Page 5 - AsiaElec Week 33 2021

AsiaElec COMMENTARY AsiaElec
Part of China’s net-zero strategy
China’s stated strategy is to use the knowledge generated by the Wuwei reactor to build a 100- MWe reactor in 2023. This is likely to be a step towards a 200-300 MWe commercialisation model, which will be applied to two strategic directions. First, MSRs will become a core asset in taking China to net zero (targeted as 2050). Along the way MSRs offer the ability to end China’s dependence on imported LNG and coal – removing what is a significant strategic vulner- ability in Beijing’s eyes.
A new global export market
Secondly, China will supply MSRs to whoever wants to buy them. With a large raft of patents and proprietary technology built up over the past two decades it is possible that China will achieve a world-dominant market position in MSR supply, creating both a revenue stream and strategic leverage from its customers. MSR power is likely to be both financially achieva- ble and politically acceptable to a wide range of countries who, at present, could neither afford nor be trusted with PWRs and their flow of pro- duced plutonium. The comparatively small size of commercial MSRs (about one tenth of the size of a normal PWR build) could make MSR power much more accessible to cash-strapped developing economies. Project finance will be helped by faster build times (the equipment will
be modular and almost mass-produced), faster licensing (no proliferation risk) and higher mar- gins. China’s plans also include the possibility of providing combined heat and power (CHP), and building plant-scale MSRs for specific large industrial sites.
Canada behind, US even further behind
While a handful of US and Canadian innova- tors have been working on thorium-fuelled and MSRs in parallel with China, progress in the US has been slow. Financial investors have been reluctant to commit the multi-billion dol- lar cost of engineering development, particu- larly in the US where regulators are intrinsically hostile to reactor innovation. One exception is Terrapower, formed and funded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet in 2006 with an estimated $50mn, plus a US government grant of $80mn. Terrapower has teamed up with GE to build a 345-MW test reactor (the “Natrium” reactor) at a retired coal power plant in Wyoming. However, while this reactor uses molten salts as a way to store heat energy, at its core lies a solid urani- um-fuelled reactor that uses liquid sodium for heat transfer out of the reactor.
Terrapower’s core innovation is Travelling Wave fission, a fission process that is designed to burn depleted uranium 238 instead of ura- nium 235, and is fuelled once only at startup, to burn for decades, like a giant nuclear candle. Terrapower signed a co-operation agreement
China is about to start up the world’s first thorium MSR
Source: ORNL
Week 33 18•August•2021 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m
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