Chinese Economics Thread
- Thread starter Norfolk
- Start date
I was referring to China's commercial nuclear industry, which I still think is slightly leading the world. However, I think you're right about the nuclear industry in general. Russia is especially advanced in 4th gen fast neutron reactors, miniature reactors and obscure tech like radioisotope generators (nuke batteries). China has a chance of leading the field in Thorium powered reactors though. They currently have two 2MW Thorium research reactors using molten fluoride coolant. The goal is to commercialize 1000MW+ sized Thorium breeder reactors from the mid-late 2030s.
China's CFR-600 fast neutron reactor has some Russian input. I think they are making a mistake though using sodium coolant and should have gone the lead-bismuth route like the BREST-300/1200. In any case, I think China should go the closed-cycle liquid fluoride thorium reactor route. It burns up more of the nuclear fuel, including most of the actinides, is inherently safer than uranium/plutonium breeder reactors, and is terrorist/war proof because it operates at near atmospheric pressure levels, while being meltdown proof vs. requiring active/passive safety measures.
A little off topic..... are they the same sort of thing that once powered heart pacemakers? If so can they also be used to power electric vechiles?
Australians laughing all the way to the bank lol
1. That is not exactly the way I look at it, although I do agree with what you are saying. In my view, today is still better than the old days.
2. It is true that the lame-stream media has a severe anti-China bias and most article reflect this negative view. One article that bashes China would be repeated 10x times.
Here, I believe there is a fundamental difference between cultures of the west and of the east.
The American Liberal media is essentially using a spam strategy, that they will spam the news waves, that way they drown out all facts they do not like, and without facts, no critical thinking can be done.
The Chinese still believe in truth. However, the Chinese never believed that everyone had the same capacity, hence truth was always there, but not necessarily widely broadcast. Getting truth to the masses was never a big priority.
Seems to me the Chinese say a few things in the press, and that is enough truth or facts for today. The Americans on the other hand, never stop with the 24/7 news cycles, and fake news often the norm for many hours during the 24/7 news cycles.
I do not think the Chinese will ever change their position on this.
This is a contest between truth and spam.
Not exactly.
Iron ore only benefits that part of their economy in Australia, the mines there. Iron ore production Australia is the undisputed world leader, because they had China as their client.
Stuff like aluminum and copper, that comes from everyone else.
The rumour I read somewhere is that China was stockpiling these base metals. Due to the Trump restrictions on Huawei, which lead to Chinese firms stockpiling semiconductor chips, now it does seem that China is stockpiling base metals too, as I think I read last week that China stocks of copper were really high.
That is the fog of trade war.
One country, China, is trying to position itself on the battlefield to win. What the other countries are doing, that is hard to figure out.
Why did Australia go after China? So that instead of buying Australian coal, China can go buy American coal?
Yup, similar technology. The Russians have a whole family of nuclear batteries that generate power via the heat decay of isotopes. These are generally under 100watts power but there are some that were scaled up into the kilowatt range. I am not sure if those pacemakers used the same principle because of their size though but I do know they used both plutonium and polonium, which is absolutely nuts! They have by far the most experience with this type of nuclear research which is very useful for deep space missions out of range of usable solar power. They even had kilowatt range nuclear batteries powering arctic radar installations and space radars. It works on a very basic principle where a thermocouple is used to generate electricity from heat similar to how a thermocouple in a gas powered boiler uses a thermocouple to regulate gas flow.
WTF are you talking about?
And they mostly pray for willing the lottery. Fuck mystical dudes and their fairy tales!
I just realized I didn't actually comment about nuclear batteries for electric vehicles. Definitely not plausible. These radioisotope generators all use various radioactive isotopes that would spread radioactive contamination in any serious accident and would be a nightmare recycling at their end of life. It's expensive to make and expensive to dispose of. Completely impractical technically as well as politically.