A Nuclear Startup Will Fold After Failing To Deliver Reactors That Run on Spent Fuel (technologyreview.com) 185
Transatomic Power, an MIT spinout that drew wide attention and millions in funding, is shutting down almost two years after the firm backtracked on bold claims for its design of a molten-salt reactor. From a report: The company, founded in 2011, plans to announce later today that it's winding down. Transatomic had claimed its technology could generate electricity 75 times more efficiently than conventional light-water reactors, and run on their spent nuclear fuel. But in a white paper published in late 2016, it backed off the latter claim entirely and revised the 75 times figure to "more than twice," a development first reported by MIT Technology Review. Those downgrades forced the company to redesign its system. That delayed plans to develop a demonstration reactor, pushing the company behind rival upstarts like TerraPower and Terrestrial Energy, says Leslie Dewan, the company's cofounder and chief executive. The longer timeline and reduced performance advantage made it harder to raise the necessary additional funding, which was around $15 million. "We weren't able to scale up the company rapidly enough to build a reactor in a reasonable time frame," Dewan says.
Where's thorium? (Score:1)
Re:Where's thorium? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
But I thought there were already "breeder reactors" that did this. How was this design different from them?
Re: (Score:2)
Four issues : Cost, oversight, nuclear weapons capabilities, and transportation logistics. Cost ought to get two slots, to signify how much of an issue it actually is. The others could be solved at great cost. The rub, renewables are cheaper.
Nuclear isn't going to disappear but the idea of expanding it "on a budget" to meet the world's local power needs while wasting abundant clean, cheap renewable energy just doesn't make actual real-world business sense.
Re:Where's thorium? (Score:5, Informative)
But I thought there were already "breeder reactors" that did this. How was this design different from them?
Old fashioned breeder reactors turn U-238 into plutonium. Although plutonium can be used as reactor fuel, it can also be used to make bombs. Furthermore, these reactors use fuel rods, and pressurized containers, and have the same complexity and safety problems as LWRs.
What makes this reactor different is that it doesn't make plutonium, it burns the fuel that in breeds in situ so no extra expensive reprocessing is needed, and it is an inherently safe design: It can't have a "meltdown" since it is already liquid, and it is not pressurized.
That is the theory. In practice, molten salt reactors don't have a very good track record.
Molten salt reactor [wikipedia.org]
Thorium is where it should be, ignored (Score:4, Informative)
Processing spent fuel as you suggest is extremely dirty and generates about 10x the amount of original waste, most of it highly radioactive.
People forget the US tried to reprocess fuel for a while, the location is a radioactive superfund site.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry but that's a lot of bollocks. Reprocessing does not generate 10x the amount of original waste. The final waste product is still very much the same the only difference is there's a hell of a lot of additional energy that is able to be extracted in the process which means per unit energy generated the final waste product is significantly reduced.
There's a reason sensible nuclear nations reprocess fuel. Of course the USA's interest in reprocessing was to extract plutonium for weapons manufacture, and tha
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Do you believe "reprocessing" is this magical process whereby the constituent elements are magically separated using no additional input materials?
To reprocess nuclear fuel you have to chemically separate the various elemental constituents. That chemical processing exposes the processing chemicals to the intense radiation of the fuel and creates radioactive fluids and the separative elements added to the process, often at far higher quantities. In 1966 when the US tried this the Company doing so disposed of
Re: (Score:2)
Just because someone polluted the environment in 1966 doesn't mean we should abandon the technology forever. This kind of thinking is exactly why our nuclear arsenal is 50 years old.
Re: (Score:2)
So just because we tried it, polluted a huge area and generated a couple hundred metric tons of contaminated material it's all good, we just didn't do it right that time?
Color me skeptical that in any system where cost is a consideration you're going to likely end up with a superfund site.
Reprocessing is hard and it generates a lot of waste material used in the reprocessing, that's just a fact of using chemical seperation processes. Is it worth generating 100 Tons of highly radioactive material to reprocess
Re: (Score:2)
So just because we tried it, polluted a huge area and generated a couple hundred metric tons of contaminated material it's all good, we just didn't do it right that time?
Yes. This is demonstrably true because other countries have managed to do reprocessing just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm astounded they don't use them in Antartica
I dunno about Antartica, but they have lots of them in Antarctica.
Re: (Score:2)
Color me skeptical
Fine.
Reprocessing is hard and it generates a lot of waste
Agreed.
Is it worth generating 100 Tons of highly radioactive material to reprocess a ton of nuclear material?
NOW we are having a discussion! :-)
It might be worth doing. The entire point of reprocessing is to produce highly dense highly radioactive material. It is easier to use and store than less dense less radioactive material. I do not know if it is worth it. But I DO know that freezing science in the year 1966 just because of their environmental policies is counterproductive.
So just because we tried it, polluted a huge area and generated a couple hundred metric tons of contaminated material it's all good, we just didn't do it right that time?
We sure didn't! 50 years ago the manufacture of steel dumped toxic chromium into waterways. Manufacturing pressure-treat
Re: (Score:2)
NOW we are having a discussion! :-)
It might be worth doing. The entire point of reprocessing is to produce highly dense highly radioactive material. It is easier to use and store than less dense less radioactive material. I do not know if it is worth it. But I DO know that freezing science in the year 1966 just because of their environmental policies is counterproductive.
Spent LWR fuel rods are are dense highly radioactive material. With the current 50 GWd/tonne burn-up rate each rod is about 1% plutonium and 5% fission products in a sealed solid package, very stable.
Using current dry cask storage practices all the spent fuel over the (extended) lifetime of all U.S. power reactors ever operated would fit in in 100 acre storage area. And since we are storing it that way right now, this costs nothing extra.
Re: (Score:2)
In 1966 when the US tried this
I'll take the French, UK, and India still doing it over your isolated example of a single USA failure. Interesting that you hold up the West Valley which operated only for a couple of years as the USA example, instead of e.g. Svahnnah River which was close to 10 times the reprocessing capacity, operated for 50 years, was closed less than a decade ago, and by your accounts should have flooded half of the country in nuclear waste by now ... but hasn't.
Re: (Score:2)
... instead of e.g. Svahnnah River which was close to 10 times the reprocessing capacity, operated for 50 years, was closed less than a decade ago, and by your accounts should have flooded half of the country in nuclear waste by now ... but hasn't.
Yeah, lets look at Savannah River Site [srs.gov]:
High-activity liquid waste is generated at SRS as by-products from the processing of nuclear materials for national defense, research and medical programs. The waste, totaling about 36 million gallons, is currently stored in 49 underground carbon-steel waste tanks grouped into two “tank farms” at SRS.
36 million gallons of high level liquid waste, prone to leaking and chemical reactions. Each of these one tank farm covers an area of 20 acres, or 40 acres total.
OTOH the entire lifetime output of all power reactors operating or ever operated in the U.S. could fit into a 100 acre dry cask storage field with generous cask spacing.
Re: (Score:2)
Being able to process English would be a great thing for the fake news editors to handle first. MIT spinout, really?
That's perfectly normal American English Technobabble and has been since the mid 1960s. (I personally encountered it quite a lot, especially with respect to the substantial collection of laser and holographic spinouts from the University of Michigan.)
These days "startup" is more common. But "spinout" is both still valid and more specific, as it identifies implies a single institutional sourc
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Why are nuclear fanboys still pushing debunked Thorium breeder technology that has been relegated to a scientific curiosity? The new messiah is SMR's.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx
Re: (Score:2)
not debunked at all, smarter countries than yours are doing them
Re: (Score:3)
Why is anyone wasting their time on this when there's thorium?
Their design does use thorium. The base salt is thorium fluoride. You heat up the salt till it melts, and then just mix in the nuclear waste, hook it up to a turbine, and presto, energy too cheap to meter.
Thorium salt reactors work GREAT in theory, and nerds tend to love them. In reality, there are ... problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Many of the processes required to utilize thorium (which is fertile, not fissile, but fertile at slow-spectrum which is interesting) can be applied to 238U at fast spectrum instead. EBR-II (IFR) demonstrated this. The main advantage of thorium is it's an abundant reserve source for making 233U (+232U, which makes it difficult to handle) if we can't find uranium anymore.
IIRC, a startup called Oklo is looking at reviving the EBR-II technology at very small scale, ~1-2MW, basically diesel generator replaceme
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, however there is also abundance of uranium and ready facilities to prepare uranium based fuel.
In detail, thorium is prevalent on land whilst uranium in oceans (estimated more in total than thorium) additionally considering existing infrastructure and equipment to mine/process and prepare power plant ready fuel rods and all the paperwork related to build a new power plant it is simply cheaper to build something close to existing solutions then to push for a novelty. Some government studies and research
So What? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are around 50 nuclear startups designing 4th generation reactors. Some were always going to fail. In fact most will probably fail. Some will succeed though.
NuScale is the closest to market. Their design has already passed NRC phase 1 review, and it has been certified as meltdown proof. They will be constructing their first 12 reactors in Idaho for Utah municipalities. Hopefully in a decade they will be mass producing them like airplanes.
How's that work (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Gas is dirty. I do not understand why you do not understand that. Climate change is real. Air Pollution is real. Also gas is expensive for the consumer.
Have you met the average consumer? If you tell them that this "clean energy" will only cost them twice as much most won't approve. It has to be directly cheaper then natural gas. For us engineers that's nuts, but then again I accepted long ago that most people are stupid and short sighted.
As a resident of Utah I enjoy pretty cheap power and solar is a very viable option with about a 10-year payoff rate. So it'll be a hard sell to convince people that it's worth the risk of putting in a Nuclear Reactor anywh
Re: (Score:3)
Have you met the average consumer? If you tell them that this "clean energy" will only cost them twice as much most won't approve.
Eventually the USA will join the 1st world and stop ignoring externalised costs, the "average consumer" will actually pay for the real cost of electricity and not only opt for the green choice, but maybe start doing something to actively bring the horrid energy consumption per household of the USA down to more reasonable levels.
Re: (Score:3)
Nice USA bash. "America is the suck." HOWEVER the 1st world includes the European Union and Japan, both of whom are shutting-down nuclear plants (after the 2011 earthquake released a bunch of radioactivity).
Re: (Score:2)
Nice USA bash. "America is the suck."
No. I don't bash anyone. I do criticise however. The USA has a fascination with energy waste mostly driven by the insanely low cost of energy. It's the fundamental economic principle behind it. Humans the world over will opt for comfort and convenience. Just in much of the world where energy is taxed to clean up the externalised costs it's more expensive so people take more care of it.
HOWEVER the 1st world includes the European Union and Japan
Countries where cars get significantly higher mileage and are used far less (cost of gasoline 4x higher than the USA). And b
Re: (Score:2)
Wind and solar power sources are cheaper than nuclear, coal, NG, etc. Try telling people they need to pay more for nuclear and fossil fuel power.
Re: (Score:2)
Solar and wind are about $1000/kilowatt so much cheaper (and getting cheaper every day).
Solar and wind energy costs about $20/MWh so much cheaper (and getting cheaper every day).
Batteries to smooth production and protect the grid pay for themselves so no extra cost.
Solar and wind are proven technologies which can be installed in running in less than a year compared to nuclear research projects which may or may not produce electricity decades from now. Why even try?
Re: (Score:2)
Batteries to smooth production and protect the grid pay for themselves so no extra cost.
Nope. You are just looking at that tesla load balancing battery in Australia. Scale that u
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear is 100% clean if you don't count the nuclear waste.
It's not just Australia, batteries pay for themselves everywhere. Nobody needs 100% grid storage anywhere.
Nuclear is proven to be very expensive. Long lead times, overruns on costs. Even old nuclear plants can't compete with wind and solar.
Climate change is real. Wind, solar and batteries are proven technologies which can be installed in less than a year. Why waste money on nuclear (Votgle, I'm looking at you) when you can have a solution this year,
Re: (Score:2)
Then why has Germany failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity production? They have spent a quarter of a trillion euros on renewables with very little to show for it(except of course the highest energy prices in Europe). Their electricity grid pollutes 10x as much as France does.
Nobody needs 100% grid storage anywhere.
If you do not have 100% grid storage it means you are running on something other than renewables. In germany it is coal, in California it is natural gas. We should be using nuclear since it is cleaner than co
Re: How's that work (Score:2)
https://news.stanford.edu/2018... [stanford.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
Citing Jacobson eh? You do know he is a snake oil salesman? The National academy of sciences has discredited his work. Read the article here [pnas.org]
In particular, we point out that this work used invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions. Policy makers should treat with caution any visions of a rapid, reliable, and low-cost transition to entire energy systems that relies almost exclusively on wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.
Jacobson is a con man.
Re: (Score:2)
If you are familiar with that hit piece from people funded by Exxon, Ford Motors, and other fossil and nuclear fuel advocates, etc. then you should also be familiar with Jacobsons reply.
http://www.pnas.org/content/11... [pnas.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah his reply was an ad hominem attack followed by a lawsuit. Filing lawsuits against other scientists is why I started calling him a snake oil salesman. His reply did not address any of the criticism of the original article. Jacobson's and your opposition to nuclear energy is emotional.
MIT scientists just released analysis saying we will need nuclear energy. Climate scientist James Hansen called Nuclear energy "the only viable path forward on climate change." Maybe you should try to understand why
Re: (Score:2)
If only nuclear could get its act together, it might be viable. As it is, it's just too expensive to matter. The latest nuclear fiasco is the Votgle plant in Georgia which is on the precipice of being cancelled. It started as a $7 billion project and is now up to $32 billion with no end in sight (and, of course, many years late).
The latest nuclear darling NuScale, is thinking it might be able to start producing electricity ten years from now (and no word on costs).
We can't wait ten years to start producing
Re: (Score:2)
Actually $28 billion which comes out to $14 billion per reactor. Not a bad deal considering the reactors will last 100+ years. Of course the Chinese built an AP 1000 in five years so it can be done. Nuclear energy should be thought of as a public works projects and should be subsidized(like solar and wind). The cost of the reactors in insignificant when compared to the cost of climate change or the costs of batteries.
NuScale is forced to wait years before they are even allowed to start construction.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
when the wiki page says gas plants cost $1900/kilowatt [wikipedia.org] vs $5000/kilowatt.... That's the only part I don't get. Is this just building in alternative sources for better grid reliability?
Grid reliability and fuel diversity is part of the equation, but nuclear can have lower operating costs due to the extremely cheap fuel. Now, a nuclear plant does require far greater staffing than a combustion plant, but that doesn't eat up all the savings of cheap uranium fuel.
A large nuclear power plant with efficient staffing is a huge money maker in most (not all) parts of the US and the world.
Hype (Score:3, Interesting)
There are around 50 nuclear startups designing 4th generation reactors. Some were always going to fail. In fact most will probably fail.
No there are lots of them CLAIMING to be developing new reactor designs. Some of them might actually be working on the problem even. Curiously we've seen zero of these actually make it to market.
Some will succeed though.
There is no guarantee of that.
NuScale is the closest to market.
Maybe. Best info I can find says they hope to have an operational reactor in 2024 [nuscalepower.com] and that was their projection in 2013. That means optimistically they might have something to show 6+ years from now. Not exactly cause for excitement.
Their design has already passed NRC phase 1 review, and it has been certified as meltdown proof.
NRC phase 1 review is a "Preliminary Safety Evalu [nrc.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Approves Key Safety Aspect to NuScale Powerâ(TM)s Advanced Reactor Design
From the fine press release, "The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has concluded that application of NuScale Powerâ(TM)s novel safety design approach eliminates the need for class 1E power for its small modular reactor (SMR)." OK, so they've signed off on one aspect of the design. The PR goes on to say that "the NRCâ(TM)s final report approving the design is expected to be complete by September 2020." That was approval of a feature, not the design. Get back to use when they have design app
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone claiming that something is "meltdown proof" is a charlatan.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It didn't meltdown under one specific test. That doesn't make it meltdown proof.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They tried one method to make it melt down. You may recall that the Chernobyl disaster was due to some idiot running an experiment, not just loss of the cooling system as they tested.
Re: (Score:2)
Human error remains a problem (Score:2)
It cannot meltdown. They proved it. The reactor was designed to have a negative thermal coefficient of reactivity making meltdowns impossible.
No they did not prove it for all conceivable circumstances. They proved it for SOME conditions and methods with a specific reactor design. Your argument assumes that there is no chance of that reactor design being incorrectly engineered, no chance of improper construction or maintenance, no chance of external damage (natural disasters, war, etc), and that in all other ways the reactor cannot be compromised to induce that failure mode. And even if a meltdown were indeed impossible that's not the only poss
Re: (Score:2)
Failure modes (Score:2)
Yet we have had provable meltdown proof reactors since the 1980's. See Experimental Breeder Reactor II
You should read your link. They did tests to see if the reactor would not melt down under specific circumstances. This is a far different thing than proving it is "meltdown proof" under all circumstances. Passive fail-safe cooling systems are a good thing but they only solve some of the dangers presented by fission power plants. Furthermore just because they are in place does not mean they still cannot fail due to flaws in engineering, construction, maintenance, natural disasters, or physical damage.
You
Re: (Score:2)
Risk analysis (Score:2)
If you listen to the scientists at that lab they said the EBRII could not meltdown under any circumstances.
Find me a quote of any scientist claiming that meltdowns were impossible under "any circumstances". That's just obviously bullshit unless you are talking about specific conditions. It assumes no engineering flaws, no manufacturing flaws, proper maintenance, no external disasters or attacks, etc. They did some tests which the reactor passed but that isn't remotely the same thing as being safe in all conditions. Furthermore a meltdown is NOT the only failure mode of concern. There are a lot of still very
Re: (Score:2)
Find me a quote of any scientist claiming that meltdowns were impossible
Watch this silly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp1Xja6HlIU [youtube.com] Goto 4:25 to hear him say it cannot meltdown. Suck it.
insurance companies
Insurance companies. So your argument against solving climate change is wall st made a bad bet 50 years ago? That is silly. If wall st insurance let energy companies by insurance they would have made nothing but money for decades.
Even if you eliminate meltdowns as a failure mode entirely that doesn't mean nuclear is 100% safe.
Nothing is perfect, but if you consider current nuclear is safer than solar and wind. That means next generation nuclear is safer than just about anything els
Re: (Score:2)
There are around 50 nuclear startups designing 4th generation reactors. Some were always going to fail. In fact most will probably fail. Some will succeed though.
NuScale is the closest to market. Their design has already passed NRC phase 1 review, and it has been certified as meltdown proof. They will be constructing their first 12 reactors in Idaho for Utah municipalities. Hopefully in a decade they will be mass producing them like airplanes.
I challenge you to back that "50 nuclear startups" with anything.
NuScale does at least exist (unlike the just shuttered Transatomic) and has done enough work to pass a design review, and to get a license to start looking for sites at the Idaho National Laboratory (but not for any actual site), and so yes, this is farther along than any of the others.
But I went Googling to check whether these projects existed anywhere but as NuScale press releases on their own website -- like on the websites of the purported
Re: (Score:2)
I challenge you to back that "50 nuclear startups" with anything.
Third way mapped out 48 different startups. https://public.tableau.com/profile/third.way#!/vizhome/AdvancedNuclearIndustry_TheNextGeneration/Dashboard1 [tableau.com] That took less than 30 second on google. I take it you cannot use google. 47 startups now that transatomic has shuttered.
You are wrong about several other statements in your crazy person rant.
NuScale just picked a manufacture. [morningconsult.com] 83 companies expressed interest. That would not happen if it was not really going to be built. Also congress just pas [arstechnica.com]
Re:So What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a look at the CEO and you will see why the editors are interested in this.
Isn't it great that women are learning how to overpromise and underdeliver? That used to be the exclusive domain of tall men with chiseled jaws named Chad. Equality. Isn't it grand?
At least this one didn't resort to fraudulent activity. She's a role model!
Re: (Score:2)
I'm fine with equality. It's good even. It's the absolute nut-ballers demanding equity that concern me. Equality of outcome is an unobtainable toxic trap that the mentally unsound are trying to drag everyone into. I'm still pissed they've got their hooked into the Linux foundation.
Re: (Score:2)
You haven't proven that any will succeed any more than you've defined success.
You could say that about any innovation. Internal combustion--you're going to deliberately set off thousands of explosions inside a sealed, iron box? Steam power? Microprocessors? Fire itself?
Imagine the first person who proposed "we're going to build a boat out of steel and it's not going to sink!" It's ludicrous! Steel is expensive. And everyone knows metal sinks and wood floats. Why on God's green Earth would you make a boat out of steel instead of good old fashioned wood?!? I'm not going to listen until
Physics wins again! (Score:1)
The momentum of the regulatory structure is impressive.
Well (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Although, molten salt does remain (eventually) a viable idea.
Eventually when? When we've got some kind of unobtainium lining to contain the molten salt effectively, unlike now?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
At least I don't hide behind a monicker.
Ok, DaMattster.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
eh, it's technically possible (and a done deal) to use spent fuel or even depleted uranium or natural uranium in certain types of reactors, and to get many times the energy out of said fuel than a PWR could do.
Re: (Score:3)
it's technically possible (and a done deal) to use spent fuel or even depleted uranium or natural uranium in certain types of reactors, and to get many times the energy out of said fuel than a PWR could do.
Yes, but it requires special equipment and special handling, and it still can't be done cost-effectively.
Re: (Score:2)
What are you talking about, seven countries use CANDU reactors, there are 31 around the world in use and more are being built.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
you are the one making incorrect assumptions, in this case that the difficulties of a couple countries with low aptitude in recycling fuel applies to all.
CANDU are using reprocessed fuel in China and Canada.
France has been recovering uranium for decades.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
There are 12 sites in the world that do it, besides France done in China, UK, India, Pakistan and Russia. Reprocessed fuel is sold commercially and used the world over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Already can reuse spent fuel... (Score:2)
The DUPIC fuel cycle allows for the direct reuse of PWR fuel in CANDU heavy water reactors. The only thing required is mechanical modification of the PWR fuel bundles so that they fit into the CANDU fuel channels.
Lead Scientists Admits Error (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:turns out science is hard (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather that money be spent/wasted on failed attempts at getting us off of fossil fuels when the math indicates that the idea might work, than to continue to burn hydrocarbon fuel for stationary power plants.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'd rather that money be spent/wasted on failed attempts at getting us off of fossil fuels when the math indicates that the idea might work, than to continue to burn hydrocarbon fuel for stationary power plants.
I'd rather not nurture your false dichotomy, and suggest instead using the money to improve and implement already-proven technologies like wind and solar.
Re: (Score:2)
"I thought the MIT kids were smarter than that."
And they are. They've managed to find gullible enough investors as to live la vida loca for eigth years in a row.
*And* they'll probably will manage to paint their "failure" as an advantage because of "the lessons learnt" for their next gig.
Re: (Score:3)
Right. The basic design principles were perfectly well-understood 60 years ago. No one is going to come along and improve the efficiency by a factor of 75. It's a claim that anyone with any sort of technical knowledge, not even specific knowledge of nuclear energy, would reject out of hand. It was bullshit for dimwitted financial types and loony environmentalists, some of whom apparently took the bait.
Re:turns out science is hard (Score:5, Insightful)
claims two orders of magnitude improvements in anything are probably bullshit
Normally I'd agree, but in this case the 10^2 improvement is largely based on the horrific inefficiency of our current fleet of solid-fuel, water moderated nukes, which is something like 0.7%. The vast majority of this efficiency gain is due to the liquid-fuel design (in this case, molten salt), which allows fuel to be reprocessed on the fly, whereas "traditional" nukes use solid fuel rods which degrade over time, and become unusable long before their energy content is anywhere near used up.
Other molten salt designs are under development, such as LFTR, which have similar claims on improved efficiency. The main difference is that this one (WAMSR) was supposed to be able to burn up existing stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel. Apparently that particular trick turned out to be more difficult than they anticipated.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with any theoretical design is the same, it's untested. Pebble bed and molten salt reactors are a interesting idea but are untested, until someone builds one we don't even know if they will work. The molten sodium (the salt) used in your particular example has a tendency to burn quite fiercely when exposed to oxygen and fires and nuclear material are catastrophic failure.
Re: (Score:3)
Much of the problems I attribute here to politics and impatience - the funding dries up when folks just get impatient that progress isn't occurring. It's understandable, but sometimes there are HARD problems that need a lot of time and money to solve, yet the payback will be worth it in the long run. Nuclear frequently ticks that mark IMO. I don't think our (US) investment climate is compatible with this much.
A old letter posted by Will Davis @atomicnews today - http://ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_en
Re:turns out science is hard (Score:4, Interesting)
molten salt reactors are a interesting idea but are untested
Molten salt reactors are proven technology. They ran one at Oak Ridge for thousands of hours back in the 1960s [wikipedia.org]. There's a ton of info about this online, such as this lecture [youtu.be] from a few years ago about LFTR [wikipedia.org]. The Chinese currently have the most active (and best funded) program in this area. With any luck we might see a commercial product from them in the next few years, which could be a real game changer.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If by proven you means experimented with but no actual safety, reliability, cost or power generating capability analysis done.
Running a little experimental reactor for a couple years tells you nothing about the commercial viability let alone safety. One of the biggest problems with "molten salt" or liquid sodium reactors is that if the reaction vessel holding this mix of highly radioactive sodium and uranium mixture is every directly exposed to water or oxygen it will explode, burn and fill the atmosphere w
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Running a little experimental reactor for a couple years tells you nothing about the commercial viability let alone safety.
Pardon my French: horseshit. Obviously we build smaller ones on the way toward building bigger ones -- whether it be nukes or jets or whatever -- it's called engineering.
One of the biggest problems with "molten salt" or liquid sodium reactors is that if the reaction vessel holding this mix of highly radioactive sodium and uranium mixture is every directly exposed to water or oxygen it will explode, burn and fill the atmosphere with a highly radioactive cloud of burning sodium which will then rain down on the surrounding countryside
You seem to be conflating molten salt with molten sodium. They are completely different. Sodium by itself is highly reactive, whereas sodium chloride (though somewhat corrosive) is quite stable. If you hit a LFTR with a bunker-buster bomb, it would indeed spray radioactive molten salt around the countryside. But it would rapidly solidify an
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to be conflating molten salt with molten sodium. They are completely different. Sodium by itself is highly reactive, whereas sodium chloride (though somewhat corrosive) is quite stable. If you hit a LFTR with a bunker-buster bomb, it would indeed spray radioactive molten salt around the countryside. But it would rapidly solidify and fall to the ground, where it would be easy to find with a geiger counter. (Unlike radioactive steam which just floats away...)
Maybe you should investigate the chemical composition, it's not molten NaCl. It's typically a lithium flouride or berylium flouride based salt as in previous designs, though the recent tendency in these designs has been to super heated liquid sodium for heat transfer.
The reason for that pressure vessel is because water boils at 100C, and nuclear reactors are just getting warmed up around 400C. So a water-cooled reactor needs plumbing that can handle 150 atmospheres of pressure, just so they can run the reac
Re: (Score:2)
From what I read, which admittedly isn't much, the primary concern to be addressed with in molten salt reactors is the fact that it is highly corrosive. Which means that they won't last as long as conventional reactors, and require costly maintenance to keep in service for any reasonable lifespan to be feasible. I think much of the other problems have been addressed or at least mitigated to some degree, but that primary one is still the thorn that keeps it largely on paper.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
All that was done with the Integral Fast Reactor in the 90's. It ran well for a couple years before being defunded by Gore and his allies.
This company failed for business reasons, not theoretical ones.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean that little 62MW demo plant they built?
It worked okay but after what happened in Japan no one is going back to that design. No, not Fukushima, Monjou. Numerous attempts, numerous failures including some quite serious accidents. Liquid sodium will spontaneously ignite on contact with air, and explode on contact with water so fire control is a bit of a problem, and of course they had just such a fire.
In the end it just proved too problematic and costly to bother with, and decommissioning is going to
Re: (Score:2)
No, pebble bed was very much tested. Turns out it produced massive amounts of Strontium-90 dust, clogging up the reactor and even escaping into the ground water.
And as pointed out below, molten salt has it's own problems with a highly chemically reactive coolant. I don't know about you, but the potential of a leak leading to coolant boiling away in chemical reactions does not fill me with a strong sense of safety; after Fukushima the nuke fanbois tried to sell us on molten salt because the heat absorption c
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the link! I've been a fan of Sorensen's for many years, but I didn't know he was working on using SNF now too. I don't know enough about TransAtomic's approach to critique it, but your points all make sense to me. My only nitpick would be the reason why molten salt is the enabling factor in the efficiency gains: your argument is that salts don't mind getting smacked around in the neutron flux (they remain chemically stable); whereas I would say the key factor is that liquids are more chemically m
Re: (Score:2)
Canada itself has stopped building CANDU reactors. Its last one (Darlington 4) was started construction 30 June 1985, which is 1/3 of a century ago.
Re: (Score:2)