Good job on your talk. Well done and polished answers to nagging questions. Good deal to build a hot salt reserve with a 500mw plant that can handle 1500mw. Its what California needs right now but they will never do it with the idiotic governor they have saddled themselves with. I can see 2 250mw plants built in a factory, able to produce zenon gas on demand as well as many other reactor produced material. I can see two small 250mw plants feeding a 1500mw storage area and keeping the cost down to 1/2 needed to stay in business. To have these ready to receive chopped uranium cores next year. Give us your hottest material and we will safe it with neutrons.
Excellent talk. One very interesting point about SMR's in general, and this one in particular, is the low cost of building the nuclear side. Because the very complex and expensive engineered safety systems are not needed, this plant should be a delight to build, commission, and operate!
Renewables can only offset some fuel costs of a reliable electricity source. If that reliable source is nuclear ( very low fuel costs) there is no point in the renewables, they just add cost, complexity and land use.
They can't even pay for the little bit of fuel they save. The intermittency renewables introduce to the grid makes the necessary backup sources much less efficient. That's why they depend on perverse incentives like the wind production tax credit that pays reliable sources to shut down whenever the unreliable renewable sources happen to be producing anything. Moreover, renewables consume orders of magnitude more raw materials and land to build while having a much shorter lifespan than any other energy system.
@@phamnuwen9442 This is the juncture where both environmentalism and conservationism start butting heads. If you only endorse renewables (especially solar and wind), you cannot be both. For me responsibility not only means curbing climate change but also making the most using as little resource as possible.
@@ManOfLore1 Climate change is a vastly exaggerated issue, but if you care about it, the only way to reduce emissions in a significant way is nuclear. We still need to increase the amount of fossil fuels we consume because nuclear can't be scaled up fast enough to provide the entire world with cheap, reliable energy in a reasonably short timeframe. At least not with current nuclear regulations and political interference. Whenever climate alarmists start advocating for dramatic deregulation of nuclear development and the construction of new reactors, I will consider taking them seriously.
Love this design as it abandon pipe dream others have about reactors being made in fabric in vast quantities. It is simple and cheap without economy of scale.
excellent presentation. One point that comes to my mind with respect to the grid reserve that it would also allow to add extra (or 'emergency') peak capacity by natural gas (or other, in the future possibly synthetic fuels) burner at very little cost. I remember this point was often also made for CSP versus photovoltaics (after the general reserve capacity). So in the case of an overall lack of electricity lasting for longer than the reserve salt capacity can handle, one could supply the heat and still have a 1500MW output for a sustained time. Certainly not a goal to do so on a regular basis (efficiency will no be on level with CCGT and yes, its not carbon free in the first place), but if it is for a few days of dead calm and cloud in winter in a year or really just as an emergency plan to avoid a blackout, it seems like a valid addition in comparison to holding an entire gas peaker plant on standby. Now it all boils down to how grid operators are willing to remunerate such services or if the free market prices offer enough incentive to do so. For sure if one would plan to use that on a more regular basis, adding a full gas turbine is also an option, since its exhaust gas temperatures could fit the input required to the energy conversion system of the SSR pretty well, but that would somehow defeat the idea of having an SSR in the first place, and certainly be a serious addition in terms of capital cost.
The question that some people ask like me, is what is the resistance of all construction and thermal transfer materials to the chemical corrosion of salt at very high temperature (700°) over a very long period of time (7 or 8 years)? Is that not the main difficulty for an operational MSR? Do you have some clues and certainty regarding this major question? Thank you for your answer
I believe salt is only corrosive when in contact with moisture, which if kept a trace levels should prevent significant corrosion. The advantage of a stable salt reactor is even further minimisation of corrosion risk, due to not needing to circulate the radioactive salt around the vessel where joints and fitting are present. Fuel pins here can be milled from a solid piece of metal, and replaced on an individual basis.
I love the idea of MSR or LFTR. All the graphs I've seen doesn't show the improvements to wind and solar to even come close to the worlds energy requirements especially in developing countries. Plus both need a lot of land that can't really be multi-use, as in farming. With coal and gas, both release known pollutants and small amounts of radioactive materials when mined and burned. I find it interesting that hardly no one talks about the radioactive parts of coal and gas. LFTR's on the other hand could be made smaller, easier, safer and less expensive than current nuclear plants. Another benefit is they can burn the nuclear fuel that is from the older plants. There would be less waste and shorter half life than current spent fuels. My big concern is China has taken the lead in this technology using the work from ORNL. The US and others should be doing this as well but China has been putting the money into building a plant. Everyone knows the R&D is what cost the most and China is willing to spend the money to control the technology.
Looks like they really changed the design! The reactor is a circular one now. Had a look at their website and they changed that too. The square design is nowhere to be found. No technical data anymore on the site. Does anybody have any more info on the new design? Really curious why they changed it. Their theory on the square core sounded quite logical. Better scalable and a more modular approach.
Probably to counteract neutron leakage. Every deviation from a perfect sphere is a sacrifice in neutrons. Originally, Dr Scott felt the sacrifice was worth it in order to make it easier to scale. Priorities have changed.
@RiverBlue11 You're probably not using the correct terms, but I think I get what you're getting at. If you want to transmute elements, you would put a "blanket" around where the fission reaction takes place. This would catch the neutrons escaping the reaction area and use them to make new elements. Blankets have been used in scientific research reactors to produce medical isotopes. Or in weapons reactors to produce nuclear weapons isotopes like plutonium-239. You can put a blanket around any reactor design. From cubic to the spherical. The question is as always, how do you put the transmutation target in, and how do you get it out. The original Oak Ridge 2 fluid molten salt reactor proposed design had a fluid blanket of thorium rich molten salt that would be separated by graphite tubing. In the Moltex concept (the old, square one) you could simply make the outer assemblies the transmutation targets while the middle of the reactor assemblies are filled with reactor fuel. In this new concept, (the cylindrical one) you would again, have the middle assemblies be filled with reactor fuel and undergo fission. Then the outer assemblies closer to the reactor vessel wall would be the transmutation targets. Blankets are however, frowned upon in modern reactor designs because the IAEA does not like their potential to produce nuclear weapons material. I don't think Moltex would put a blanket in. Instead they would probably line the reactor walls with a neutron reflector. You could do this with tons of lead, or more cheaply (and more structurally sound), slabs of stainless steel. Steel that is thick enough can actually reflect neutrons: www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power-plant/nuclear-reactor/neutron-reflector/ This would improve neutron economy by reducing losses of neutrons flying away into the walls of the reactor vessel.
@RiverBlue11 I mean, this kind of science isn't being obstructed. It's being researched and developed right now. The question is as always around funding. I have serious doubts as to the viability of venture capital in being able to bring this reactor to full scale. That's just not how VC operates. Every vampire capitalist wants a quick project to make a quick buck on, often within 2-3 years. And if they find out the project isn't working, they would hire marketing firms to hype the company up, force the company into a share offering, pump the price, then dump his share. We have seen this hundreds of times with tech startups. I think Moltex is also receiving government funding so this deadly fate might be avoidable but it would still massively set Moltex back if a VC did a pump and dump on it. As for your idea about neutron "gates", that's not how it works. When neutrons are discussed, they are not considered in terms of individual particles. Billions of neutrons are created per second that a fission reaction proceeds. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_flux The direction and the amount of neutrons per second that a reaction kicks off is completely random. It is impossible to design a "gate" that individually catches, or releases, a single neutron. You could only do that if you had a particle accelerator that produced and redirected a single neutron. This is not practical to run a reactor. In a reactor you can only put things in a general direction of where you expect neutrons to be coming from. So in a real life reactor, you expect a lot of neutrons to be escaping _radially_ - that is to say, streaming out from the centre of the reactor out the sides. So a lot of reactors, would use _radial reflectors_ to stop neutron loss. See this picture of the ORNL High Flux Isotope Reactor design: neutrons.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/HFIR-reflector-and-fuel-element.jpg You can see that the reflector surrounds the core like a nut might encircle a bolt. There are no gates, no chambers, no sorters. Just sheer volume of material all around the core. It just isn't possible to predict every single neutron kicked off by a fission reaction to then position a catcher or reflector in time.
@RiverBlue11 no worries. If you ever have the time, look into this free online lecture series on radiation, nuclear science, physics of nuclear fission, and applications of nuclear science: ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-01-introduction-to-nuclear-engineering-and-ionizing-radiation-fall-2016/lecture-videos/index.htm The course is heavy on the medical side because that's the professor's speciality but there's a lot of info on the basics.
The designers consulted with both nuclear regulators and reactor designers and engineers with long experience in the field. The square design was eliminated for simplicity. Less machinery that can break down in the fuel shunting process, particularly in the core where maintenance would have to be carried out by remote control and thus be very expensive and complicated. The fewer moving parts and maintenance issues you need to have with a nuclear core, the better.
I think the SSR-W with Grid Reseve is a brilliant idea. With any sane regulations it will become the best and most economical way to generate electricity AND process heat. What can we in the general public do to help? Where can we invest to most help? (USA in my case.)
Negative prices for electricity are an artifact of subsidies for solar power, combined with a lack of investment in loads that can benefit from mid day power. If the reactors can be commercialized, and thermal grid storage proves practical, the cost variation throughout the day will drop significantly. But aren't almost all of the concentrating solar projects shut down due to high maintenance costs?
I found this out somewhere later. Yes it was partly due to the fuel shuffling, but also that from a regulatory perspective their modular brick design didn't work. Each size of reactor would have to be certified from scratch as a new reactor. This meant they essentially had to pick a single size and run with it and a circular core has better neutronics.
Chloride salts are very interesting due to the high solubility of many actinides of interest. But the more complex chemistry of chloride salts compared to flouride salts seems to have been a barrier to their use in the past. I was doing some research into the heat transfer characteristics of these salts and found very little besides a detailed PhD dissertation describing an experiment into convection for a few specific chloride salts. I am very interested in reading about progress from moltex in developing usable chloride salts.
It's a half way step towards thorium molten salt reactor, but better than a regular nuclear reactors, removing the water 👍 Still not clear on how many generations of humans will be burdened by managing this waist. I know IP patents are how things are done, but sometimes they can be used as road blocks, which makes me nervous for such an important emerging field. Proliferation concerns of uranium might prevent the small modularity capability of these units from being deploy in manufacturing facility to help reduce carbon output.
All generations of past reactors were the product of teams of engineers and regulators that assured the public that they had taken into consideration all elements of failure and environmental contamination. Just because a person is totally confident in themselves doesn't mean that there was some elements that they overlooked. Most people gravitate to those who project a great deal of confidence in themselves.
Excellent and fascinating but... please stop smacking your lips (making a loud "tut" noise) at the start of your paragraphs, as it makes me turn off mentally - I can't bear it!
I’m in favor of GEN IV SMRs, a great deal of R&D must be spent to produce an economical, sustainable and safe system. I consider any advancement in developing fission and fusion power worth it.
After looking at the others, I believe Moltex is the best design. No flibe means no tritium (which enviros hate). Because they use chloride salts. And the grid reserve just kicks butt because it's already thermal (you can't do that with electrical, like from solar because you lose the ⅔rds converting that heat back into electricity. So batteries are better for solar and molten salts for nuclear. This is exactly what I was thinking earlier but I thought they'd use Tesla style batteries for storing electricity. But molten salt is still cheaper.
@@fireofenergy Any high-temperature nuclear reactor design can use the same kind of thermal storage strategy, it's not exclusive to Moltex. I think the Elysium Industries is quite a bit better, no fuel processing needed and the modularity is much better, check them out. They have several presentations on youtube.
@@fireofenergy I have no idea what you're talking about. Any high-temperature reactor can put in a clean salt loop heat exchange and use the same storage method.
Nuclear Power has an extreme schedule and costs issues which must be overcome. Plant Vogtle in Georgia is 10 years and 5x the budget overrun. If these take 10 years to bring online, Renewables + Battery Storage will be far cheaper.
Good job on your talk. Well done and polished answers to nagging questions. Good deal to build a hot salt reserve with a 500mw plant that can handle 1500mw. Its what California needs right now but they will never do it with the idiotic governor they have saddled themselves with. I can see 2 250mw plants built in a factory, able to produce zenon gas on demand as well as many other reactor produced material. I can see two small 250mw plants feeding a 1500mw storage area and keeping the cost down to 1/2 needed to stay in business. To have these ready to receive chopped uranium cores next year. Give us your hottest material and we will safe it with neutrons.
Best of luck hope we will see these reactors soon
Excellent talk. One very interesting point about SMR's in general, and this one in particular, is the low cost of building the nuclear side. Because the very complex and expensive engineered safety systems are not needed, this plant should be a delight to build, commission, and operate!
Excellent talk!! I just wish that England, USA, or France would finance a test reactor to prove it....
"I'm not a smart man" but I know that this guy is. Brilliant!
Brilliant presentation!
Renewables can only offset some fuel costs of a reliable electricity source. If that reliable source is nuclear ( very low fuel costs) there is no point in the renewables, they just add cost, complexity and land use.
They can't even pay for the little bit of fuel they save. The intermittency renewables introduce to the grid makes the necessary backup sources much less efficient. That's why they depend on perverse incentives like the wind production tax credit that pays reliable sources to shut down whenever the unreliable renewable sources happen to be producing anything.
Moreover, renewables consume orders of magnitude more raw materials and land to build while having a much shorter lifespan than any other energy system.
@@phamnuwen9442 This is the juncture where both environmentalism and conservationism start butting heads. If you only endorse renewables (especially solar and wind), you cannot be both. For me responsibility not only means curbing climate change but also making the most using as little resource as possible.
@@ManOfLore1 Climate change is a vastly exaggerated issue, but if you care about it, the only way to reduce emissions in a significant way is nuclear. We still need to increase the amount of fossil fuels we consume because nuclear can't be scaled up fast enough to provide the entire world with cheap, reliable energy in a reasonably short timeframe. At least not with current nuclear regulations and political interference.
Whenever climate alarmists start advocating for dramatic deregulation of nuclear development and the construction of new reactors, I will consider taking them seriously.
Love this design as it abandon pipe dream others have about reactors being made in fabric in vast quantities. It is simple and cheap without economy of scale.
excellent presentation.
One point that comes to my mind with respect to the grid reserve that it would also allow to add extra (or 'emergency') peak capacity by natural gas (or other, in the future possibly synthetic fuels) burner at very little cost. I remember this point was often also made for CSP versus photovoltaics (after the general reserve capacity).
So in the case of an overall lack of electricity lasting for longer than the reserve salt capacity can handle, one could supply the heat and still have a 1500MW output for a sustained time. Certainly not a goal to do so on a regular basis (efficiency will no be on level with CCGT and yes, its not carbon free in the first place), but if it is for a few days of dead calm and cloud in winter in a year or really just as an emergency plan to avoid a blackout, it seems like a valid addition in comparison to holding an entire gas peaker plant on standby.
Now it all boils down to how grid operators are willing to remunerate such services or if the free market prices offer enough incentive to do so.
For sure if one would plan to use that on a more regular basis, adding a full gas turbine is also an option, since its exhaust gas temperatures could fit the input required to the energy conversion system of the SSR pretty well, but that would somehow defeat the idea of having an SSR in the first place, and certainly be a serious addition in terms of capital cost.
The question that some people ask like me, is what is the resistance of all construction and thermal transfer materials to the chemical corrosion of salt at very high temperature (700°) over a very long period of time (7 or 8 years)? Is that not the main difficulty for an operational MSR? Do you have some clues and certainty regarding this major question? Thank you for your answer
I believe salt is only corrosive when in contact with moisture, which if kept a trace levels should prevent significant corrosion. The advantage of a stable salt reactor is even further minimisation of corrosion risk, due to not needing to circulate the radioactive salt around the vessel where joints and fitting are present. Fuel pins here can be milled from a solid piece of metal, and replaced on an individual basis.
@@adamdanilowicz4252 Thank you for these useful insights
I love the idea of MSR or LFTR. All the graphs I've seen doesn't show the improvements to wind and solar to even come close to the worlds energy requirements especially in developing countries. Plus both need a lot of land that can't really be multi-use, as in farming. With coal and gas, both release known pollutants and small amounts of radioactive materials when mined and burned. I find it interesting that hardly no one talks about the radioactive parts of coal and gas. LFTR's on the other hand could be made smaller, easier, safer and less expensive than current nuclear plants. Another benefit is they can burn the nuclear fuel that is from the older plants. There would be less waste and shorter half life than current spent fuels. My big concern is China has taken the lead in this technology using the work from ORNL. The US and others should be doing this as well but China has been putting the money into building a plant. Everyone knows the R&D is what cost the most and China is willing to spend the money to control the technology.
TBF you can also have a 2 fluid reactor, you have a molten salt thermal exchange fluid separate from the fuel salt.
He stated they want to avoid that because the coolant eventually leaks.
@@daveb4446 Has that been proven, or is it just supposition?
@@daveb4446
Also hard to model due to delayed neutrons and plating out in the heat exchangers. SSR bypasses all that.
@@killcat1971 Proven.
Just curious, what is the ideal (cost-wise) max power do you envisage can you produce per one single reactor ?
It must be possible to use a molten salt reactor constantly at its most viable power and use the not needed energy to produce hydrogen.
Looks like they really changed the design! The reactor is a circular one now. Had a look at their website and they changed that too. The square design is nowhere to be found. No technical data anymore on the site. Does anybody have any more info on the new design? Really curious why they changed it. Their theory on the square core sounded quite logical. Better scalable and a more modular approach.
Probably to counteract neutron leakage. Every deviation from a perfect sphere is a sacrifice in neutrons. Originally, Dr Scott felt the sacrifice was worth it in order to make it easier to scale. Priorities have changed.
@RiverBlue11 You're probably not using the correct terms, but I think I get what you're getting at. If you want to transmute elements, you would put a "blanket" around where the fission reaction takes place. This would catch the neutrons escaping the reaction area and use them to make new elements.
Blankets have been used in scientific research reactors to produce medical isotopes. Or in weapons reactors to produce nuclear weapons isotopes like plutonium-239.
You can put a blanket around any reactor design. From cubic to the spherical. The question is as always, how do you put the transmutation target in, and how do you get it out.
The original Oak Ridge 2 fluid molten salt reactor proposed design had a fluid blanket of thorium rich molten salt that would be separated by graphite tubing.
In the Moltex concept (the old, square one) you could simply make the outer assemblies the transmutation targets while the middle of the reactor assemblies are filled with reactor fuel.
In this new concept, (the cylindrical one) you would again, have the middle assemblies be filled with reactor fuel and undergo fission. Then the outer assemblies closer to the reactor vessel wall would be the transmutation targets.
Blankets are however, frowned upon in modern reactor designs because the IAEA does not like their potential to produce nuclear weapons material. I don't think Moltex would put a blanket in.
Instead they would probably line the reactor walls with a neutron reflector. You could do this with tons of lead, or more cheaply (and more structurally sound), slabs of stainless steel. Steel that is thick enough can actually reflect neutrons: www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power-plant/nuclear-reactor/neutron-reflector/
This would improve neutron economy by reducing losses of neutrons flying away into the walls of the reactor vessel.
@RiverBlue11
I mean, this kind of science isn't being obstructed. It's being researched and developed right now. The question is as always around funding. I have serious doubts as to the viability of venture capital in being able to bring this reactor to full scale. That's just not how VC operates.
Every vampire capitalist wants a quick project to make a quick buck on, often within 2-3 years. And if they find out the project isn't working, they would hire marketing firms to hype the company up, force the company into a share offering, pump the price, then dump his share.
We have seen this hundreds of times with tech startups. I think Moltex is also receiving government funding so this deadly fate might be avoidable but it would still massively set Moltex back if a VC did a pump and dump on it.
As for your idea about neutron "gates", that's not how it works. When neutrons are discussed, they are not considered in terms of individual particles. Billions of neutrons are created per second that a fission reaction proceeds. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_flux
The direction and the amount of neutrons per second that a reaction kicks off is completely random. It is impossible to design a "gate" that individually catches, or releases, a single neutron. You could only do that if you had a particle accelerator that produced and redirected a single neutron. This is not practical to run a reactor.
In a reactor you can only put things in a general direction of where you expect neutrons to be coming from. So in a real life reactor, you expect a lot of neutrons to be escaping _radially_ - that is to say, streaming out from the centre of the reactor out the sides. So a lot of reactors, would use _radial reflectors_ to stop neutron loss.
See this picture of the ORNL High Flux Isotope Reactor design: neutrons.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/HFIR-reflector-and-fuel-element.jpg
You can see that the reflector surrounds the core like a nut might encircle a bolt. There are no gates, no chambers, no sorters. Just sheer volume of material all around the core. It just isn't possible to predict every single neutron kicked off by a fission reaction to then position a catcher or reflector in time.
@RiverBlue11 no worries. If you ever have the time, look into this free online lecture series on radiation, nuclear science, physics of nuclear fission, and applications of nuclear science: ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-01-introduction-to-nuclear-engineering-and-ionizing-radiation-fall-2016/lecture-videos/index.htm
The course is heavy on the medical side because that's the professor's speciality but there's a lot of info on the basics.
The designers consulted with both nuclear regulators and reactor designers and engineers with long experience in the field. The square design was eliminated for simplicity. Less machinery that can break down in the fuel shunting process, particularly in the core where maintenance would have to be carried out by remote control and thus be very expensive and complicated. The fewer moving parts and maintenance issues you need to have with a nuclear core, the better.
I think the SSR-W with Grid Reseve is a brilliant idea. With any sane regulations it will become the best and most economical way to generate electricity AND process heat. What can we in the general public do to help? Where can we invest to most help? (USA in my case.)
Reactors could be localized to save on transmission cost,and use waste heat for district heating or whatever
Co2 turbine is cheaper
Negative prices for electricity are an artifact of subsidies for solar power, combined with a lack of investment in loads that can benefit from mid day power. If the reactors can be commercialized, and thermal grid storage proves practical, the cost variation throughout the day will drop significantly. But aren't almost all of the concentrating solar projects shut down due to high maintenance costs?
Once you have full demand sized nuclear power that can load follow, what would be the point of adding wind or solar to that nuclear cost?
Circular core now. Probably down to the abandonment of fuel shuffling. A good thing.
I found this out somewhere later. Yes it was partly due to the fuel shuffling, but also that from a regulatory perspective their modular brick design didn't work. Each size of reactor would have to be certified from scratch as a new reactor. This meant they essentially had to pick a single size and run with it and a circular core has better neutronics.
Chloride salts are very interesting due to the high solubility of many actinides of interest. But the more complex chemistry of chloride salts compared to flouride salts seems to have been a barrier to their use in the past. I was doing some research into the heat transfer characteristics of these salts and found very little besides a detailed PhD dissertation describing an experiment into convection for a few specific chloride salts. I am very interested in reading about progress from moltex in developing usable chloride salts.
Utah versatile test reactor look it up.
It's a half way step towards thorium molten salt reactor, but better than a regular nuclear reactors, removing the water 👍
Still not clear on how many generations of humans will be burdened by managing this waist.
I know IP patents are how things are done, but sometimes they can be used as road blocks, which makes me nervous for such an important emerging field.
Proliferation concerns of uranium might prevent the small modularity capability of these units from being deploy in manufacturing facility to help reduce carbon output.
All generations of past reactors were the product of teams of engineers and regulators that assured the public that they had taken into consideration all elements of failure and environmental contamination. Just because a person is totally confident in themselves doesn't mean that there was some elements that they overlooked. Most people gravitate to those who project a great deal of confidence in themselves.
Utah versatile test reactor. Look it up.
Yay! Great news! Can’t wait until 2035 to see them made econ viable
ian has a cancer rash
Excellent and fascinating but... please stop smacking your lips (making a loud "tut" noise) at the start of your paragraphs, as it makes me turn off mentally - I can't bear it!
Only affects you. We are all more or less good with it...
I’m in favor of GEN IV SMRs, a great deal of R&D must be spent to produce an economical, sustainable and safe system. I consider any advancement in developing fission and fusion power worth it.
We know fission works, nobody knows if fusion will ever be possible/economical. Money is better spent on a sure thing.
After looking at the others, I believe Moltex is the best design. No flibe means no tritium (which enviros hate). Because they use chloride salts. And the grid reserve just kicks butt because it's already thermal (you can't do that with electrical, like from solar because you lose the ⅔rds converting that heat back into electricity. So batteries are better for solar and molten salts for nuclear. This is exactly what I was thinking earlier but I thought they'd use Tesla style batteries for storing electricity. But molten salt is still cheaper.
@@fireofenergy Any high-temperature nuclear reactor design can use the same kind of thermal storage strategy, it's not exclusive to Moltex. I think the Elysium Industries is quite a bit better, no fuel processing needed and the modularity is much better, check them out. They have several presentations on youtube.
@@chapter4travels
Nah...
No one else rids the fuel in the plumbing problem, will never get passed...
@@fireofenergy I have no idea what you're talking about. Any high-temperature reactor can put in a clean salt loop heat exchange and use the same storage method.
Nuclear Power has an extreme schedule and costs issues which must be overcome. Plant Vogtle in Georgia is 10 years and 5x the budget overrun. If these take 10 years to bring online, Renewables + Battery Storage will be far cheaper.
@Brin Jenkins Battery failure rate can be calculated and added to the storage capacity. When the batteries reach end of life they can be recycled.
Could the "Battery Storage" in "Renewables + Battery Storage" be GridReserve?