A Place to Stand

The Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that it will finance the development of a programme to develop a Thorium Fuelled Molten Salt Reactor (TFMSR). This is first of four “strategic leader in science and technology projects” that the Chinese Academy of Science will be supporting.

The Head of the Chinese TFMSR programme is Dr Jiang Mianheng, Graduate of Drexel University, with a PhD in electrical engineering. His father Jiang Zemin, was the former President of the People's Republic of China from 1993 to 2003. This gives an indication of the importance .....

   Indeed they are not playing around. Thorium is 4 times more common on Earth than uranium, though there is no shortage of either. Molten salt reactors are safer, if that is a consideration. The molten salts considered for MSRs are chemically stable. They do not react rapidly with moisture or air. Their chemical inertness precludes accidents that are due to chemical interaction. There is no fire hazard or explosion hazard. They are also compatible and are non-corrosive with respect to suitable structural materials. The experience with the MSRE has shown that high-nickel alloys, combined with adequate oxidation potential balancing of the salt, can result in low corrosion of the structural materials.

The molten salts considered for the MSR are stable to high temperatures at low pressures. This feature allows for high efficiency with no extreme safety demands from the structure materials. Being a liquid system at low-pressure eliminates the storage of potential energy or other risk of an energetic burst or explosion.
   The Russsian attitude is equally sane

The use of nuclear energy is vital for the future development of the world economy, the head of Russia's state nuclear agency said Monday in an impassioned defence of atomic power.


Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Rosatom, described nuclear energy as a "locomotive" of development

and certainly true as our present economic meltdown proves.

So what is the western attitude. Well we actually had one in the 1960s which proved itself as designed

The broadest and perhaps most important conclusion from the MSRE experience was that a molten salt fueled reactor concept was viable. It ran for considerable periods of time, yielding valuable information, and maintenance was accomplished safely and without excessive delay

So obviously it was closed down , further development suppressed and 50 years later the Chinese are going to overtake us. And some people wonder why we are in recession.


So what is the British attitude. Funny you should ask

...although the Coalition Government continues to pour subsidies worth many millions (should be 10s of billions) of pounds into wind power, which, as Live revealed earlier this year, produces at best intermittent energy with potential environmental costs, it has so far decided to do nothing about thorium except to maintain a ‘watching brief’.
The reason is that a review last year by the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, concluded that thorium research shouldn’t be a priority, as ‘development of the appropriate technology would appear to be some way into the future’.

That could be described as a depressingly circular argument: if the scientists aren’t funded to pursue the research and development, the technology will indeed remain in the future. Meanwhile, the reasons for Sir John’s pessimistic assessment seem baffling.

In a letter to Cywinski, he admitted the science behind thorium reactors was ‘well based’, and said the main reason he couldn’t recommend government support was because there had never been research on how to reprocess thorium fuel ‘on an industrial scale’.

  We shouldn't do any research purely because we haven't done ant research. Beddington clearly knows what lies he has to tell to keep his job as "Government Chief Science Advisor". and is willing to tell them. Of course such reactors won't always remain in the future. Soon they will be in China.The responsibility for the economic, scientific and cultural failure of Britain and the western countries generally lies entirely with the treasonous politicians, bureaucrats, Luddite activists and the corrupt MSM "reporters" who propagandise for them and censor everybody else..
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  And as further proof that the "environmentalists" scare stories have nothing whatsoever to do with real safety issues see these quotes that show the agenda is entirely Luddite unconcerned about human survival.. Compare and contrast the zero deaths at Fukushima and 56 in Chernobyl with the 33 from the e coli outbreak that came from a German organic farm. If their hysteria were sincere or even not wholly dishonest they would now be putting more than 33 times as much effort ito closing organic farms. They aren't.
1960s reactor site