China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from thorium

Re:China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from... by wizzwizz4 on Saturday November 22, 2025 @07:49PM (#46019703)

There's also the choice to match our energy consumption dynamically to intermittent power sources (e.g. solar), reducing the baseload demand. This is entirely orthogonal to decisions about where the baseload generation should come from.

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Re:China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from... by hunterpayne on Saturday November 22, 2025 @10:02PM (#46020388)

That's called load following. That's also a thing a liquid fueled reactor can do that a solid fueled reactor can't.

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Re:China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from... by dalyons on Sunday November 23, 2025 @12:21AM (#46020989)

doesnt make a difference to the economics of a nuke plant. Fuel consumption is a tiny fraction of the cost of nuke power, its almost all fixed cost - amortized construction costs, operations, etc. You need to run it at as close to 100% always to have any chance at payback & economical $/kw. Thats why they arent getting built.

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Re:China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from... by wizzwizz4 on Sunday November 23, 2025 @01:40AM (#46021320)

No, it's the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_side_management. Load-following is a good property for a power plant to have, though, especially if the plant is suitable for baseload generation.

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Re:China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from... by jabl on Sunday November 23, 2025 @02:15AM (#46021463)

You need to go tell the French that what they've been doing for decades isn't possible, then.

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Re:China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from... by thinkcontext on Sunday November 23, 2025 @12:19PM (#46025239)

EPR has shown that the French have lost the ability to build reactors rapidly and on budget.

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