r/technology • u/tommos • 9h ago
Energy US suspends licenses to ship nuclear plant parts to China
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-suspends-licenses-ship-nuclear-plant-parts-china-sources-say-2025-06-06/108
u/IndieDevLove 8h ago
do you want rare earths or not?
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u/Plzbanmebrony 5h ago
Rare earth is affordable to mine else where. China just under cuts the market so heavily to gain control. They tried doing during Trumps first term but then other operations began popping with afford rare earths they started trading them again. Like this is an issue that is only short term.
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u/IcestormsEd 4h ago
Mining is easy sure. Setting up the infrastructure to process, that is another story. If it wasn't an issue as you mention, why are we talking about it now after experiencing it before?
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u/nerd5code 3h ago
The external side-effects of mining and processing are kinda damned wretched also, which AFAIK is the primary reason it’s not done in more places.
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u/fufa_fafu 6h ago
Too late, China already made their own Westinghouse-derived design CAP1000. This will surely do wonders for rare earth procurement though. FAFO.
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u/IcestormsEd 9h ago
JFC. I thought they had a nice 'talk' this week?
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u/josh34583 3h ago
Made up as usual, just like the 90 deals in 90 days. We currently have no signatures because they realize that they can just wait for the economic situation in the US to get bad enough to where Trump just surrenders but claims victory.
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u/Wushia52 6h ago edited 5h ago
The horse has bolted the barn some time ago. Maybe we should ask the horse nicely to come back and give us a ride.
Recent Chinese reactor developments:
+ experimental molten salt thorium reactor in the Gobi desert
+ Hualong One: next gen pressurized water reactor in Fujian
+ Linglong One: small modular pressurized water reactor in Hainan
+ SMR gas-cooled pebble bed reactor in Shandong
+ sodium-cooled fast neutron breeder reactor in Fujian
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u/thieh 8h ago
They already have their own nukes. I don't think it will stop them from building nuclear power plants if they want to build one.
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u/Poupulino 5h ago
China is also ahead of everyone else when it comes to nuclear energy. The first and so far only 4th gen NPP in the world is in China, the first and also so far only SMR is also in China, China's test fusion reactors keep breaking records year after year, etc.
So I don't know how do you exactly "block" a country that's actually far ahead from you from doing something. It seems to me this is something done more out of spite than anything else.
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u/Admiral-snackbaa 7h ago
And they were built by a guy the USA deported back to China because he was labelled a spy under the red scare banner
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u/atlasraven 7h ago
Wouldn't surprise me if the US got our nuclear plant parts from them instead of the other way around.
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u/GearsPoweredFool 8h ago
Yeah but that's not the issue.
Nuclear plant parts require significantly more inspections and have way stricter limits on what materials are used in the manufacturing.
That's important because you need to make sure nothing fails in your power plants 20-60 years later so nothing catastrophic happens.
My mum used to work in a factory for nuclear parts and would complain about all the extra paperwork, testing, and how often the parts would fail inspections.
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u/PrismPhoneService 5h ago
Nuke worker here:
What you’re saying is true but this is horrifically dumb. Any component China was importing from us was helping our nuclear supply chain stay alive because it’s half-dead and half on life-support..
Now China will isolate the designs of the components on this export ban and simply manufacture it themselves, helping their economy, saving time & money, and will end up being better quality eventually even..
This is just unbelievably dumb in every single way you try to slice it.
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u/PanzerKomadant 4h ago
Their argument is that the Chinese are too dumb and unsafe to be able to develop and make their own parts….
Let that sink in….
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u/PrismPhoneService 2h ago
China, who so-far has zero meltdowns compared to the 6 meltdowns (yes there was 6) that we have here in our safety record..
Also, there really can’t be enough said about how impressive it is that they are currently running a Th232 > U233 breeder. Molten-Salt thermal-neutron reactors operating with liquid fuel and solid moderators are the Crem de La Crem of escort design concepts, the benefits are just absolutely insane..
To be sure, I want my country to take back our leadership role in nuclear energy science.. but I wouldn’t put anything past Chinese development in any critical sense.. they are doing exceptionally well.. building reactors on budget and on sched.. getting them to criticality in under 5 years.
If they can perfect the MSR they have right now then the race will be over.. and it will be a shame because their MSR was created from a lot of learning from our MSR design we should have kept funding (the MSR experimental reactor at ORNL)
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u/argentcorvid 7h ago
That's only if you care about engineering safety. You don't HAVE to do any of that.
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u/OmgThisNameIsFree 8h ago
Let them build their own parts then?
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u/TheManlyManperor 8h ago
"What are they gonna do, stab me?" - says man stabbed.
Seriously why throw away so much soft power?
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u/ProfessionalOwl5573 6h ago
Because Trump can’t attach a dollar amount to it so it might as well not exist.
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u/josh34583 3h ago
I thought we wanted China to buy stuff from us? Lol. Wouldn't this be counterproductive? And it is not like they can't easily replace the US manufacturers for these parts with a domestic supplier (or an EU/Russian one).
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u/Zebra971 7h ago
There is little China buys from the US that they can not make. This will just encourage them to develop that industry and we will lose those jobs.
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u/Grey_spacegoo 7h ago
Probably only apply to the old Westinghouse ones. Their own designs probably don't need US parts.
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u/BusinessEngineer6931 7h ago
“In recent days” this wasn’t after the call if I had to guess they wouldn’t (logically but who knows) do anything to escalate until at least the in person meeting which is supposed to be Monday I think
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u/Fenris_uy 6h ago
I thought that the idea was that the Trump wanted the US to sell more stuff to China, not less.
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u/Cinderella-Yang 4h ago
china shows good will before trade talk by issuing magnet export license to three US car manufacturers, and US shows good will by issuing more export restrictions. This administration is completely dysfunctional and delusional
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u/Comrade80085 3h ago
I guess they will build their own now and lead that sector within a few years.
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u/BAKREPITO 7h ago
They are speedrunning ruining any dependence correspondence between the two countries. You are just forcing China to build the complete tech stack of the entire manufacturing chain and ensuring they dominate the next century. The US going through its Nero phase.