From Forbes:
Nuclear Power Turns To Salt
Today, the United States Department of Energy announced that its Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee is partnering with Canadian nuclear company Terrestrial Energy Inc. (TEI) to assist with TEI’s new Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR). The engineering blueprint stage for this GenIV reactor should be reached in two years. The reactor should come online in less than ten.
Think of it: a nuclear reactor that
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- is cheaper than coal
- creates much less waste and few long-lived radioactive elements
- uses almost all of the fuel which lasts 7 years between replacement, and can be recycled easily
- is modular, from 80 MWt to 600 MWt, able to be combined and adapted to individual needs for both on and off-grid heat and power
- is small enough to allow fast and easy construction, and trucking to the site
- operates at normal pressures, removing those safety issues, and at higher temperatures making it more energetically efficient
- has the type of passive safety systems that make it walk-away safe
- does not need external water for cooling
- can load-follow rapidly to buffer the intermittency of renewables
- cannot be repurposed for military use and has strong proliferation resistance
- can last for many decades
- uses a liquid fuel
Now that is different!
Nuclear power has been biding its time, waiting for the new round of reactors to bring the industry into the 21st Century so we can address our numerous environmental and energy challenges. This announcement is a good step in that direction.
Thorium does not go Ka-Boom so nuclear companies that were also invested in selling nuclear bomb parts (General Electric and Raytheon) had zero interest in developing a second processing chain.
Line item #3: uses almost all of the fuel is often overlooked. Uranium reactors poison the fuel after about 30% of it has been consumed. It is those isotopes that require the 10,000+ year sequestration. What is really neat is that the Thorium reactors can process this waste and burn up the worlds existing waste stores and use them as additional fuel.
It is almost like this was put out here for us to discover... More faster please!
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