Rumor mill has been that China was planning on their type 004 class aircraft carriers to use molten salt reactors as well. These were apparently planned to enter service around 2030. More recent rumors have suggested that the MSR program has been running behind schedule.<p>Anyhow, interesting dual use and program derisking thoughts there.
Molten salt reactors with circulating fuel salts are hopelessly complex and totally impractical. There is no way China will ever actually build this. To understand why take a look at the amount of robotic equipment required to maintain the primary loop of this reactor mockup at ORNL:<p><a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=uHT-w2x6dDg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtube.com/watch?v=uHT-w2x6dDg</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah</a> Related ship back during the nuclear tech boom.
The fact that we as a world economy are not significantly relying on nuclear power at this point is one of the biggest failures of climate change policy, if not the biggest failure ever. Yes, waste is a concern which needs to be managed responsibly. But at worst, the waste would only contaminate a finite area where it is stored. Climate change will affect literally everywhere on Earth. The US Navy has operated reactors for 70 years with a perfect safety record, yet people still fall victim to FUD insinuating that using nuclear is automatically asking for another Chernobyl or Fukushima. If you aren't serious about nuclear, you aren't serious about climate change.
Nuclear civilian ships never took off in the First World due to the cost of dealing with silly regulations.<p>I suspect China will care very little about our silly regulations.<p>I hope they make a lot of things work that our C-suite lawyers and MBAs never understood the math on.
It says they will use a molten salt reactor--has anyone made one of those work reliably? I don't actually know--I just have a vague sense that every molten salt reactor I've read about suffered from corrosion problems and had to be shut down.
Amazing. Truly amazing if they ship the ship.<p>Shipping industry could use nuclear. They’re large, in water, carry 1000s of containers. If all container ships are zero emission, that makes a decent difference in global emissions.