American scientists pioneered molten salt reactor technology – including building a small test reactor in the 1960s – but the project was shelved in favour of uranium-based systems. “The US left its research publicly available, waiting for the right successor,” Xu was quoted as saying. “We were that successor.”
Absolute banger
China’s state-owned shipbuilding industry has also unveiled a design for thorium-powered container ships that could potentially achieve emission-free maritime transport.
They’ll definitely go to war with China to stop this
Chinese firms are also building and deploying a few different ammonia fueled vessels - which can be produced from renewables anywhere you have a plant
Does that work by combustion? Wouldn’t it emit tons of NOx?
The dual fuel one that is already around (achieved some milestone this year from memory) has an addictive or catalytic converter
(Dual fuel because ammonia combusts poorly, but I’m pretty sure there’s a couple fuel cell ammonia prototype ships in development)
China would win.
Good, let China destroy the petulant child nation they built.
After construction of the experimental reactor started in 2018, most of the scientists involved in the project abandoned their holidays – they worked day and night, and some stayed on site for more than 300 days in a year.
That’s not ideal
Not that I’d ever support throwing your work-life balance into the meatgrinder like that, but if I had a job trying to create one of the best potential options for long-term power production while the world was setting itself on fire from fossil fuels I might consider 50 hour work weeks for a bit too.
Yep. I’d do it in a heartbeat. These folks are heroes.
create one of the best potential options for long-term power production
I disagree about this (you don’t solve the substantive short and medium term problems of nuclear) but even if it was a wonder technology that was cheaper, faster to deploy and simpler than anything else, having a 30 year timeframe to mass commercial roll out means it won’t really make a difference
That said, if anyone could make a cheap thorium SMR that could be mass produced, it’ll be China
My instinct is, “please don’t allow sleep deprived people to operate an experimental nuclear reactor, even if they want to.”
(or build one)
that’s how you get the eldrich, we built it but we don’t understand it reactors out of science fiction
Seems like might be a case of them really wanting to see it work. Most jobs don’t really have any meaning beyond a paycheck, but this is a rare case of work being genuinely meaningful and interesting.
Presenteeism is a sickness and if I were Chinese Stalin, I’d be sending them home. It burns out people in academia very quick and it’s not like Chinese has a lack of young graduates to put on projects like these
I certainly agree that working this hard is not healthy as a rule.
Well meaningful is a bit of an understatement.
Totally sounds like by choice by the wording
Yes, honestly there is a big difference between being forced to work long hours by a corporation and choosing to work long hours because you are passionate about something, or in a “flow state,” or you feel like you have a real stake in the outcome of the project. I am sure during the Space Race there were scientists on both sides pulling insane hours, driven largely by national patriotic pride, which might also be at play here. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with workers working for long hours as long as 1) it is voluntary, 2) it is safe both physically and mentally, and 3) it is temporary, for only a year or a few years, with an enforced return to a 40-hour work week at some cutoff point.
You forgot to mention job security
Imagine working super hard, burning out for a little bit, then getting fired for low performance
burning out for a little bit
There’s no such thing as “burning out for a little bit” though. Burn out takes about 4 years to recover from.
It’s stupid but this is the norm around the world. At my plant, which is not a nuclear plant, most of the engineers and workers can’t take a leave and are always “on call” (even though their contract is not an on call contract) until they can get a break once in around 1.5 years because we are technically understaffed. And this isn’t even a meaningful plant, if it goes down nothing really happens.
I did see something about how a lot of the hydro plants in the US are becoming woeful understaffed because there is no appetite to hire staff and very few people have the appropriate training anyway
They can definitely hire staff, especially in the US of all places there is no shortage of promising engineers. Very few people get hired to these kinds of plants fully trained, most pick up 90% of their skills on the job. It’s just a long process. The real reason, at least for our plant (a plant that has already returned all its investment dividends tenfold, passed its calculated lifespan, and is now just a money printing machine), is that there are chiefly 2 ways (3 in our country, but this isn’t about that) that the plant becomes more economical to keep running: process improvements or reduction of labour costs. The sacrifice first comes for maintenance staff, overworking them, then for all other disciplines depending on whats allowed to be gutted by law. Engineers are actually making out in a relatively “favourable” position, since they can directly contribute to process improvements - the company has fewer incentives to let them go. This situation ends in there being a settled number of so-and-so engineers, which is “understaffed” according to your and mine definitions, but is the perfect amount for the line-go-up number-crunchers.
Guessing you’re Russian based on the handle but this was also a thing in the Soviet union even in the 30s, there were cases of people wanting to work too much that their boss had to force them to take time off. It just lowers your productivity in the long run
Trust me our guys aren’t raring to work at all. Most of them aren’t citizens and their residency status and their family’s lifestyle depend on them being able to hold this job, so they feel obligated to do this. Just classic capitalism things. Also, the plant is not in Russia.
Its actually pretty common in China for employers to provide housing accomodations to their employees. So my guess is they had some sort of apartment complex on site that people were using. They werent like sleeping in their offices.
It’s not a very large complex - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1
The site is about an hour and a half away from the nearest urbanised area
Being an hour and a half away actually makes it make even more sense theyd sleep there to avoid a commute.
My guess is the top right building is housing. You have 2 gate houses, one just to the main building and one to that side building. Would make sense if researchers were living in that side building that there would be visitors or maybe even family living with them there that they would want the extra gate for. Since they wouldnt be allowed inside the main building.
This is incredible news! If they can reliably inject fuel mid-operation, then that solves a huge barrier for molten salt reactors.
Oh they’re just doing that to make life better, more sustainable, or cheaper, or something else, but at what cost, under the despotic regime.
Thor is Chinese now
