If America won't build the future, China will gladly do it

While the US is lobotomizing itself by purging scientists and starving universities of research grants, our main competitor, China, is forging ahead.

China has announced the completion of TMSR-LF1, a two-megawatt nuclear power plant fueled by thorium. According to Chinese state media, the reactor reached its full power last year, and this month Chinese engineers achieved a milestone by reloading it with fresh fuel while it was running. The country now plans to upgrade the reactor to generate 10 megawatts by 2030, enough to power 10,000 homes.

A brief history of thorium power

Thorium, named for the Norse god of thunder, is a naturally occurring radioactive element. Unlike uranium, it isn't fissile, meaning it can't sustain a chain reaction by itself. But when bombarded by neutrons, it transmutes into uranium-233, which is fissile. To kick off the reaction, a small amount of fissile uranium or plutonium is needed to act as a "driver." Once the thorium cycle gets started, the U-233 it creates can become the driver for the next round of fission, making it self-sustaining.

Thorium has advantages as a nuclear fuel. It's three times more abundant in the crust than uranium, opening up an avenue for nations that don't have large uranium reserves. It's also cleaner. The thorium cycle produces fewer long-lived isotopes, so thorium reactors shouldn't need nearly as much deep subterranean storage for dangerous radioactive waste.

China's thorium reactor is also innovative in another way. It's a molten salt reactor, using a high-temperature liquid mixture of lithium and beryllium salts as the coolant. Experts believe this design is intrinsically safer than earlier generations of nuclear reactors.

Most nuclear plants use water to cool the core, but if the water leaks out or boils away, catastrophe results. The fuel rods melt from the heat of their own radioactive decay, causing secondary exothermic reactions. The most dangerous reaction is water molecules splitting to create hydrogen, which explodes and burns, spreading radioactive plumes far and wide.

Both Chernobyl and Fukushima caused this type of disaster.

In theory, molten salt reactors aren't susceptible to meltdown. If there's a leak, the salt simply expands, cools down and solidifies, safely halting the reaction. That said, the combo of radiation and superhot molten salt corrodes most metals, so containing it is a formidable engineering challenge.

This isn't brand-new technology. The United States' Oak Ridge National Laboratory built a molten salt reactor as a proof of concept in the 1960s, and Shippingport, a thorium-based, water-cooled reactor, ran for five years from 1977 to 1982. India has also been experimenting with thorium reactors, among other nations.

But even if China's thorium reactor isn't a revolutionary scientific achievement, it's a significant technological step forward. If they prove that they're able to operate the reactor safely, China can claim to be the first nation to master this technology. Given current developments, it's not likely to be the last time China is first out of the gate.

Who should we root for?

China's apparent success raises the question of how Americans, or all non-Chinese people for that matter, should feel. Should we cheer, or should we be concerned?

From the standpoint of our shared humanity, I believe we should welcome this news. It would be wrong to give in to provincialism, believing that nothing counts unless America does it. Progress is progress, wherever it happens and whoever achieves it.

In the long run, scientific and technological achievement benefits all of humanity. New discoveries spread and diffuse until they're part of the common knowledge base of the world, which raises everyone's living standards. China, after all, can claim credit for bringing the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing into existence. These inventions changed the world for everyone, no matter where they were created.

At this moment of history, when some nations are falling under the shadow of malignant anti-intellectualism, it's reassuring to know that progress is continuing somewhere. Even if the US is marching backwards, we're not dragging the rest of the world with us. Smarter nations will continue to fund research, make discoveries, and build the future whether we join in or not.

That's especially true when it comes to carbon-free energy sources like nuclear power. Climate change is a massive and looming disaster, and to prevent the absolute worst outcomes, we need every electron of clean energy we can get, from whatever source. This should be an all-hands-on-deck moment for humanity.

Instead, just when the crisis has grown pressing, America has abdicated its leadership role. It should be a relief that someone is stepping up to take our place—and China is, in more ways than one. Besides their work on thorium power, they've built the world's largest high-speed rail network and the world's biggest electric car company, as well as dominating the manufacture and deployment of solar panels.

That being said, there are also reasons to feel ambivalent about this story. Whatever its technological achievements, China is still a fiercely authoritarian state. It has no democratic elections, no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, no free press, and no equal protection of law for people the government dislikes. That's not the kind of society we should want in charge of the future.

If China surpasses the US in science and technology, there's no doubt that they'll press their advantage in international geopolitics. In exchange for technological assistance and expertise, they'll demand that other countries copy their social model, becoming vassal states indebted to Beijing. Humanity will become less free.

That's not the future we should want, no matter how clean or green it is. We shouldn't have to choose between democracy and technological progress—much less saving civilization from climate change. In a perfect world, we could have both. However, if America offers neither respect for science nor a functioning democracy... then we lose the right to be surprised when some people choose the option that offers them at least one of the two.