Nuclear Energy

PopularScience

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As terrible as this sounds for the environment I have to agree with you, from an energy security standpoint coal is indispensable, China has massive reserves (170 billion tons) and even in the unlikely scenario that they start dwindling Russia has even larger coal reserves (178 billion tons). And even in the worst case scenario where new deposits do not become viable and coal use remains at the current levels (4-5 billion tones per year) the reserves won't be depleted until the 60's. Until Fast Breeder Reactors, Thorium reactors and reprocessing facilities can be built at scale there is little incentive to fully phase out coal from the energy security standpoint.
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They estimate that undiscovered coal reserves are 10 times the actual reserves.
 

tphuang

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Story here of CNNC developing N36 Zirconium based alloy and CF3 nuclear fuel assemblies for Hualong-1 plant. CNNC has developed CF2 and CF3 nuclear fuel and exported them also to Pakistan. First 6000 N36 tubes were produced in 2018/11. Product has gone up 30x by 2024. Yield from tube billet to finished pip rose from 45% to 75% (close to international standards). America developed zircaloy-4 back in 60s and this was kept in house. Now, N36 has finally allowed China to catch up in this alloy. Additional work was required to produce Zirconium alloy cladding tubes for heavy water reactor (totaling > 4000 units by 2024/6). Higher standard required here due to high diameter to thickness ratio for HWR. By end of 2025, 西部新锆 got contract for a million HWR cladding tubes, !70% of domestic demand for this product. 西部新锆 is now working on next generation N45 alloy. Linglong-1 is validating N36 short tube. 西部新锆 was relying on single supplier for nuclear grade zirconium sponge, but it got more suppliers by 2024. It ahs now exported Zirconium alloy material samples to Argentina, CNNC's first such export.
 

Michael90

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Something something overcapacity lol.



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To be fair, that’s not overcapacity at all. If anything , China is just playing catching up in nuclear production . Afterall Chinas current nuclear production is barely equal to France (a country of 60million) and who has lost much of its industrial power. Even with all the nuclear plants in construction today in China if all of them become operational they will just match the US CURRENT NUCLEAR production . This shows that China still has a long way to go. Since China is a 1.4billion country and with basically the worlds factory, so her production in many ways should be at least twice that of the US at minimum . Maybe when they get to over 3/4 times that of th US then we can indeed start talking about overcapacity like today in solar industry where China has clearly had a problem of overcapacity which the government has been trying hard to tame and cut those excess production , but still haven’t been able to succeed until now(it’s getting better though). So the nuclear sector is clearly far from that.
 

supersnoop

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To be fair, that’s not overcapacity at all. If anything , China is just playing catching up in nuclear production . Afterall Chinas current nuclear production is barely equal to France (a country of 60million) and who has lost much of its industrial power. Even with all the nuclear plants in construction today in China if all of them become operational they will just match the US CURRENT NUCLEAR production . This shows that China still has a long way to go. Since China is a 1.4billion country and with basically the worlds factory, so her production in many ways should be at least twice that of the US at minimum . Maybe when they get to over 3/4 times that of th US then we can indeed start talking about overcapacity like today in solar industry where China has clearly had a problem of overcapacity which the government has been trying hard to tame and cut those excess production , but still haven’t been able to succeed until now(it’s getting better though). So the nuclear sector is clearly far from that.
I believe in terms of GW, China is ahead of US nuclear production
US has more reactors, but they are often dinky (1 or 2 unit plants) and at this point, old
 

Dante80

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As terrible as this sounds for the environment I have to agree with you, from an energy security standpoint coal is indispensable, China has massive reserves (170 billion tons) and even in the unlikely scenario that they start dwindling Russia has even larger coal reserves (178 billion tons). And even in the worst case scenario where new deposits do not become viable and coal use remains at the current levels (4-5 billion tones per year) the reserves won't be depleted until the 60's. Until Fast Breeder Reactors, Thorium reactors and reprocessing facilities can be built at scale there is little incentive to fully phase out coal from the energy security standpoint.
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Not only that, China is actively working on the carbon footprint of its coal for power generation.

Case in point.


Breaking: China just built the world’s first zero-carbon-emission direct coal fuel cell. Read that again. No burning, no steam turbines, no Carnot heat-engine limits holding everything back. Instead Shenzhen University’s Xie Heping and his team take coal, pre-process it and feed it straight into an electrochemical fuel cell. Chemical energy converts directly to electricity across an oxide membrane. Oxygen on the cathode side electrons flow out as clean power. At the anode you get high-purity CO₂ captured on the spot and turned into useful chemicals like syngas or sodium bicarbonate. This isn’t lab fantasy; they’ve been at it since 2018 solved the materials durability and coal-quality headaches and now have a working system with a fresh perspective paper just out in Energy Reviews this month. Potential efficiency smashes traditional plants. Coal stops being a dirty combustion fuel and becomes a structured electrochemical resource. And yeah the usual suspects will still scream “China burns more coal than everyone else combined”. But here’s the truth which they always dodge: China is installing more renewables than the rest of the planet combined over 360 gigawatts of wind and solar in 2024 alone pushing total clean capacity past fossil by 2025. EVs batteries and grids too at a scale no other nation even pretends to match. This breakthrough isn’t clinging to the past, it’s pure CPC realism. You’ve got massive domestic reserves you use them smartly while renewables scale at record speed. Energy security first pragmatism over virtue-signalling lectures from countries that import their problems and shut down baseload then pray the wind blows. The West paints China as the climate villain. Reality? China is the only player engineering its way through the transition with what it actually has on hand redefining fossil carbon in the process. Future of energy might not be setting stuff on fire. It might be extracting power through smarter structure. While others debate China builds. Here is the paper if you are interested in reading the science:
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Generally speaking, as far as power generation is concerned, China is moving everywhere at once. Because they can, and because they have to. Nuclear is a very important pylon on this, but the idea that China is "not doing enough" is ludicrous.
 

RedGreekRevolt

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"SINAP aims for a 2 MWt pilot plant (TMSR-LF1) by 2018, a 10 MWt experimental reactor (TMSR-LF2) by 2025 and a 100 MWt demonstration plant (TMSR-LF3) with full electrometallurgical reprocessing by 2035, followed by 1 a GW demonstration plant."

So, it seems that TMSR-LF4 will be a Giga Watt scale reactor, the article claims thermal but given that since TMSR-LF3 has been more or less confirmed that it will be 100MWe it's more likely than not that it will be 1GWe for TMSR-LF4. Another really exciting thing is the on-site reprocessing. One significant caveat is that the articles themselves are old, from 2016.

From my understanding:
TMSR-LF1 2MWt, no electricity output (0MWe)
TMSR-LF2 60MWt, 10MWe
TMSR-LF3 ?MWt, 100MWe, on-site reprocessing
TMSR-LF4 ?MWt, 1000MWe, on-site reprocessing
 
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