from the where-is-the-point-of-diminishing-returns? dept.
China's New Breeder Reactors May Produce More Than Just Watts:
Jutting out from the coast of China's Fujian province, Changbiao Island may seem small and unremarkable. It is anything but. This is where the China National Nuclear Corp. is building two fast-neutron nuclear breeder reactors, the first of which is slated to connect to the grid in 2023, the second in 2026. So China could start producing weapons-grade plutonium there very soon.
They are called breeder reactors because they produce more nuclear fuel than they consume. According to Chinese authorities, the ones on Changbiao are civilian power reactors, designed to generate 600 megawatts of electricity each, which amounts to a little more than 1 percent of the total capacity of China's nuclear power sector. But each reactor could also yield up to 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium each year, enough for about 50 nuclear warheads—which is making nuclear-arms-control experts in Western countries nervous.
"China is in the middle of a big buildup of its nuclear-weapon arsenal," says Frank von Hippel, a physicist and nuclear-policy expert at Princeton University. "My belief is that one of the purposes of these reactors is to produce weapons-grade plutonium for that buildup."
Fast breeder reactors date back more than half a century, when the global nuclear community thought there wouldn't be enough uranium fuel available for the nuclear-power industry. Natural uranium is composed of only 0.7 percent uranium 235 (U-235), which can support the fission reactions needed for generating power. The rest is U-238, which cannot sustain a chain reaction. But when bombarded with neutrons, U-238 is readily transformed into an isotope that can: plutonium-239.
Breeder reactors use plutonium as the fissile fuel in the core, which is surrounded by a blanket rich in U-238. Fast neutrons—that is, ones with 1 megaelectron-volt or more of kinetic energy—split the plutonium atoms, releasing secondary neutrons that are captured by the U-238 and convert some of that U-238 into plutonium. Liquid sodium is used as a coolant because it does not slow down neutrons as much as water does. Weapons-grade plutonium can be separated chemically from the blanket.
[...] Each reactor could also yield up to 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium each year, enough for about 50 nuclear warheads.
[...] China already has between 3 and 5 tonnes of plutonium for warheads, Hecla says. And they are building 250 additional silos. "So they likely need more plutonium," he says. "One way of doing this would be to create civilian infrastructure that is dual use, and this fast breeder program is perfect for that. If China flipped on old plutonium-processing reactors, the international response would be strong and negative. This provides a way to get around that." [...] But no matter how they intend to do it, if Chinese weapons builders are trying to catch up to the United States, which has nearly 88 tonnes of plutonium, they still have a long road ahead.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by MIRV888 on Friday December 30, @08:38AM (11 children)
Russia is continuing it's decline in 2nd world land.
China is going to assert soon. They will call our bluff over Taiwan.
We will have to double down or fold.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday December 30, @08:41AM (10 children)
It's hard to imagine the U.S. committing to a hot war over Taiwan. Maybe a weasel war.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Friday December 30, @08:48AM (2 children)
Agreed.
By doing that though we will have globally yielded the southwestern Pacific area to China's purview.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by coolgopher on Friday December 30, @09:58AM (1 child)
I'd like to think that the west learned a lesson after they didn't take a stand when Russia invaded Crimea.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday December 31, @04:56PM
Agreed.
There is a slight difference though, in that Ukraine lies in mineral-rich border territory between NATO-aligned nations and Russia - it's kind of a natural place for border back-and-forth between antagonistic empires to to occur.
In contrast, Taiwan, Japan, etc. fall well within China's "natural" sphere of influence, and we have occupied/allied with them specifically to enable ourselves to force-project into China's territory on the opposite side of the largest ocean in the world. Not unlike the Soviet Union establishing close ties with (and military bases in) Cuba so they could force-project into the US interior. We don't really have any other significant interests there, other than what we've created to make the arrangement more profitable.
I have to wonder if that sort of antagonistic positioning is a wise thing in the long term. At best, having an opponents knife at your throat does tend to keep you on good behavior, and maybe we should hope for a similarly tight alliance between Cuba and China to keep a complementary knife at our own throat. Or as something a bit more similar to Taiwan's proximity to Hong Kong - perhaps we should grant independence to the Maryland/Delaware peninsula just east of Washington D.C., and encourage them to ally with China.
But that kind of constant imminent threat also breeds a desire to be rid of it, and an animosity towards the ones threatening you. The kind of desire that might tempt someone to do something rash if an opportunity presented itself.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 30, @11:32AM (4 children)
I'd consider it likely they'd try for a proxy war like they did with Ukraine though.
I'll also point out that (1) blowing stuff up is something the US is pretty damn skilled at, and (2) even with this the US has a lot more nukes than China.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Touché) by HiThere on Friday December 30, @02:24PM (3 children)
Does the phrase "overkill" have any meaning to you? You can't be killed more than once.
OTOH, it would solve global warming.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Friday December 30, @04:12PM (1 child)
Overkill is not about 'killing more than once' but about certitude of killer blow delivery.
Statistics is a probability monster nascent from pure arithmetic.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 30, @06:35PM
Given the estimates of the result that I've seen, my original interpretation of overkill is the correct one. (Although I'll accept that some people wouldn't be killed...at least immediately.)
Nuclear Winter (well, Autumn) was the projected result of an atomic war between India and Pakistan. Between two major powers...well, "On the Beach" had things happening too quickly among the immediate survivors, but it's not really clear that mice would survive over the decades. (OTOH, rats seem to have a built-in aversion to highly radiated environments...so maybe.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 30, @11:52PM
If you didn't kill them, then you didn't bring enough overkill.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 30, @01:28PM (1 child)
It takes two to play at weasel war. Too many Chinese have seen Top Gun [nypost.com], and the green envy runs deep. Back 30 years ago, a young, drunk, wealthy Chinese student bared his soul (well, it was the Bacardi that did it, but...) and gave me a clear statement of: "The U.S. is great, better than China, best in the world, but... our day is coming, we will be the great ones..."
That kid, and his peers, are now in their 50s, and running China... that old saw about "the tallest tree gets cut first" and individuals in Asian cultures never presuming to make themselves the center of attention... that may still apply to the Chinese masses, but there's a large ... not really U.S. style upper-middle, more of a lower-upper class - significantly more privileged than U.S. upper-middle - in China who are more than ready and willing to "Make China Great" and they don't even have to throw "Again" into it...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31, @02:49PM
The USA has densely populated cities too, but heck the US leaders do an even worse job of pretending to care about US people or the USA. So if shit happens some of the US top leaders might be well on their way to Argentina or similar where they can still have their steak and burgers, heck enough people there might even understand "Yankee English". Where would Winnie the Pooh and gang fly to, to have a nice new life?
Not as many "nuke havens" have many people who speak Mandarin as their first or second language.
Would Singapore be a nice place to live after a US-China nuclear war? Singapore seems to have strong US ties so, if China starts the war or can still be blamed somewhat for it, I doubt if Winnie the Pooh and gang would be welcome there...
FWIW I wouldn't be surprised if the US nuked Taiwan, Singapore, etc and blamed China for it. I mean the USA have been convincing people that Russia blew up their own pipeline. Logically all Russia has to do is tell the EU if you don't pay us for gas, we don't send you gas; or even charge the EU more for gas - "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."...
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday December 30, @11:19AM (4 children)
It's a shame because they can be used to consume plutonium rather than to produce more of it. Still, there's a world that needs taking over, and someone's got to do it, I suppose.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 30, @01:30PM
I hope, from their smog choked cities, the Chinese realize that they can't trash the rest of the world without taking themselves down in the process, unless they read that chapter about Neutron Bombs....
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30, @04:03PM (2 children)
More nukes don't equate to more capability, just more liability and more expense. Unless they are planning on selling it to rogues states, then stockpiling nukes is just going to cost them money for no gain. A bit like building cities and knocking them down 20 years later, I suppose.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Friday December 30, @04:44PM (1 child)
How long does the plutonium remain weapons grade? How often do the warheads need to be replaced? I don't understand the mentality of producing all that extra weapons grade stuff. It's not like you can use it, since after you've set of a few nukes, the whole world becomes a very difficult place to live. In the UK we used to have two fast reactors, which operated and produced electricity. They were also capable of breeding more plutonium. I think the idea was that it would be easier to breed more fuel for fast reactors (plutonium) than dig up and enrich more uranium for thermal reactors. Still, we've got a lot of plutonium lying around that would make great nuclear fuel. We'd get electricity out of it and get rid of some nuclear waste (plutonium). I believe our fast reactors got shut down for all sorts of spurious reasons. I think they didn't want to invest the money in the R&D any more or something. Typical British short-sightedness.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rich on Saturday December 31, @09:15AM
"Weapons grade" means a low Pu-240 content in the plutonium, compared to Pu-239. If the uranium gets irradiated for a longer time, some Pu-239 will catch neutrons and become Pu-240. You want a low Pu-240 content, because it spontaneously emits neutrons, which make the compression in an implosion weapon (too?) difficult. Once you've got your "grade" stuff, that will last for centuries.
What does not last, is tritium. "Modern" nuclear weapons use some tritium for "boosting", e.g. causing a D/T-fusion which emits a 14 MeV neutron, which in turn even can crack the normally non-fissioning U-238. Tritium has a half life of about 12 years, so that has to be replenished every couple of years, give or take some.
The weapons themselves undergo deterioration like other technical devices. The chemical explosives may decompose. I guess they need a fundamental overhaul every 20 years or so, less if they've been rushed through development.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by oumuamua on Friday December 30, @03:28PM (5 children)
Someone is actually building NEW nuclear power plants to combat climate change! Finally!
And at the same time taking care of the nuclear waste problem! Holy cow!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jul/30/fast-breeder-reactors-nuclear-waste-nightmare [theguardian.com]
Power on China
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30, @09:06PM (4 children)
"Someone is actually building NEW nuclear power plants"
Easy to do when you can just send NIMBYs to reeducation camps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31, @05:38AM (3 children)
It's amazing the appetite for Strong Leaders(tm) after all we've been through.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31, @02:56PM (2 children)
You want US style stuff go to the USA. You want China style stuff go to China. You want German style stuff go to Germany. etc etc.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday December 31, @03:22PM (1 child)
> I think it's great as long as neither country takes/screws over too many other countries. Then people can go to whichever place they think is less crap.
Movement between countries is a luxury that most people in the world do not have; especially people in poorer and non-democratic countries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02, @04:49AM
Then your first move should obviously be to a country where you do have those options.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday January 02, @02:52AM
What's the neutron spectrum of the reactors?
Just because they're breeders doesn't mean they're very good for making bomb fuel. You can produce too much of P-240 and more neutron rich isotopes that spontaneously fission and make the pit blow apart before it goes into a full nuclear explosion. The problem is that it's difficult to know if you don't know the specifics of the reactor and or have access to the site to make measurements.
This is why we wanted to give N. Korea light water reactors. They aren't very good for making bombs. There are also breeders that aren't because they make too much P-240 and that means a hard isotope separation to prepare it which a good bit of the point of making plutonium was to get around.
The problem with Breeders, is that as part of the fuel making process you set up a chemical separation facility. These separation facilities using the PUREX process are a key signature of a bomb making program, but they also are used to make plutonium or MOX reactor fuel. In the case of China, they already have them, and they already have dedicated reactors for making bomb grade plutonium. These could be an increase in capacity, but they aren't anything particularly new.