Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
Didn't Schellenburg appeal his life sentence and does a life sentence in China mean all of life?This is getting really interesting now.
This Canadian guy was given a life sentence, I forget now, but it was long sentence. But with the Meng Wanzhou arrest, his sentence was upgraded to a death sentence, which is now upheld.
Co-incidentally, the Meng Wanzhou extradition hearings are about to conclude in Vancouver. If there are appeals, then that could drag out for years. The longest an extradition has dragged out for someone going from Canada to America, was 10 years.
What if Meng Wanzhou is released, and this guy still has the death penalty on his head? What will Trudeau do? Sing Kumbaya?
What happens to a country like lithuania? does that mean that they can't do business with China? If there wasn't much trade and given that Lithuania has been pretty sketchy lately, maybe it's time for the iron fist to come out; maybe help russians burn a few of their villages. (sarcasm, don't sue me)
Could China’s molten salt nuclear reactor be a clean, safe source of power?
By STEPHEN CHEN | The South China Morning Post, 19 July 2021
A team of government researchers in China have unveiled the design for a commercial nuclear reactor that is expected to be the first in the world that does not need water for cooling, allowing the systems to be built in remote desert regions to provide power for more densely populated areas.
The molten salt reactor, which is powered by liquid thorium rather than uranium, should also be safer than traditional ones because in the event of a leak, the molten thorium would cool and solidify quickly, dispersing less radiation into the environment.
Construction work on the first commercial reactor should be completed by 2030 and the government plans to build several in the deserts and plains of central and western China.
China may also consider building these reactors for some countries that have signed up to the Belt and Road Initiative because, unlike uranium, thorium cannot be used to make nuclear weapons.
“Small-scale reactors have significant advantages in terms of efficiency, flexibility and economy. They can play a key role in the future transition to clean energy. It is expected that small-scale reactors will be widely deployed in the next few years,” Professor Yan Rui and colleagues at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics wrote in a paper published in the Chinese journal Nuclear Techniques last week.
“A molten salt reactor has the advantage of being multipurpose, small in size and highly flexible. It is as easy to design as a small-scale reactor. In recent years, the potential of small-scale molten salt reactors has caught international attention.”
An important drive for the molten salt reactor programme came from President Xi Jinping’s announcement last year that China would become carbon neutral by 2060, according to scientists involved in the project.
According to the official plan, reactors in the sparsely populated west of the country will provide a clean, stable electricity supply to the densely populated east in combination with wind and solar power plants.
The technology could also provide a new energy source for Chinese warships such as aircraft carriers and submarines.
The concept of a reactor powered by liquid salt rather than solid fuel rods has been around since the 1940s, and in the following decade the United States started an experimental programme to build a bomber fuelled by the technology.
In the 1960s the US built a facility to test the technology’s capacity to generate electricity, while countries such as France, the former Soviet Union and Japan also launched similar programmes.
The idea was attractive because the liquid fuel acts as its own coolant, removing the need for water, while thorium’s lower levels of radioactivity meant there is less risk of nuclear proliferation.
These early projects all failed because they could not solve problems such as pipes cracking too easily because they had become corroded by the radioactive molten salt.
But scientists learned a lot from these experiments and in recent years researchers in the field have received steady support from the Chinese government.
In 2011, Beijing approved the construction of the prototype Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR), in Wuwei, a desert city in Gansu province.
Meanwhile, teams of researchers from across the country were mobilised to solve the technical problems that scuppered previous attempts, such as the development of an alloy that can withstand the radiation from thorium salt at temperatures of nearly 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832F).
Although the project fell behind schedule last year, in part due to the pandemic, construction work on the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) is due to finish next month and a test run of equipment could start as early as September.
Although the prototype is only capable of generating two megawatts, if it succeeds it will be the first time the theory has been brought to life.
The commercial reactor designed by Yan and his colleagues could generate up to 100MW, less than a uranium reactor but still enough to power a modern residential area with 100,000 inhabitants.
Though a power plant needs other equipment such as steam turbines, the reactor itself will only be 3 metres (10 feet) tall and 2.5 metres wide, about the size of a bathroom.
It works by allowing the thorium to flow through the reactor, participating in a nuclear chain reaction and transferring the heat to a steam generator outside before returning to the reactor for another cycle.
It is safer than traditional nuclear technology because in the event of an accident the molten salt will fall into an underground container.
“Due to its high melting point … the molten salt will quickly cool and solidify without the direct release of solid and liquid effluents, thus preventing the further diffusion of radioactivity into the environment,” the team wrote.
Another part of the appeal for China is that it has some of the world’s largest reserves of thorium, a silvery metal with weak radioactivity. By some calculations it has enough to meet the country’s energy needs for at least 20,000 years.
In contrast, China has some of the lowest uranium reserves of any nuclear-capable country and even though work on seven or eight new nuclear plants is due to begin within the next few years, there is growing concern in Beijing that shortages could affect the country’s energy security.
Actually, the original sentence was 15 years, later upgraded to death.
The Canadian government is actually dumber than the American government, when it comes to a China policy.
A Canadian is going to be executed by the Chinese government, when he only had a 15 year sentence.
The Canadian government, it is their duty to intervene in some way to save his drug dealing life. If the sentence went from 15 years to death, then maybe it can go back to 15 years.
The drug dealing, I think the Canadian was trying to smuggle it into Australia. Seemed to me the deal was make the drugs in China, then the Canadian exports it to Australia.
That is probably why got 15 years in the first place and not death.
I thought they might have changed it to a suspended death sentence.Actually, the original sentence was 15 years, later upgraded to death.
The Canadian government is actually dumber than the American government, when it comes to a China policy.
A Canadian is going to be executed by the Chinese government, when he only had a 15 year sentence.
The Canadian government, it is their duty to intervene in some way to save his drug dealing life. If the sentence went from 15 years to death, then maybe it can go back to 15 years.
The drug dealing, I think the Canadian was trying to smuggle it into Australia. Seemed to me the deal was make the drugs in China, then the Canadian exports it to Australia.
That is probably why got 15 years in the first place and not death.
Under current situation, I actually will prefer China to just close eyes if this Canadian guy is simply trying to procure for complete export to the former Aborigines Land. First it's for export, generating revenue. Then it's not China's concern to deal with such export to Oz, let that country handle its own issue.... let Oz take care the Canadian guy, why should China be the bad buy in this case??? China simply closes its eyes, look at other direction, just not be so diligent... provided there's nothing else untold.Actually, the original sentence was 15 years, later upgraded to death.
The Canadian government is actually dumber than the American government, when it comes to a China policy.
A Canadian is going to be executed by the Chinese government, when he only had a 15 year sentence.
The Canadian government, it is their duty to intervene in some way to save his drug dealing life. If the sentence went from 15 years to death, then maybe it can go back to 15 years.
The drug dealing, I think the Canadian was trying to smuggle it into Australia. Seemed to me the deal was make the drugs in China, then the Canadian exports it to Australia.
That is probably why got 15 years in the first place and not death.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
You forget a few factors. Firstly, the Canadian wasn’t working alone. He was the mastermind and got dumb poor Chinese criminals to commit capital offences for his own personal financial gain. You think he was the only one arrested or that China would have made exceptions for his Chinese employees? This guy almost certainly directly caused the deaths of multiple Chinese people by getting them into the drugs trade. Don’t know for sure because the western MSM most certainly isn’t going to report on anything that shows China as being fair and just, and don’t care enough about the case to search Chinese sources for details.
Secondly, there was no way Chinese authorities could have known if his intention was only to export it Australia when they busted his little operation. And even that was only based on what this Canadian confessed. Who’s to know if that is the truth or just what he thought would get him the shortest sentence.
Lastly, he is due to die primarily because he himself is an idiot. He already had a lucky break with 15 years to start with, to appeal was unwise, to appeal in the middle of the Meng case was downright moronic.
If he appealed on his own, he was an idiot in thinking that was a good time to do it or that he could somehow attach his case to any deal the Canadian government might cut with China; if he did it after being promoted by Canadian officials than that is clear foreign political interference in Chinese domestic law enforcement so of course China was going to push back and push back hard.
But even though his case is getting covered in the western MSM, there is zero concerted Western governmental pressure to try to get him back or to have his sentence eased. That’s how you know he is a simple criminal, in contrast to all the political capital expanded on the two Michael’s, who are clearly spies that China had been watching and decided to bring in after the Meng case.
All the sudden the MSM (I know its onlt TRT, but I count them as MSM) is concerned with all the deaths in Afghanistan? Gee.