News on China's scientific and technological development.

olalavn said:

China's high-temperature gas-cooled reactor recently announced a new type of "Dragon Ball". It is a nuclear fuel element containing tens of thousands of particles. It is only the size of a tennis ball, but has more than one ton of coal energy.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1763553143151878378

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Have to say it is not new. It is the one and only one design for the reactor up till now.

Here is the paper from Qinghua university (the developer and builder of HTR-10 prototype).


The highlght is saying between 2021 and 2025, taking 2 to 3 years to build a facotry of 20t per year, then commercialize and refine that factory to 200t per year. Now it is 3 years since 2021 and the same time the reactor go commercial. So it is the first commercialized production of the fuel element that was planned from the begining for the reactor.

However, a true new fuel element is planned to the end of period of 2016 to 2030, changing the coating from SiC to ZrC which is harder and melt at higher temperature. This is intended for a new type of reactor VHTR (higher temperature than current HTR).

antiterror13 said:

Is this HTR-PM, a high-temperature gas-cooled (HTGR) pebble-bed generation IV ?

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Yes, it is for HTR-PM.

antiterror13 said:

I was expecting that one ball has way more energy than 1 ton of coal

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Olalavn's post says more than 1.5t actually. But I guess you are expecting much more than 1.5t?

I can't give an answer, but wiki stated some detail about the ball that can be used to calculate.

Each pebble is 60 mm in diameter. They have an outer layer of graphite. Each contains some 12,000 four-layer, ceramic-coated fuel particles of uranium (totaling 7 g)

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to 8.5%

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dispersed in a graphite matrix.

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So each ball has 7g of U235 at 8.5%. As I understand, 1g of pure U-235 is equal to 2.7 million gram (2.7t) of coal in energy density.

7 x 2.7 x 0.085 = 1.6t which matches pretty well to 1.5t in the X post.

Wondering whether 8.5% enriched U-235 (LEU) is available in open market or China has to produce them? I understand Russia has a lot of it

sunnymaxi said:

Heavy duty commercial gas turbines. Japan , USA , Germany , Italy , France and UK.. but UK has very minimal market share. French company Alstom bought by GE for whopping $17 Billion and their CEO was arrested just like Huawei..

this industry dominated by three giants for long, USA, Germany and Japan.

now China entered in this industry..

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South Korea as well.

The most bird-like aircraft of its kind! A team from Northwestern Polytechnical University recently launched the bionic flapping-wing aircraft "Little Falcon". It is based on anatomy and has wings that can flap and fold

OppositeDay said:

South Korea as well.

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Are all the parts localized?

OEMs going in opposite direction in China. Honor getting stronger with many accolades. Apple is cutting prices big time because it's having demand issues

A research team led by Chinese scientists designed a new type of electrolyte for lithium battery with a wide range of applications.

This new design can enable lithium-ion batteries to achieve reversibility when the cells are charged and discharged in a wide temperature range from minus 70 degrees Celsius to 60 degrees Celsius. The lithium-ion batteries can also be charged and discharged within just 10 minutes at room temperature, according to the study.

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Chinese scientists produce a powerful winter-proof lithium battery​

• A new electrolyte has been developed that allows lithium-ion batteries to operate in temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Celsius
• The development solves issues around operating and charging batteries for use in electric vehicles and aviation in extreme temperatures

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Ligand-channel-enabled ultrafast Li-ion conduction​

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I posted about agvs here


Really important part of industry 4.0

The final assembly of the world's first high-temperature superconducting tokamak device "Honghuang 70" was completed. This project is invested by miHoYo and it's the first technological route in the world. The goal is to create a commercial version of "artificial sun"

According to a South Korean biannual government report, China recently surpassed Korea across an index of "national core technologies."

The Technology Level Assessment Results, which are released every two years by the Ministry of Science and ICT, compare the technology levels of five major countries (Korea, the United States, the European Union, Japan, and China). It considers the United States, which was ranked first in 2022, as 100 percent and compares it to other countries.

China has overtaken Korea in 136 national core technologies across 11 major fields for the first time. While Korea narrowed its technological gap with the U.S. by about 1.5 years over a decade, reducing it from 4.7 years to 3.2 years, China significantly closed the gap with the U.S. from 6.6 years to 3.0 years, surpassing Korea.

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