Why China's Thorium-Fueled TMSR-LF1 Reactor is a Really Big Deal

Part III: China's role in the World Order and how TMSR-LF1 fits into a grand strategy

Part I covered how the TMSR-LF1 came to be, and Part II explained why the TS-MSBR reactor design has the potential to make nuclear energy cost less than energy from fossil fuels. Now Part III will explain why the TS-MSBR reactor design is likely to be central to China’s long-term energy strategy, and how it will give China an immense economic (and eventually, military) advantage over the West.

Three Cheers for China!

Before going on, I want to be absolutely clear that I’m not criticizing China in any way. They’re doing an absolutely brilliant job of advancing their own interests, and I salute both the Chinese engineers who built the TMSR-LF1 for their technical leadership, and the Chinese political leadership who have adopted a long-term nuclear energy strategy that I’m sure will serve the Chinese people extremely well.

So I’m all for what China is doing and don’t mean to criticize them. But the fact that my own country has failed for more than half a century to define a coherent nuclear energy strategy and then carry it out is, quite frankly, embarrassing. I think that’s about to change under U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who in my opinion has already evidenced himself to be the best Energy Secretary to serve the United States in my lifetime. But he has his work cut out for him, because while it may be painful to admit, the fact remains that China is very clearly in the lead on all things nuclear.

For starters, China has more conventional (light water) reactors planned/proposed or already under construction than the size of the entire U.S., Russian, and European operating reactor fleets combined!

With apologies, the above chart is from 2023. The current numbers are even more staggering. So China clearly isn’t “waiting” for Generation IV technology such as the TMSR-LF1 to mature before making big strides in nuclear energy. Their planned and proposed reactor fleet by itself will deliver China an immense boost to the competitive advantage they already enjoy in manufacturing for export.

The TMSR-LF1 gives us a glimpse of where China is headed strategically, but Thorium-fueled nuclear energy won’t become China’s dominant form of nuclear energy for a few more decades. They’re also making huge investments in Uranium-fired nuclear energy right now, both conventional and advanced.

Something that I frankly don’t think the U.S. Nuclear industry has really taken to heart yet is that the single most important “technological advance” we need from nuclear energy is actually an economic advance: We’ve got to figure out how to build nuclear reactors that make nuclear energy cost less than fossil fuel energy. (See The Nuclear Henry Ford Moment for why that’s so important).

And I’m personally convinced that the key to making nuclear energy cost less than fossil fuel energy will be figuring out how to mass-produce entire nuclear reactors in automotive-style fully robotic assembly and test lines that deliver a higher standard of Quality Assurance/Quality Control than is possible with human inspectors. That means that to really win the global race for who’s first to deliver nuclear energy that costs less than fossil fuel energy will hinge in large part on who has the best industrial robotics technology. Guess who’s in the lead on that front?

Again, sorry for the dated chart. The above is from 2022, but I think it makes the point persuasively. My guess is the latest statistics on Chinese leadership in industrial robotics are even more daunting.

So the point is, China is far more active in pursuing the most promising Generation IV advanced nuclear technologies, and they’re already the leader in industrial robotics, which is the primary enabling technology for making future nuclear energy cost less than fossil fuel energy. Forgive my candor, but when it comes to nuclear energy, China is kicking ass and leaving the West in the dust.

This story will take decades to play out, but on current course and speed, China will deliver mass-produced Thorium-fueled breeder reactors that make nuclear energy cost less than coal and gas at least a full decade before the West, and that outcome will (my prediction) change the course of world history in a way that very few people fully appreciate.

“Beyond Shipping”

Here’s the tweet from China’s propaganda bureau promoting their plans to build a fleet of nuclear container ships powered by Thorium-fired molten salt reactors. Please note particularly the end of the 2nd paragraph:

Admittedly, I’m “reading between the lines” and speculating here, but I for one think that “the significance of which is beyond shipping” is a profoundly important hint about China’s future intentions for this technology.

I think that China correctly understands that the most important advance that’s needed in nuclear energy is to make it cost less than fossil fuel energy by “seizing the The Nuclear Henry Ford Moment”, and choosing one workhorse reactor design that can be mass-produced on fully robotic assembly and test lines. A “small block Chevy of Nuclear Reactors”, if you will. A small (100-250MWth) reactor that is small enough to be mass-produced on robotic assembly and test lines and then deployed in a wide range of applications ranging from powering commercial vessels like container ships to military ships including aircraft carriers (as the tweet mentions directly) to running remote mining villages to making process heat for making concrete and smelting steel, to who-knows-what other industrial applications, for making both electricity and process heat.

To my eye, this tweet signals that China has chosen the Thorium-fueled MSR as that workhorse reactor. Early models probably won’t be full breeders, nor do they need to be. China has plenty of spent fuel waste from which they can easily source reactor grade plutonium kickstarter fuel. That plus a high burn-up ratio design would deliver a cheap, mass-produced workhorse reactor that only needs a tiny bit of LEU or RGPu and runs primarily on Thorium. Later models will be full breeders that run entirely on Thorium after being kickstarted with RGPu sourced from applying the PUREX process to spent fuel from the army of conventional LWRs China already has planned/proposed or under construction today.

In other words, I think China has already decided that the most sensible strategic reactor design to mass-produce by the thousands will be the Thorium MSR, and the purpose of the TMSR-LF1 is to prove the design before finalizing the decision to standardize on the T-MSR and eventually the TS-MSBR design as the primary workhorse reactor for Energy Transition.

Trouble on the Horizon

Historians predicted a hot war between the United States and Japan more than two full decades before Pearl Harbor. How did they know so far in advance what was coming? Because one of the most reliable lessons of history (for the few who are willing to learn from history) is that when a single nation has been the unquestioned military and economic superpower for several decades, and then a second nation emerges as the economic equal to the long-standing unquestioned superpower, the outcome is that those two nations will go to war within 20 years after the up-and-comer achieves economic equality to the reigning superpower. History is really, really clear on this point, enabling historians to predict war between USA and Japan by the late 1910’s.

I asked ChatGPT to tell me when China first achieved economic equality with the United States, based on objective, unbiased criteria. It gave me several measures, and concluded the answer is sometime between 2010 when Chinese manufacturing output first exceeded U.S. figures, and 2014 when Chinese purchasing power parity (PPP) GDP first exceeded U.S. PPP GDP. Add 20 years and the prediction is hot war between China and USA by 2030 - 2034. And without a doubt, political messaging from both governments very much aligns with the possibility of war between USA and China in coming years. I certainly hope we can avoid that outcome, but even if we do avoid a hot war, it’s already way past clear that trade tensions between the two countries are already at fever pitch.

Another point where History is painfully clear is that energy dominance eventually leads to economic dominance, and economic dominance eventually leads to military dominance. The logic is easy to see: cheap and abundant energy directly translates to lower cost manufacturing and that translates directly to economic dominance. And as a country become economically dominant over a long period of time, they are able to afford to invest more into their military, achieving military dominance. China is already building out their “blue water” Navy, and they claim to already be in the lead over USA on 6th generation fighter jet technology.

But despite China’s unquestioned manufacturing capability and rapidly advancing technological prowess, the fact remains that China is anything but energy-independent. China depends on fossil fuel imports from the rest of the world, mostly coal from Australia and oil from the middle-east. China couldn’t possibly continue to maintain manufacturing dominance without foreign-sourced fossil fuel imports, which could easily be blockaded in a USA-China hot war scenario.

If China can attain energy independence, that alone will profoundly change the balance of power globally, because China would then be impervious to being cut off from fossil fuel imports which would pose an existential threat to China’s manufacturing capabilities today. And guess what? China has enough Thorium under its own soil to power the entire planet (never mind just China itself) for the next thousand years. Once China develops the ability to mass-produce Thorium-fired TS-MSBR breeder reactors, they will be completely energy independent just as soon as they roll out enough of them to replace the energy they now rely on foreign imports for.

Now try on this thought exercise: What happens in a U.S.-China hot war scenario if China is already energy-independent, and therefore blockading crude oil imports becomes a moot military tactic? Remember, China already has enough submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missile capability to destroy the USA several times over. So any sort of pre-emptive nuclear weapons strike on China would be certain to result in Mutual Assured Destruction.

Much more than just Thorium

China’s leadership on advanced nuclear energy is much broader than just the TS-MSBR reactor design which I think will prove to be the key to making nuclear cost less than coal and gas. For example, China has already fielded the world’s first full-scale commercial power station using “pebble bed” High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) technology, which is particularly important because it produces much higher temperature transfer out of the reactor core, which is particularly suitable for hydrogen production and various process heat applications needed to apply nuclear energy not just to electricity production, but to other energy-intensive activities such as smelting steel and making concrete.

But I still see the TS-MSBR as China’s most strategic advanced nuclear energy initiative, because of the way it will help China achieve complete energy independence. China produces some uranium within its own borders, but not enough to fuel the entire nation if it were ever cut off from foreign uranium imports. But China already has enough Thorium under its own soil to power the country for millennia. That’s the reason I think Thorium-fired nuclear is so strategic to China’s eventual aspirations of surpassing the United States as the global economic and military hegemon.

Sure, it’s fair to say that the TMSR-LF1 is nothing but an itsy-bitsy little 2MWth research reactor that never so much as produced a single watt of electricity, since it wasn’t even connected (as of this writing, so far as we know from China’s public statements) to an electric generator. But that’s like dismissing the Wright Flyer as nothing more than a bunch of bicycle parts that were thrown together to build a proof-of-concept that only flew a handful of times. True, but the fact remains that it was where modern aviation started. I contend that the TMSR-LF1 will be remembered as China’s Wright Flyer of Energy. It’s the first step in a technological journey that will eventually lead China to complete energy independence, and an immense economic advantage over the rest of the world because they’ll be able to produce energy from Thorium that costs considerably less than the energy they produce from coal today. That means they’ll no longer be dependent on Australian coal imports or Arab oil imports. So I see the TMSR-LF1 as marking the dawn of a whole new age of energy independence and economic superiority for China.

The West needs to Get Nuclear Wright

Again, my hat is off to the Chinese for a job well done. They’re kicking ass on both conventional and advanced nuclear energy, and every Chinese citizen should feel proud of their country for leading the world in advanced nuclear energy. It will lead their nation to great financial and geopolitical advantage, and they can’t be faulted for doing such a good job of advancing their own interests.

But there’s plenty of room to fault the U.S. Government for having wasted more than half a century since we stopped making meaningful advances in nuclear energy technology in the early 1970s. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright is the first ray of hope I’ve seen for USA to turn this around, and we still (just barely) have time to use our technology leadership to catch up to the Chinese. And let’s not kid ourselves: China is already in the lead, by a lot, whether we’re ready to admit that to ourselves or not.

America’s National Laboratories invented nuclear energy, and they were ready to take it to the next level in the 1970s when Alvin Weinberg’s team at ORNL first conceived the Thorium-fueled Molten Salt Breeder Reactor and laid out plans in ORNL-5018 (explained in Part I) to commercialize that design in the USA. So far as I know, Chris Wright is the first energy secretary in history to begin his term in office by making personal visits to ORNL and the other National Labs most involved in nuclear energy technology.

We can and should revive the most important breeder reactor technologies (fueled by both Thorium and Depleted Uranium) by putting our American National Laboratories on the job of catching up with and then surpassing China’s current technical leadership on advanced nuclear technology. Chris Wright is the first U.S. Government official I’ve been able to believe might actually pull it off, and I sure hope he does. This is going to have a profound impact on the course of human history. We won’t know for a couple more decades how that will pan out, but the TMSR-LF1 isn’t just another random Chinese research project. It’s a Wright Flyer-level milestone that we can’t afford to ignore.

In Closing

I hope you found this final installment of this series interesting, and if you did, I hope you’ll take a moment to like, restack, and promote this series starting with Part I on X and other social media.

I’m really serious about how important I think this is to our national security, and it feels to me like almost nobody “gets it”. Hopefully this post will inspire more people to recognize the historical significance of what China is doing, and why the TMSR-LF1 is so important.