America going full sour grapes right now. “We weren’t the first to develop this technology so obviously the technology sucks and is not viable.”
The funny part is that the US was the first to study this technology back in the day, but it was abandoned since thorium has no military application.
The presidental candidate from a few years back, Andrew Yang, even championed thorium reactors in the US, and now here we are.
Andrew Yang also championed hiring a management consulting firm to identify areas of inefficiency in the federal workforce and cut 15–20% of current government workers, assigning KPIs and sunset clauses to all Congressional legislation, and assigning AI life coaches with Oprah’s voice to people in need of marriage counseling.
So, a very mixed bag of ideas. Few of them had a serious implementation behind them. Yang loved to noodle, but failed to explain where the novel technologies and extra-constitutional authorities would come from.
Cant find anything in there thats worse than today tho.
We don’t like it today, why would we have liked it then?
Cool, but I am more excited about the French maintaining a fusion reaction for over twenty minutes.
China’s way ahead there as well https://charmingscience.com/chinas-artificial-sun-sets-nuclear-fusion-record-runs-1006-seconds-at-180-millionf/
Not to worry anyone. I am sure the free market will do much better soon. Investors love to put money in risky projects and not wait for the government to tell them what to do after all /s
I remember reading somewhere that the US started work on Thorium reactors in the 60s and 70s, but abandoned work for reasons. China picked up on that old work.
The reactor is reportedly designed to sustainably generate 2 megawatts of thermal power.
Anyone know how the power density compares to a conventional uranium PWR? In other words, are these machines substantially smaller or larger than a PWR for the same output?
The linked PDF (page 14) has a few diagrams that can help infer vessel size, and the Wikipedia page for TSMR-LF1 also includes a decent floor plan and links to satellite images. Looks like a typical research reactor footprint, which means it may scale to be similar to existing LWRs at higher power. https://esfr-smart.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/S53_1_Paul_Gauthe_Overview_MSR_Gauthe.pdf
For reference, a typical PWR may be ~3000 MWth.
Thanks for the info!
A 2Mw diesel is too big for a regular truck. But not as big as a small house. My prior data center drew 4Mw. My current data center (AI-oriened) draws 30Mw.
