billion (USD444 million) R&D programme on liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs), known there as the thorium-breeding molten-salt reactor (Th-MSR or TMSR), and claimed to have the world's largest national effort on it, hoping to obtain full intellectual property rights on the technology. This is also known as the fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor (FHR). The TMSR Centre at SINAP at Jiading, Shanghai, is responsible.

Construction of the 2 MWt TMSR-LF1 reactor began in September 2018 and was reportedly completed in August 2021. The prototype was scheduled to be completed in 2024, but work was accelerated.

"According to the relevant provisions of the Nuclear Safety Law of the People's Republic of China and the Regulations of the People's Republic of China on the Safety Supervision and Administration of Civilian Nuclear Facilities, our bureau has conducted a technical review of the application documents you submitted, and believes that your 2 MWt liquid fuel thorium-based molten salt experimental reactor commissioning plan (Version V1.3) is acceptable and is hereby approved," the Ministry of Ecology and Environment told SINAP on 2 August.

It added: "During the commissioning process of your 2 MWt liquid fuel thorium-based molten salt experimental reactor, you should strictly implement this plan to ensure the effectiveness of the implementation of the plan and ensure the safety and quality of debugging. If any major abnormality occurs during the commissioning process, it should be reported to our bureau and the Northwest Nuclear and Radiation Safety Supervision Station in time..."

The last MSR to operate operated at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1964 to 1969. It was an experimental reactor and was not designed to produce power. The program was cancelled by the US in favor of expanding the PWR. The PWR has been a remarkable device, and has saved many lives that would have otherwise been lost to air pollution, but it's an inflexible device capable only of producing electricity.

This said, personally, I've lost some enthusiasm for the FLIBE system over the years; I think better options exist.

One interesting parameter on this new version is the highly isotopically purified Li-7 isotope to minimize tritium production. This is probably wasteful as the world could certainly use more tritium.

The most advanced molten salt utilizing reactor systems close to commercialization in the US are not true MSR's in which the fuel is dissolved in the molten salt. The Kairos reactor is a hybrid Triso reactor with a molten salt coolant, and the Terrapower reactor is a liquid sodium breeder with a molten salt thermal reserve.

[pscot]

1. We're still dealing with the mess

from molten salt reactors at Hanford 60 years and billions of dollars later. The slow disaster at Hanford is a large component of the fear and loathing people feel toward nuclear power plants. Has China devised a reactor that avoids the issues created at Hanford? I'm not opposed to nuclear power generation. I was, but I've come to believe nukes are the only way forward in our new climate reality. But the idea of liquid sodium reactors still seems like a mistake we don't want to repeat.

[NNadir]

2. We're all dealing with the mess of climate change, but there are...

...certainly people who raise comparative trivialities over serious matters.

Generally, in my experience, such people are very badly informed and don't know very much.

I have personally toured ORNL when I dropped my son off there for his undergraduate internship at the neutron spallation facility. It's in Tennessee not Washington State.

The MSRE operated at ORNL .

I personally regard antinukes as the precise equivalents of antivax types. They elevate specious fear and ignorance to obstruct the saving of human lives. It's all rather like complaining about the side effects of the Moderna vaccine, etc.

Nuclear energy saves lives.

It never ceases to amaze me that 18,000 people will die today from air pollution and there are still people insipidly whining about Hanford. Has Hanford killed someone recently? As many people as will die in the next 5 minutes from dangerous fossil fuel waste?

The highest life expectancy in the Pacific Nothwest is in the Portland area, down river from Hanford. Of course, the Columbia River, like many, even most, of the world's major river systems is threatened by climate change, not that radiation paranoids give a rat's ass.

They don't care how many people die as long as no one ever, even in their fevered imaginations ever dies from radiation.

It's ethically appalling.

[StevieM]

3. I remember that you are not a molten salt kind of guy.

Regardless, it is still another nuclear plant opening up, which will take the place of fossil fuels. And it is one more step in the direction of looking toward nuclear power as the key to combating climate change.

[NNadir]

4. I think molten salts have a real value, particularly in used fuel recycling.

I also value them as coolants, heat transfer agents, and to overcome the pernicious economic issues raised by unreliable but highly subsidized and environmentally odious so called "renewable energy," as short term thermal "capacitors."

To return to the chemistry of recovering valuable and essential components of used nuclear fuels, I am particularly intrigued by organic salts, the so called widely studied "ionic liquids."

The particular LTMSR as designed under the incomparable nuclear engineer Alvin Weinberg was innovative and brilliant in its conception but it was only one permutation of possible systems of this type. It relies on beryllium, and while you are correct that even so it is better than any dangerous fossil fuel plant, it is not ideal. Better options clearly exist.

To be clear, I'm a fast neutron spectrum kind of guy. Flibe reactors don't cut it. To phase out and eliminate energy related mining, we need short doubling times.

I do think it behooves us to consider catching up with China. They will now have two high temperature reactors operating. My impression is that they will rapidly advance in using this heat to make chemical fuels. They are piloting the SI thermochemical cycle, and they already have industrial plants for DME synthesis, albeit currently driven by coal.

We are lagging dangerously behind.