‘No quick wins’: China has the world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor

American scientists pioneered molten salt reactor technology – including building a small test reactor in the 1960s – but the project was shelved in favour of uranium-based systems. “The US left its research publicly available, waiting for the right successor,” Xu was quoted as saying. “We were that successor.”
Absolute banger

China’s state-owned shipbuilding industry has also unveiled a design for thorium-powered container ships that could potentially achieve emission-free maritime transport.
They'll definitely go to war with China to stop this
- Chinese firms are also building and deploying a few different ammonia fueled vessels - which can be produced from renewables anywhere you have a plant
  
  Does that work by combustion? Wouldn't it emit tons of NOx?
- Good, let China destroy the petulant child nation they built.
- China would win.

After construction of the experimental reactor started in 2018, most of the scientists involved in the project abandoned their holidays – they worked day and night, and some stayed on site for more than 300 days in a year.
That's not ideal
- Not that I'd ever support throwing your work-life balance into the meatgrinder like that, but if I had a job trying to create one of the best potential options for long-term power production while the world was setting itself on fire from fossil fuels I might consider 50 hour work weeks for a bit too.
  
  Yep. I'd do it in a heartbeat. These folks are heroes.
  
  create one of the best potential options for long-term power production
  I disagree about this (you don't solve the substantive short and medium term problems of nuclear) but even if it was a wonder technology that was cheaper, faster to deploy and simpler than anything else, having a 30 year timeframe to mass commercial roll out means it won't really make a difference
- My instinct is, "please don't allow sleep deprived people to operate an experimental nuclear reactor, even if they want to."
  
  (or build one)
- Seems like might be a case of them really wanting to see it work. Most jobs don't really have any meaning beyond a paycheck, but this is a rare case of work being genuinely meaningful and interesting.
  
  Presenteeism is a sickness and if I were Chinese Stalin, I'd be sending them home. It burns out people in academia very quick and it's not like Chinese has a lack of young graduates to put on projects like these
  
  Well meaningful is a bit of an understatement.
- Totally sounds like by choice by the wording
  
  Yes, honestly there is a big difference between being forced to work long hours by a corporation and choosing to work long hours because you are passionate about something, or in a "flow state," or you feel like you have a real stake in the outcome of the project. I am sure during the Space Race there were scientists on both sides pulling insane hours, driven largely by national patriotic pride, which might also be at play here. I don't think there's anything wrong with workers working for long hours as long as 1) it is voluntary, 2) it is safe both physically and mentally, and 3) it is temporary, for only a year or a few years, with an enforced return to a 40-hour work week at some cutoff point.
- It's stupid but this is the norm around the world. At my plant, which is not a nuclear plant, most of the engineers and workers can't take a leave and are always "on call" (even though their contract is not an on call contract) until they can get a break once in around 1.5 years because we are technically understaffed. And this isn't even a meaningful plant, if it goes down nothing really happens.
  
  I did see something about how a lot of the hydro plants in the US are becoming woeful understaffed because there is no appetite to hire staff and very few people have the appropriate training anyway
  
  Guessing you're Russian based on the handle but this was also a thing in the Soviet union even in the 30s, there were cases of people wanting to work too much that their boss had to force them to take time off. It just lowers your productivity in the long run
- Its actually pretty common in China for employers to provide housing accomodations to their employees. So my guess is they had some sort of apartment complex on site that people were using. They werent like sleeping in their offices.
  
  It's not a very large complex - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1
  The site is about an hour and a half away from the nearest urbanised area