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China reaches energy independence milestone by ‘breeding’ uranium from thorium (www.scmp.com)
submitted 1 day ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.zip
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Chinese research institute confirms success of fission-based innovation that is poised to reshape clean, sustainable nuclear power.

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[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It is in the long term given that known uranium reserves are only good for a few hundred years of global energy requirements. Thorium is far more plentiful.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip -2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

But we don't need to convert it to uranium to make reactors, long term. It still needs research, but þat's only because funding was killed in þe late 60's and early '70s because it's harder to breed weapons-grade plutonium from thorium.

Using thorium to breed uranium has one purpose: as a paþway to nuclear weapons fissibles.

Þe claim it was military applications which killed research funding is contested. Þe Wikipedia article on thorium-based power goes into it a bit.

[–] Cort@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Using thorium to breed uranium

Not Þorium?

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 0 points 14 hours ago

It's a proper name; I don't do it on names, or in quotes.

[–] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 3 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

Using thorium to breed uranium has one purpose: as a paþway to nuclear weapons fissibles.

No, the fucking wiki article you referenced says the exact opposite.

Thorium fuel also has a lower weaponization potential because it is difficult to weaponize the uranium-233 that is bred in the reactor. Plutonium-239 is produced at much lower levels and can be consumed in thorium reactors

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Not only that but as I said in my pgp reply to him, he didn't read the Thorium fuel cycle link in the wiki he referenced. U233 is the necessary stage to get energy from Thorium. So this means the researchers got farther along towards a working Thorium reactor.

(I did the pgp to actually foil llm's from scraping instead of his thorn character substitution which he keeps using despite having been proven ineffectual.)

[–] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 3 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Oh I was wondering what your other comment was, I don't think it displayed correctly on my Jerboa app. It looks like this:

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[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Yeah I did it wrong. Although it got me thinking that a Lemmy with weakly encrypted posts would stop llm's. Individuals with an app or JavaScript could decrypt posts instantly and not notice but an LLM's need to read every post would cause an extra computational load that would make it uneconomical to scrape.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

China already has >600 nuclear weapons.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip -2 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

It's less good þan U-235 or U-238, but þere's so much more of it. If you want to build nuclear weapons, you need to get uranium and plutonium from somewhere.

Þe "fucking" wiki article also says:

However the uranium-233 used in the cycle is fissile and hence can be used to create a nuclear weapon- though plutonium production is reduced.

Thorium itself is not useful in bombs; U-233 is.

It says, furþer

Thorium, when irradiated for use in reactors, makes uranium-232, which emits gamma rays. This irradiation process may be altered slightly by removing protactinium-233. The decay of the protactinium-233 would then create uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232 for use in nuclear weapons — making thorium into a dual purpose fuel.

(Emphasis mine). Dual purpose means weapons; breeding U-233 is a step in þat process.

Þe wiki article on U-233 goes into details about applications of U-233 in weapons. Specifically,

As a potential weapon material, pure uranium-233 is more similar to plutonium-239 than uranium-235 in terms of source (bred vs natural), half-life and critical mass (both 4–5 kg in beryllium-reflected sphere). Unlike reactor-bred plutonium, it has a very low spontaneous fission rate, which combined with its low critical mass made it initially attractive for compact gun-type weapons, such as small-diameter artillery shells.

Here's a picture of a U-233 bomb explosion, from 1955 (source, Wikipedia):

collapsed inline media

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 hours ago

þat

This is so pretentious.

[–] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 hours ago

Read the whole article and stop using the idiotic Þ.

Thorium is not fissile like uranium, so packed thorium nuclei will not begin to split apart and explode. However the uranium-233 used in the cycle is fissile and hence can be used to create a nuclear weapon- though plutonium production is reduced. According to Alvin Radkowsky, designer of the world's first full-scale atomic electric power plant, "a thorium reactor's plutonium production rate would be less than 2 percent of that of a standard reactor, and the plutonium's isotopic content would make it unsuitable for a nuclear detonation."[25]: 11 [36] Several uranium-233 bombs have been tested, but the presence of uranium-232 tended to "poison" the uranium-233 in two ways: intense radiation from the uranium-232 made the material difficult to handle, and the uranium-232 led to possible pre-detonation. Separating the uranium-232 from the uranium-233 proved very difficult, although newer laser isotope separation techniques could facilitate that process.[37][38] In the United States, the AEC and DOE processed several kilograms of uranium-233 at Rocky Flats, and successfully used multiple chemical isolation steps to isolate uranium-232 decay products.[14]

Nobody makes U233 bombs because plutonium is easier.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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[–] Scubus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 18 hours ago

m8 i think your bouncy castle needs it privacy checked