China to build first-ever thorium molten salt nuclear power station

There's staggered overlapping construction at play here, this "power station" is the second in a series of three TMSR reactors, the first to generate power, and (IIRC) a fair amount of this second TMSR reactors infrastructure (foundations, building, etc) is already complete.

From the article:

    According to the report, a prototype TMSR at the same location, which was designed to produce 2 megawatts of thermal energy but no actual electricity, achieved criticality in October last year.

    Building on the results of the prototype, the new facility will produce 60MW of heat that will be used to generate 10MW of electricity and hydrogen as part of a larger renewable and low-carbon energy research hub.

This second TMSR is being 'fine tuned' in design based on the lessons learned from the first, once those have been gathered, applied, and had six months of so of post critical testing (~ 4-5 years from now) the plans are in place to move forward with a third large TMSR, this one in the high MW | low GW range.

Again, staggered overlapping construction - as described the groundwork for the third TMSR infrastructure could start in two years assuming there are no suprises that call for a change in design from the continuous running of the first, with the gnarly details of the third being sorted out from any new lessons arising from the this second one once completed.

The planned goal here is:

    The project is part of China's campaign to become carbon neutral by 2060, which has seen Beijing funding research into a wide variety of low-carbon energy technologies including new types of large nuclear reactors and small modular reactors (SMRs).

    According to a paper previously published in the Chinese scientific journal Nuclear Techniques by the SINAP, China aims to begin producing 100MW TMSRs from 2030.

See also: How innovative is China in nuclear power?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40703088

https://itif.org/publications/2024/06/17/how-innovative-is-c...

Expected to start construction next year and be producing in 5 years. It takes us longer than that to pick a site and start the ecological and social impact assessments.