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715 points by scmp_news 15 hours ago on reddit | 46 comments

[OP] scmp_news | 15 hours ago

China has broken ground on the world’s first utility-scale combined supercritical carbon dioxide power generation and molten salt energy storage project, which could help reduce energy waste and improve grid stability.

On September 16, construction began on the Ruitan demonstration project at China Huaneng’s Bajiao power station in Yantai. The project in Shandong province, eastern China, is expected to go into operation next year.

During periods when energy demand is low, surplus electricity generated by the plant’s existing coal power units will be used to heat up molten salt, according to a report by state news agency Xinhua on September 16.

Read more: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3368337/china-breaks-ground-worlds-first-supercritical-co2-and-molten-salt-energy-plant?utm_source=Reddit&utm_medium=Social

PossibleAlienFrom | 11 hours ago

Thanks Al Gore!

Ok_Maintenance_9692 | 10 hours ago

I was picturing two LLM's beheading each other... till i realized thats an 'el' not an 'eye'.

cloudystateofmind | 15 hours ago

It’s crazy what countries can accomplish with a strong public education system.

Venboven | 10 hours ago

More like an (overly) strong government that can greenlight, fund, and build massive projects like this in record time.

jxj24 | 2 hours ago

Or choose to cancel them on a whim and destroy the systems needed to educate generations of scientists and engineers and educators. Also in record time.

Only_Razzmatazz_4498 | 8 hours ago

The way it was explained to me the difference is between an engineering state and a lawyer state. The risk is in one case they overbuild because that is all they know to do and the other over regulate because the same.

ReturnoftheSpack | 14 hours ago

Why build good education systems when you can sabotage foreign tech industries and scalp their talent?

cloudystateofmind | 14 hours ago

Or teach the power of prayer instead of science and math…/s

thenikolaka | 7 hours ago

Because if you elect a fucking moron the benefit will go away for decades maybe.

Foreign-Entrance-255 | 13 hours ago

They did do that, the US (and other western nations before them) also rigged the game in their favor. If you were running a very poor country and you saw two paths, in one you fast forward and make your country wealthy by breaking rules, in the other you accept the corrupt system and your country being poorer, shorter lifespans for your population etc but play by the rules that only apply to the poor. Which path would you choose?

I know that if the US is the poorer one in 50 years, they will break every rule in existence to claw their way back. Look at their illegal and immoral actions to FF AI!

Elizabeth-WildFox886 | 13 hours ago

Developing country status rigs the game in developing countries favour. This is why everyone bought into the global order since ww2

PatientWoodpecker288 | 12 hours ago

Germany willingly sold their Wind and Solar industries. No sabotage involved.

TwoFlower68 | 10 hours ago

How else was the US ever going to get to the moon?

jxj24 | 2 hours ago

We had leading sound-stage technology, and Stanley Kubrick. Duh.

/s

Elizabeth-WildFox886 | 13 hours ago

According to China's own 2015 census data, only 30% of the labour force aged 18 to 65 had ever attended high school. That is below the 36% average for other middle-income countries and far below the OECD average of 78%. The same census data shows just 12.5% of China's workforce was college educated, lower than most other middle-income countries. Stanford economist Scott Rozelle notes that this puts China behind South Africa, Turkey and Mexico, and describes it as having the least educated labour force in the middle-income world. The gap is concentrated in rural China, where roughly 500 million workers have at most a junior high education. Access to high school has expanded sharply for younger people, but those workers will stay in the labour force for decades.

2023 Source: https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/Scott_Rozelle_Testimony.pdf

Jaambie | 11 hours ago

Also giving funding to science and research!

fincog | 13 hours ago

It’s crazy what countries can accomplish with competent authoritarianism

Decent-Debate33 | 11 hours ago

Yes and with incompetant authoriatarianism you get measles, high gas prices, expensive groceries, and a new ballroom.

coxenbawls | 6 hours ago

You still can't drink the tap water there

CorgiRocket | 4 hours ago

I have to develop engineering instructions on how to change the battery on a carbon monoxide detector. I would very much like it if we had a better education system.

Ceno-taur | 13 hours ago

The most likely outcome is that we won't know what went wrong with that project.

abdallha-smith | 8 hours ago

It's crazy what countries can accomplish with an authoritarian regime

biggestlarfles | 14 hours ago

it’s in large part due to being a half socialist half capitalist enthnostate, there’s a reason why europe and north america were so successful for so long.

johnny_51N5 | 14 hours ago

Ethnostate has nothing to do with the success though. It's all education and science. Also the state being socialist and dominating the capitalists, making them pay and do technology transfer if they want to have a piece of the juicy chinese pie that ks the chinese market. In the West it's the other way around. Capitalists dominate the state, the market and the state bows to them doing policies for them.

Capitalists can't think in the long run like China does. Only the next few quarters, everything else is too far off for them. China is planning things for the next 10-20+ years.

Colddigger | 14 hours ago

Ethnostate?

Do you have any idea how many ethnicities exist in china?

Other-Comfortable-64 | 13 hours ago

To him they are all the same, it tells you a lot about him.

Jamooser | 11 hours ago

It's a weirdly out of context comment. That being said, over 90% of China is comprised of a single ethnicity. And let's be honest, the Han do hold all political power in China.

Colddigger | 2 hours ago

Won't disagree with any of that.

Extra-Cut1370 | 8 hours ago

You can say the same for majority of all Asian countries

Trensocialist | 11 hours ago

I'm kinda stupid but how is this green if they are actively pumping more CO2 out?

Character-Actual | 10 hours ago

Only kinda stupid because you didn't read it:

Traditional power plants burn fuel such as coal to heat water into steam, which then drives a turbine to produce electricity.

In a supercritical system, carbon dioxide is held at a critical temperature and pressure, at which point it behaves like both a gas and a liquid. This dense fluid directly powers a turbine and can recirculate in a closed-loop system.

Trensocialist | 10 hours ago

OK no I did read it I'm kinda stupid because I dont know what that means. So does it not pump CO2 out even though it's using it as fuel or not?

Character-Actual | 10 hours ago

Closed loop system

WeAmGroot | 10 hours ago

So...

You have a cage

Co2 is in the cage

A turbine is in the cage

You heat the cage

Co2 goes brrrrrrrt

Turbine goes ffhhhwpptt

Profit

kapeman_ | 8 hours ago

You go in the cage,
cage goes in the water,
you go in the water.
shark's in the water,
our shark.

JuliaKyuu | 9 hours ago

How do you heat the cage?

WeAmGroot | 9 hours ago

Heat used to power supercritical systems can come from different sources, such as solar energy, geothermal energy, and even waste heat produced by industrial plants.

Unlike battery energy storage, which stores electricity as chemical energy, molten salt energy storage stores excess energy as heat or thermal energy within liquid salts in large tanks.

retour-a-tipasa | 2 hours ago

In this case it’s surplus electricity from coal power generation being used.

anethma | 2 hours ago

Not fuel. It’s used instead of water and steam as the thing that spins the turbine. The molten salt is the nuclear fuel.

TheDarkFiend | 9 hours ago

CO2 is used as a working fluid (transfer heat from core to spin turbine, rejects heat to environment via heat exchanger, repeats cycle). Very little amounts of CO2 need to be replenished due to losses over time. It is not the fuel for the system. Just to be clear, I wouldn’t consider the power plant green since it’s burning coal as the fuel source. But this tech could be leveraged with nuclear energy to make it green. From the article “Heat used to power supercritical systems can come from different sources, such as solar energy, geothermal energy, and even waste heat produced by industrial plants.”

Megalodon7770 | 10 hours ago

Sure thing

Dsrtfsh | 11 hours ago

“Why you white man have so much cargo”