3 ms·
>Molten salt reactors in particular are supposed to be able to adjust to demand within a minute or so. Nobody is making these commercially and the SMR companie
by adamsmith143 5y ago
>Molten salt reactors in particular are supposed to be able to adjust to demand within a minute or so.
Nobody is making these commercially and the SMR companies out there are making standard pressurized water reactors afaik.
- DennisP 5y agoA bunch of companies are developing molten salt reactors commercially, including Terrestrial Energy, Moltex, Elysium, Seaborg, Thorcon, and Terrapower.
- EricE 5y agoAnd if a fraction of the funding that was dumped on frivolous "renewables" in the last 20 years (Solara? Ha - tip of the iceberg for waste!) was instead spent on new reactor designs we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Which is probably why nuclear continues to be demonized. Follow the money...
- adamsmith143 5y agoThe last plant built in the US was the Watts Bar Unit 2, estimated cost around 6.1B USD for ~1.1 GW of output and construction took over 40 years. Average cost for Solar is something like 2-3$/watt. Follow the money indeed.
- ncmncm 5y agoSolara failed purely because cost for the competition dropped well below theirs. It was an honest business failure, like many others; and ultimately good news for the rest of us. They burned through $1/2 billion. Nukes always burn much more; US subsidies are more, every year, for equal value in the end. Harping on Solara only calls attention to nukes' overwhelmingly worse performance. Nukes are "demonized" because they cost overwhelming more than alternatives.
- adamsmith143 5y agoCommercially usually means they are actually outputting things. Lftrs have been hyped since like 2010 and I don't think any new molten salt reactor has made any net power on the grid since then. From what I could tell of the companies you listed not a single one even has a demo reactor and the earliest ones are slated for years from now.
- DennisP 5y agoSo you wouldn't define pre-release tech startups as commercial? Ok. They have investors who hope for profits, call them what you like. None of these projects are LFTRs. They're generally uranium-fueled, which retains the safety and cost advantages of MSRs without the radioactive chemical engineering of LFTRs. Terrestrial Energy, to take one example, has been doing well with regulators in Canada, and plans to operate a 390MW plant in 2028: https://www.powermag.com/terrestrial-energy-launches-390-mw-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-design/ https://www.powermag.com/terrestrial-energy-launches-390-mw-... So yes, years away, but not that many years.
- adamsmith143 5y agoWell forgive the pessimism but these claims feel awfully like "Fusion is just 30 years away" which people have been saying for 50 years.