Transatomic Energy shuts down and opensources IP

Transatomic Energy started in 2011, realized there were mistakes in their original analyses in 2016 and has shutdown in 2018. They have made their work and molten salt reactor designs open source.

As of January 2018, the advanced nuclear industry has climbed up to over 75 projects in North America.

At least five companies are already working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to prepare for licensing, and major new milestones have been reached with regulators in both the U.S. and Canada. The first advanced reactors sending power to the grid should be as soon as 2026.

Transatomic raised $4.5 million in funding.

NuScale modular reactors and Terrestrial Energy Molten Salt reactors are currently in the lead to commercial reactors.

103 thoughts on “Transatomic Energy shuts down and opensources IP”

  1. If the first meltdown proof reactors actually become mass produced by 2026, we might have a chance.
    However, we NEED for them to be FAST or CLOSED CYCLE, so we’d have enough fuel to power “everything”, including the manufacture of all the solar, wind and batteries the anti nuclear people “supposedly” wants, and also, the ability to get enough fresh water to literally remove the excess CO2 to reverse global warming AND make better soil (carbon rich soils are better). Also, the safe, meltdown proof molten salt fast reactor creates no long lived wastes…

  2. Ok,, that is how you feel. Could you please explain why? Can you find deficiencies in the technical design….. or is it that you feel that it is not politically feasible given recent disasters and public disfavour ?

  3. Ok that is how you feel. Could you please explain why?Can you find deficiencies in the technical design….. or is it that you feel that it is not politically feasible given recent disasters and public disfavour ?

  4. on matters unfamiliar to me….” Then, why are you discussing which nuclear reactor should be built? The fluid around the tubes in Moltex IS radioactive. If it has neutron flux, it is radioactive. Hacking, terrorism, corporate stupidity – irrelevant. The assumption is that the power plant is well operated and not in a war zone. State responsibility to secure the boundary including internet and I don’t know a lot of ‘moves 15Mlb/hr pumps’ that are part of the ‘network of things’ like your fridge calling Kroger because you need milk or milf or whatever. Moltex is English. That is it. And they don’t have somebody like me as director of nuclear engineering, and I would only take it if offered my current salary plus room and board for my family and a guarantee that I don’t lose $20K selling my house in this gobforsaken part of NJ. Bottom line…. the Moltex design is nothing better than the others – you put your ear to the rail and heard “no cladding” so you put the salt in cladding. There is nothing particularly brilliant about Moltexxx, being English, or anything else – your fuel is not able to be handled! that is it.

  5. Thanks for your insights on matters unfamiliar to me. However, you must admit that there is nothing combustible or explosive within the Moltex waste burner reactor. No water, no hydrogen, no zirconium, no carbon, no oxygen.. No radioactivity in the cooling loop. In today`s atmosphere of terrorism, malicious hacking, and corporate stupidity this is somewhat reassuring. The designers claim that the only gases to be produced will be retained long enough in the vented headspaces to be safely removed . No excess of internal pressure in the fuel tube throughout its life. The individual fuel tubes are very thin skinned. In the event of chlorine transmutation to sulphur… leading to volatile and corrosive by products…. appropriate chemistry in the salt bath should deal with this.. Pyrolitic (erm?) processing apparently effective and very compact, involving no aqueous process. The very low viscosity of molten salt, allowing heat transfer without heavy pumping . All sorts of radical propositions here worth a sceptical dissection. Your comment about shuffling of fuel elements is worthy of consideration. I do note that there is a description of how a Moltex reactor would be first loaded , indicating that a random access centre to outer loading facility is proposed. Regards, john I

  6. on matters unfamiliar to me….”” Then”” why are you discussing which nuclear reactor should be built?The fluid around the tubes in Moltex IS radioactive. If it has neutron flux it is radioactive.Hacking terrorism corporate stupidity – irrelevant. The assumption is that the power plant is well operated and not in a war zone. State responsibility to secure the boundary including internet and I don’t know a lot of ‘moves 15Mlb/hr pumps’ that are part of the ‘network of things’ like your fridge calling Kroger because you need milk or milf or whatever. Moltex is English. That is it. And they don’t have somebody like me as director of nuclear engineering”” and I would only take it if offered my current salary plus room and board for my family and a guarantee that I don’t lose $20K selling my house in this gobforsaken part of NJ. Bottom line…. the Moltex design is nothing better than the others – you put your ear to the rail and heard “”””no cladding”””” so you put the salt in cladding. There is nothing particularly brilliant about Moltexxx”” being English”” or anything else – your fuel is not able to be handled! that is it.”””

  7. Thanks for your insights on matters unfamiliar to me.However you must admit that there is nothing combustible or explosive within the Moltex waste burner reactor. No water no hydrogen no zirconium no carbon no oxygen.. No radioactivity in the cooling loop.In today`s atmosphere of terrorism malicious hacking and corporate stupidity this is somewhat reassuring.The designers claim that the only gases to be produced will be retained long enough in the vented headspaces to be safely removed . No excess of internal pressure in the fuel tube throughout its life.The individual fuel tubes are very thin skinned.In the event of chlorine transmutation to sulphur… leading to volatile and corrosive by products…. appropriate chemistry in the salt bath should deal with this..Pyrolitic (erm?) processing apparently effective and very compact involving no aqueous process.The very low viscosity of molten salt allowing heat transfer without heavy pumping .All sorts of radical propositions here worth a sceptical dissection.Your comment about shuffling of fuel elements is worthy of consideration. I do note that there is a description of how a Moltex reactor would be first loaded indicating that a random access centre to outer loading facility is proposed.Regards john I

  8. Dual fluid as in Moltex where the second coolant contains no fissile or fertile atoms or dual fluid as in a thorium blanket salt that absorbs neutrons leaking from the active core? I assume you mean the latter, in which case the reprocessing (extraction of bred fuel) will be easier with a blanket salt. Again, I must state that the ‘sexy’ fuel cycle topic is completely irrelevant and that engineering should focus on fission product retention, metallurgy, operations, heat tracing, reprocessing, offgas handling and the 100 other difficult engineering problems that have kept the MSR technology ‘on the shelf’ as opposed to ‘in your backyard’.

  9. Dual fluid as in Moltex where the second coolant contains no fissile or fertile atoms or dual fluid as in a thorium blanket salt that absorbs neutrons leaking from the active core? I assume you mean the latter in which case the reprocessing (extraction of bred fuel) will be easier with a blanket salt. Again I must state that the ‘sexy’ fuel cycle topic is completely irrelevant and that engineering should focus on fission product retention metallurgy operations heat tracing reprocessing offgas handling and the 100 other difficult engineering problems that have kept the MSR technology ‘on the shelf’ as opposed to ‘in your backyard’.

  10. Looks like a mess… liquid metal, metallic fuel, molten chloride salt. Might as well throw in the kitchen sink.

  11. Dual-fluid as in the design they named the dual-fluid reactor. 🙂 There’s a wikipedia article and a website with a pdf detailing the concept: festkoerper-kernphysik[dot]de/dfr.pdf

  12. Hello again… I am trying to find out what really matters from the point of view of an average fairly smart participant in nuclear matters. I can claim to be a participant because, aged 14, I was subjected to fallout from the Windscale graphite fire. This was bad enough to force local farmers to pour their cows milk down the drains. OK, it did very little measurable harm to the local population. My kids and grandkids will have their own problems…. based on decisions we make today. Then the Chernobyl reactor blew up, and local farmers were ordered to keep their sheep at home until they cooled off. Then Fukushima cooling systems were swamped by the tsunami and residual heating slowly and inevitably caused blowouts. NHK TV covered this whole progression and it was like having teeth pulled out while helpless and fully conscious. I`m afraid I don`t trust politicians and Big Business to always get things right. Anyway, I think maybe I am not on the best thread here and I am going to focus on the Canada Moltex presentation where I see you are already active. Over and out. john

  13. Looks like a mess… liquid metal metallic fuel molten chloride salt. Might as well throw in the kitchen sink.

  14. Dual-fluid as in the design they named the dual-fluid reactor. 🙂 There’s a wikipedia article and a website with a pdf detailing the concept: festkoerper-kernphysik[dot]de/dfr.pdf

  15. Hello again… I am trying to find out what really matters from the point of view of an average fairly smart participant in nuclear matters.I can claim to be a participant because aged 14 I was subjected to fallout from the Windscale graphite fire. This was bad enough to force local farmers to pour their cows milk down the drains. OK it did very little measurable harm to the local population. My kids and grandkids will have their own problems…. based on decisions we make today.Then the Chernobyl reactor blew up and local farmers were ordered to keep their sheep at home until they cooled off.Then Fukushima cooling systems were swamped by the tsunami and residual heating slowly and inevitably caused blowouts. NHK TV covered thiswhole progression and it was like having teeth pulled out while helpless and fully conscious.I`m afraid I don`t trust politicians and Big Business to always get things right.Anyway I think maybe I am not on the best thread here and I am going to focus on the Canada Moltex presentation where I see you are already active.Over and out. john

  16. Rickover would classify your two-fluid Rx as the quintessential academic reactor. An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose (“omnibus reactor”). (7) Very little development is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components. (8) The reactor is in the study phases. It is not being built now. Note the point about being “very flexible” – that is what you describe. Now, I’ve mentioned PRISM a dozen times. It is based on the EBR2 and could be built within a decade. Brits had some passing interest recently. Not only is it interesting, there are reams of documentation available such as an exhaustive Safety Analysis Report (SAR)…. All of it is very old – scanned – raster. This German reactor concept combines two or more technologies nobody really wants to build into one big cluster fvck. Molten salt. Liquid metal. Etc. A mess. Sorry for disappointing you with lack of better intellectual pro/con analysis.

  17. Wow. I thought you might have something intellectual to say pro or contra. But you just throw cheap insults at it. I like it’s claims: Natural uranium, thorium, nuclear “waste” fuel. High efficiency. Safety. Breeding. No off time. Low cost. All of which together would make it (or any other) the ideal reactor design. Most other designs don’t even dare claim half of this. ( Doctorpat mentioned the PRISM reactor, which also seems interesting. )

  18. Rickover would classify your two-fluid Rx as the quintessential academic reactor.An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose (“omnibus reactor”). (7) Very little development is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components. (8) The reactor is in the study phases. It is not being built now.Note the point about being very flexible”” – that is what you describe.Now”” I’ve mentioned PRISM a dozen times. It is based on the EBR2 and could be built within a decade. Brits had some passing interest recently. Not only is it interesting”” there are reams of documentation available such as an exhaustive Safety Analysis Report (SAR)…. All of it is very old – scanned – raster.This German reactor concept combines two or more technologies nobody really wants to build into one big cluster fvck. Molten salt. Liquid metal. Etc. A mess. Sorry for disappointing you with lack of better intellectual pro/con analysis.”””””””

  19. Wow. I thought you might have something intellectual to say pro or contra. But you just throw cheap insults at it.I like it’s claims: Natural uranium thorium nuclear waste”” fuel. High efficiency. Safety. Breeding. No off time. Low cost.All of which together would make it (or any other) the ideal reactor design. Most other designs don’t even dare claim half of this. ( Doctorpat mentioned the PRISM reactor”””” which also seems interesting. )”””

  20. Rickover would classify your two-fluid Rx as the quintessential academic reactor. An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose (“omnibus reactor”). (7) Very little development is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components. (8) The reactor is in the study phases. It is not being built now. Note the point about being “very flexible” – that is what you describe. Now, I’ve mentioned PRISM a dozen times. It is based on the EBR2 and could be built within a decade. Brits had some passing interest recently. Not only is it interesting, there are reams of documentation available such as an exhaustive Safety Analysis Report (SAR)…. All of it is very old – scanned – raster. This German reactor concept combines two or more technologies nobody really wants to build into one big cluster fvck. Molten salt. Liquid metal. Etc. A mess. Sorry for disappointing you with lack of better intellectual pro/con analysis.

  21. Rickover would classify your two-fluid Rx as the quintessential academic reactor.An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose (“omnibus reactor”). (7) Very little development is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components. (8) The reactor is in the study phases. It is not being built now.Note the point about being very flexible”” – that is what you describe.Now”” I’ve mentioned PRISM a dozen times. It is based on the EBR2 and could be built within a decade. Brits had some passing interest recently. Not only is it interesting”” there are reams of documentation available such as an exhaustive Safety Analysis Report (SAR)…. All of it is very old – scanned – raster.This German reactor concept combines two or more technologies nobody really wants to build into one big cluster fvck. Molten salt. Liquid metal. Etc. A mess. Sorry for disappointing you with lack of better intellectual pro/con analysis.”””””””

  22. Wow. I thought you might have something intellectual to say pro or contra. But you just throw cheap insults at it. I like it’s claims: Natural uranium, thorium, nuclear “waste” fuel. High efficiency. Safety. Breeding. No off time. Low cost. All of which together would make it (or any other) the ideal reactor design. Most other designs don’t even dare claim half of this. ( Doctorpat mentioned the PRISM reactor, which also seems interesting. )

  23. Wow. I thought you might have something intellectual to say pro or contra. But you just throw cheap insults at it.I like it’s claims: Natural uranium thorium nuclear waste”” fuel. High efficiency. Safety. Breeding. No off time. Low cost.All of which together would make it (or any other) the ideal reactor design. Most other designs don’t even dare claim half of this. ( Doctorpat mentioned the PRISM reactor”””” which also seems interesting. )”””

  24. Looks like a mess… liquid metal, metallic fuel, molten chloride salt. Might as well throw in the kitchen sink.

  25. Looks like a mess… liquid metal metallic fuel molten chloride salt. Might as well throw in the kitchen sink.

  26. Hello again… I am trying to find out what really matters from the point of view of an average fairly smart participant in nuclear matters. I can claim to be a participant because, aged 14, I was subjected to fallout from the Windscale graphite fire. This was bad enough to force local farmers to pour their cows milk down the drains. OK, it did very little measurable harm to the local population. My kids and grandkids will have their own problems…. based on decisions we make today. Then the Chernobyl reactor blew up, and local farmers were ordered to keep their sheep at home until they cooled off. Then Fukushima cooling systems were swamped by the tsunami and residual heating slowly and inevitably caused blowouts. NHK TV covered this whole progression and it was like having teeth pulled out while helpless and fully conscious. I`m afraid I don`t trust politicians and Big Business to always get things right. Anyway, I think maybe I am not on the best thread here and I am going to focus on the Canada Moltex presentation where I see you are already active. Over and out. john

  27. Hello again… I am trying to find out what really matters from the point of view of an average fairly smart participant in nuclear matters.I can claim to be a participant because aged 14 I was subjected to fallout from the Windscale graphite fire. This was bad enough to force local farmers to pour their cows milk down the drains. OK it did very little measurable harm to the local population. My kids and grandkids will have their own problems…. based on decisions we make today.Then the Chernobyl reactor blew up and local farmers were ordered to keep their sheep at home until they cooled off.Then Fukushima cooling systems were swamped by the tsunami and residual heating slowly and inevitably caused blowouts. NHK TV covered thiswhole progression and it was like having teeth pulled out while helpless and fully conscious.I`m afraid I don`t trust politicians and Big Business to always get things right.Anyway I think maybe I am not on the best thread here and I am going to focus on the Canada Moltex presentation where I see you are already active.Over and out. john

  28. Dual-fluid as in the design they named the dual-fluid reactor. 🙂 There’s a wikipedia article and a website with a pdf detailing the concept: festkoerper-kernphysik[dot]de/dfr.pdf

  29. Dual-fluid as in the design they named the dual-fluid reactor. 🙂 There’s a wikipedia article and a website with a pdf detailing the concept: festkoerper-kernphysik[dot]de/dfr.pdf

  30. Dual fluid as in Moltex where the second coolant contains no fissile or fertile atoms or dual fluid as in a thorium blanket salt that absorbs neutrons leaking from the active core? I assume you mean the latter, in which case the reprocessing (extraction of bred fuel) will be easier with a blanket salt. Again, I must state that the ‘sexy’ fuel cycle topic is completely irrelevant and that engineering should focus on fission product retention, metallurgy, operations, heat tracing, reprocessing, offgas handling and the 100 other difficult engineering problems that have kept the MSR technology ‘on the shelf’ as opposed to ‘in your backyard’.

  31. Dual fluid as in Moltex where the second coolant contains no fissile or fertile atoms or dual fluid as in a thorium blanket salt that absorbs neutrons leaking from the active core? I assume you mean the latter in which case the reprocessing (extraction of bred fuel) will be easier with a blanket salt. Again I must state that the ‘sexy’ fuel cycle topic is completely irrelevant and that engineering should focus on fission product retention metallurgy operations heat tracing reprocessing offgas handling and the 100 other difficult engineering problems that have kept the MSR technology ‘on the shelf’ as opposed to ‘in your backyard’.

  32. Rickover would classify your two-fluid Rx as the quintessential academic reactor.

    An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose (“omnibus reactor”). (7) Very little development is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components. (8) The reactor is in the study phases. It is not being built now.

    Note the point about being “very flexible” – that is what you describe.

    Now, I’ve mentioned PRISM a dozen times. It is based on the EBR2 and could be built within a decade. Brits had some passing interest recently. Not only is it interesting, there are reams of documentation available such as an exhaustive Safety Analysis Report (SAR)…. All of it is very old – scanned – raster.

    This German reactor concept combines two or more technologies nobody really wants to build into one big cluster fvck. Molten salt. Liquid metal. Etc. A mess. Sorry for disappointing you with lack of better intellectual pro/con analysis.

  33. Wow. I thought you might have something intellectual to say pro or contra. But you just throw cheap insults at it.
    I like it’s claims: Natural uranium, thorium, nuclear “waste” fuel. High efficiency. Safety. Breeding. No off time. Low cost.
    All of which together would make it (or any other) the ideal reactor design. Most other designs don’t even dare claim half of this. ( Doctorpat mentioned the PRISM reactor, which also seems interesting. )

  34. Hello again… I am trying to find out what really matters from the point of view of an average fairly smart participant in nuclear matters.
    I can claim to be a participant because, aged 14, I was subjected to fallout from the Windscale graphite fire. This was bad enough to force local farmers to pour their cows milk down the drains.
    OK, it did very little measurable harm to the local population.
    My kids and grandkids will have their own problems…. based on decisions we make today.
    Then the Chernobyl reactor blew up, and local farmers were ordered to keep their sheep at home until they cooled off.
    Then Fukushima cooling systems were swamped by the tsunami and residual heating slowly and inevitably caused blowouts. NHK TV covered this
    whole progression and it was like having teeth pulled out while helpless and fully conscious.
    I`m afraid I don`t trust politicians and Big Business to always get things right.
    Anyway, I think maybe I am not on the best thread here and I am going to focus on the Canada Moltex presentation where I see you are already active.
    Over and out. john

  35. Dual-fluid as in the design they named the dual-fluid reactor. 🙂 There’s a wikipedia article and a website with a pdf detailing the concept: festkoerper-kernphysik[dot]de/dfr.pdf

  36. Dual fluid as in Moltex where the second coolant contains no fissile or fertile atoms or dual fluid as in a thorium blanket salt that absorbs neutrons leaking from the active core? I assume you mean the latter, in which case the reprocessing (extraction of bred fuel) will be easier with a blanket salt. Again, I must state that the ‘sexy’ fuel cycle topic is completely irrelevant and that engineering should focus on fission product retention, metallurgy, operations, heat tracing, reprocessing, offgas handling and the 100 other difficult engineering problems that have kept the MSR technology ‘on the shelf’ as opposed to ‘in your backyard’.

  37. on matters unfamiliar to me….” Then, why are you discussing which nuclear reactor should be built? The fluid around the tubes in Moltex IS radioactive. If it has neutron flux, it is radioactive. Hacking, terrorism, corporate stupidity – irrelevant. The assumption is that the power plant is well operated and not in a war zone. State responsibility to secure the boundary including internet and I don’t know a lot of ‘moves 15Mlb/hr pumps’ that are part of the ‘network of things’ like your fridge calling Kroger because you need milk or milf or whatever. Moltex is English. That is it. And they don’t have somebody like me as director of nuclear engineering, and I would only take it if offered my current salary plus room and board for my family and a guarantee that I don’t lose $20K selling my house in this gobforsaken part of NJ. Bottom line…. the Moltex design is nothing better than the others – you put your ear to the rail and heard “no cladding” so you put the salt in cladding. There is nothing particularly brilliant about Moltexxx, being English, or anything else – your fuel is not able to be handled! that is it.

  38. on matters unfamiliar to me….”” Then”” why are you discussing which nuclear reactor should be built?The fluid around the tubes in Moltex IS radioactive. If it has neutron flux it is radioactive.Hacking terrorism corporate stupidity – irrelevant. The assumption is that the power plant is well operated and not in a war zone. State responsibility to secure the boundary including internet and I don’t know a lot of ‘moves 15Mlb/hr pumps’ that are part of the ‘network of things’ like your fridge calling Kroger because you need milk or milf or whatever. Moltex is English. That is it. And they don’t have somebody like me as director of nuclear engineering”” and I would only take it if offered my current salary plus room and board for my family and a guarantee that I don’t lose $20K selling my house in this gobforsaken part of NJ. Bottom line…. the Moltex design is nothing better than the others – you put your ear to the rail and heard “”””no cladding”””” so you put the salt in cladding. There is nothing particularly brilliant about Moltexxx”” being English”” or anything else – your fuel is not able to be handled! that is it.”””

  39. Thanks for your insights on matters unfamiliar to me. However, you must admit that there is nothing combustible or explosive within the Moltex waste burner reactor. No water, no hydrogen, no zirconium, no carbon, no oxygen.. No radioactivity in the cooling loop. In today`s atmosphere of terrorism, malicious hacking, and corporate stupidity this is somewhat reassuring. The designers claim that the only gases to be produced will be retained long enough in the vented headspaces to be safely removed . No excess of internal pressure in the fuel tube throughout its life. The individual fuel tubes are very thin skinned. In the event of chlorine transmutation to sulphur… leading to volatile and corrosive by products…. appropriate chemistry in the salt bath should deal with this.. Pyrolitic (erm?) processing apparently effective and very compact, involving no aqueous process. The very low viscosity of molten salt, allowing heat transfer without heavy pumping . All sorts of radical propositions here worth a sceptical dissection. Your comment about shuffling of fuel elements is worthy of consideration. I do note that there is a description of how a Moltex reactor would be first loaded , indicating that a random access centre to outer loading facility is proposed. Regards, john I

  40. Thanks for your insights on matters unfamiliar to me.However you must admit that there is nothing combustible or explosive within the Moltex waste burner reactor. No water no hydrogen no zirconium no carbon no oxygen.. No radioactivity in the cooling loop.In today`s atmosphere of terrorism malicious hacking and corporate stupidity this is somewhat reassuring.The designers claim that the only gases to be produced will be retained long enough in the vented headspaces to be safely removed . No excess of internal pressure in the fuel tube throughout its life.The individual fuel tubes are very thin skinned.In the event of chlorine transmutation to sulphur… leading to volatile and corrosive by products…. appropriate chemistry in the salt bath should deal with this..Pyrolitic (erm?) processing apparently effective and very compact involving no aqueous process.The very low viscosity of molten salt allowing heat transfer without heavy pumping .All sorts of radical propositions here worth a sceptical dissection.Your comment about shuffling of fuel elements is worthy of consideration. I do note that there is a description of how a Moltex reactor would be first loaded indicating that a random access centre to outer loading facility is proposed.Regards john I

  41. “on matters unfamiliar to me….”

    Then, why are you discussing which nuclear reactor should be built?

    The fluid around the tubes in Moltex IS radioactive. If it has neutron flux, it is radioactive.

    Hacking, terrorism, corporate stupidity – irrelevant. The assumption is that the power plant is well operated and not in a war zone. State responsibility to secure the boundary including internet and I don’t know a lot of ‘moves 15Mlb/hr pumps’ that are part of the ‘network of things’ like your fridge calling Kroger because you need milk or milf or whatever.

    Moltex is English. That is it. And they don’t have somebody like me as director of nuclear engineering, and I would only take it if offered my current salary plus room and board for my family and a guarantee that I don’t lose $20K selling my house in this gobforsaken part of NJ. Bottom line…. the Moltex design is nothing better than the others – you put your ear to the rail and heard “no cladding” so you put the salt in cladding. There is nothing particularly brilliant about Moltexxx, being English, or anything else – your fuel is not able to be handled! that is it.

  42. Thanks for your insights on matters unfamiliar to me.
    However, you must admit that there is nothing combustible or explosive within the Moltex waste burner reactor. No water, no hydrogen, no zirconium, no carbon, no oxygen.. No radioactivity in the cooling loop.
    In today`s atmosphere of terrorism, malicious hacking, and corporate stupidity this is somewhat reassuring.
    The designers claim that the only gases to be produced will be retained long enough in the vented headspaces to be safely removed . No excess of internal pressure in the fuel tube throughout its life.
    The individual fuel tubes are very thin skinned.
    In the event of chlorine transmutation to sulphur… leading to volatile and corrosive by products…. appropriate chemistry in the salt bath should deal with this..
    Pyrolitic (erm?) processing apparently effective and very compact, involving no aqueous process.
    The very low viscosity of molten salt, allowing heat transfer without heavy pumping .
    All sorts of radical propositions here worth a sceptical dissection.
    Your comment about shuffling of fuel elements is worthy of consideration.
    I do note that there is a description of how a Moltex reactor would be first loaded , indicating that a random access centre to outer loading facility is proposed.
    Regards, john

    I

  43. Ok,, that is how you feel. Could you please explain why? Can you find deficiencies in the technical design….. or is it that you feel that it is not politically feasible given recent disasters and public disfavour ?

  44. Ok that is how you feel. Could you please explain why?Can you find deficiencies in the technical design….. or is it that you feel that it is not politically feasible given recent disasters and public disfavour ?

  45. Ok,, that is how you feel. Could you please explain why?
    Can you find deficiencies in the technical design….. or is it that you feel that it is not politically feasible given recent disasters and public disfavour ?

  46. We should all take a look at the following patent which explains the thinking behind the Moltex family of reactor designs. ht..and so on…moltexenergy.com/files/cms/2_Annex%202%20GB2508537-20141217-Publication%20document.pdf Seems extraordinary that nobody previously has bothered to patent simple tube and mixture heat flow and design. Has anybody been able to pick holes in the intended design ? Come on, all you vultures, gather round . This could be a big breakthrough.

  47. We should all take a look at the following patent which explains the thinking behind the Moltex family of reactor designs.ht..and so on…moltexenergy.com/files/cms/2_Annex{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12}202{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12}20GB2508537-20141217-Publication{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12}20document.pdfSeems extraordinary that nobody previously has bothered to patent simple tube and mixture heat flow and design.Has anybody been able to pick holes in the intended design ?Come on all you vultures gather round . This could be a big breakthrough.

  48. We should all take a look at the following patent which explains the thinking behind the Moltex family of reactor designs.

    ht..and so on…moltexenergy.com/files/cms/2_Annex%202%20GB2508537-20141217-Publication%20document.pdf

    Seems extraordinary that nobody previously has bothered to patent simple tube and mixture heat flow and design.
    Has anybody been able to pick holes in the intended design ?
    Come on, all you vultures, gather round . This could be a big breakthrough.

  49. True. Lots of people were offended by the millennial Dr Leslie Dewan being one of Time Magazine’s 30 under 30 making outlandish assertions about their particular design without consulting the gray beards that actually knew their design wouldn’t work. It was quite obnoxious. When Kord Smith, the father of modern multi-group nodal diffusion codes (MIT faculty, DOE guy, etc.) debunks your claims it is time to dissolve the company. No worries – they’ll get cherry jobs anywhere they choose – so long as there is a lab there (New Mexico, California, Idaho, etc.).

  50. True. Lots of people were offended by the millennial Dr Leslie Dewan being one of Time Magazine’s 30 under 30 making outlandish assertions about their particular design without consulting the gray beards that actually knew their design wouldn’t work. It was quite obnoxious. When Kord Smith the father of modern multi-group nodal diffusion codes (MIT faculty DOE guy etc.) debunks your claims it is time to dissolve the company. No worries – they’ll get cherry jobs anywhere they choose – so long as there is a lab there (New Mexico California Idaho etc.).

  51. Major ‘selling points’ for MSR are high temperature (i.e. > 800C) and low pressure (near atmospheric) – so I couldn’t suggest something that would defeat those selling points. Density of liquid water at 100C and atmospheric pressure is 180% of density of liquid water at the critical point 374C & 217 atmosphere – that density would be a major parameter in sizing and spacing the tubes and tuning the spectrum of the reactor. Using liquid water also makes possible several trustworthy reactivity (power) control mechanisms. For instance, if you allow the water to boil in the tubes – more precisely, if you control the subcooling – then you could move up or down the elevation at which bulk boiling occurs. This ‘knob’ on the moderation by varying void fraction is the secondary reactivity mechanism of BWR; the BWR can run back from 100% to 35% power in a minute by simply reducing coolant flow rate and allowing the core to void. Taking another tac, if you were to keep the water in the tubes solid, then you could dissolve boron in the tubes to suppress excess reactivity and change power level. I’ll keep asking around. Nothing moderates like hydrogen and nothing packs hydrogen like water. On average a neutron loses half of it’s kinetic energy per collision with hydrogen. It is a flat probability curve – 10% of scattering events shed 90% of neutron energy and 10% of scattering events shed only 10% of neutron energy. Moderating with water will absolutely minimize (the limit) the diffusion length in MSR and allow a smaller system to be ‘thermal’ than possible with graphite. Yes, you’d have to double wall the tubes so that heat would be transferred to the water only via neutrons or gammas. Evacuate the tubes or circulate some inert gas through them. The outer tube would be something like thin-walled hastalloy and the inner tube would be thin-walled zirconium alloy. The pressure across the tubes would be p*g*h; a couple of atmospheres at the most – whatever thin wall tu

  52. Major ‘selling points’ for MSR are high temperature (i.e. > 800C) and low pressure (near atmospheric) – so I couldn’t suggest something that would defeat those selling points. Density of liquid water at 100C and atmospheric pressure is 180{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of density of liquid water at the critical point 374C & 217 atmosphere – that density would be a major parameter in sizing and spacing the tubes and tuning the spectrum of the reactor. Using liquid water also makes possible several trustworthy reactivity (power) control mechanisms. For instance if you allow the water to boil in the tubes – more precisely if you control the subcooling – then you could move up or down the elevation at which bulk boiling occurs. This ‘knob’ on the moderation by varying void fraction is the secondary reactivity mechanism of BWR; the BWR can run back from 100{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} to 35{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} power in a minute by simply reducing coolant flow rate and allowing the core to void. Taking another tac if you were to keep the water in the tubes solid then you could dissolve boron in the tubes to suppress excess reactivity and change power level.I’ll keep asking around. Nothing moderates like hydrogen and nothing packs hydrogen like water. On average a neutron loses half of it’s kinetic energy per collision with hydrogen. It is a flat probability curve – 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of scattering events shed 90{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of neutron energy and 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of scattering events shed only 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of neutron energy. Moderating with water will absolutely minimize (the limit) the diffusion length in MSR and allow a smal

  53. So the air gap is an insulator to stop the water taking away too much heat? Why not let the water take away heaps of heat, as a boiling water reactor, and use that as your power generation system? Or did I misinterpret your design?

  54. So the air gap is an insulator to stop the water taking away too much heat?Why not let the water take away heaps of heat as a boiling water reactor and use that as your power generation system?Or did I misinterpret your design?

  55. So… making all the transatomic work open source might at least stop some other MIT grads from repeating the same mistakes.

  56. So… making all the transatomic work open source might at least stop some other MIT grads from repeating the same mistakes.

  57. To my mind, Moltex Energy has a large lead over all of the others in terms of time to market and clever and cheap design. This design will undoubtedly beat all of the others on cost and is the easiest to get approved – it uses existing fuel rods filled with molten salt and uranium and, rather than create a very expensive reactor by using advanced metals that can resist corrosive effects of molten salt, it simply rotates out the stainless steel fuel rods every 5 years, before they can be damaged – they are thus sacrificial metals. Very smart. Company is English.

  58. To my mind Moltex Energy has a large lead over all of the others in terms of time to market and clever and cheap design. This design will undoubtedly beat all of the others on cost and is the easiest to get approved – it uses existing fuel rods filled with molten salt and uranium and rather than create a very expensive reactor by using advanced metals that can resist corrosive effects of molten salt it simply rotates out the stainless steel fuel rods every 5 years before they can be damaged – they are thus sacrificial metals. Very smart. Company is English.

  59. True. Lots of people were offended by the millennial Dr Leslie Dewan being one of Time Magazine’s 30 under 30 making outlandish assertions about their particular design without consulting the gray beards that actually knew their design wouldn’t work. It was quite obnoxious. When Kord Smith, the father of modern multi-group nodal diffusion codes (MIT faculty, DOE guy, etc.) debunks your claims it is time to dissolve the company. No worries – they’ll get cherry jobs anywhere they choose – so long as there is a lab there (New Mexico, California, Idaho, etc.).

  60. Major ‘selling points’ for MSR are high temperature (i.e. > 800C) and low pressure (near atmospheric) – so I couldn’t suggest something that would defeat those selling points. Density of liquid water at 100C and atmospheric pressure is 180% of density of liquid water at the critical point 374C & 217 atmosphere – that density would be a major parameter in sizing and spacing the tubes and tuning the spectrum of the reactor. Using liquid water also makes possible several trustworthy reactivity (power) control mechanisms. For instance, if you allow the water to boil in the tubes – more precisely, if you control the subcooling – then you could move up or down the elevation at which bulk boiling occurs. This ‘knob’ on the moderation by varying void fraction is the secondary reactivity mechanism of BWR; the BWR can run back from 100% to 35% power in a minute by simply reducing coolant flow rate and allowing the core to void. Taking another tac, if you were to keep the water in the tubes solid, then you could dissolve boron in the tubes to suppress excess reactivity and change power level.

    I’ll keep asking around. Nothing moderates like hydrogen and nothing packs hydrogen like water. On average a neutron loses half of it’s kinetic energy per collision with hydrogen. It is a flat probability curve – 10% of scattering events shed 90% of neutron energy and 10% of scattering events shed only 10% of neutron energy. Moderating with water will absolutely minimize (the limit) the diffusion length in MSR and allow a smaller system to be ‘thermal’ than possible with graphite.

    Yes, you’d have to double wall the tubes so that heat would be transferred to the water only via neutrons or gammas. Evacuate the tubes or circulate some inert gas through them. The outer tube would be something like thin-walled hastalloy and the inner tube would be thin-walled zirconium alloy. The pressure across the tubes would be p*g*h; a couple of atmospheres at the most – whatever thin wall tube you were comfortable with.

  61. So the air gap is an insulator to stop the water taking away too much heat?

    Why not let the water take away heaps of heat, as a boiling water reactor, and use that as your power generation system?

    Or did I misinterpret your design?

  62. To my mind, Moltex Energy has a large lead over all of the others in terms of time to market and clever and cheap design. This design will undoubtedly beat all of the others on cost and is the easiest to get approved – it uses existing fuel rods filled with molten salt and uranium and, rather than create a very expensive reactor by using advanced metals that can resist corrosive effects of molten salt, it simply rotates out the stainless steel fuel rods every 5 years, before they can be damaged – they are thus sacrificial metals. Very smart. Company is English.

  63. Still “on the shelf” like caseless ammunition and a hundred other good ideas “in theory” with practical downsides

  64. Still on the shelf”” like caseless ammunition and a hundred other good ideas “”””in theory”””” with practical downsides”””

  65. IP, like company made-up valuations, is whatever anyone says it is, these days. Kinda like Next Big China government stats.

  66. IP like company made-up valuations is whatever anyone says it is these days. Kinda like Next Big China government stats.

  67. Right. Because four MIT grads sitting at desks running simulations in software everyone has access to is IP these days.

  68. Right. Because four MIT grads sitting at desks running simulations in software everyone has access to is IP these days.

  69. I’m pretty sure that, after all this years of development en engineering, some of their IP is actually valuable.

  70. I’m pretty sure that after all this years of development en engineering some of their IP is actually valuable.

  71. Protecting IP that is not valuable is silly – very humble that they made it open source. I can’t believe they raised $4.5M with their MIT pedigree.

  72. Protecting IP that is not valuable is silly – very humble that they made it open source. I can’t believe they raised $4.5M with their MIT pedigree.

  73. Too bad the business failed, but I’m glad the design work they did won’t sit on a shelf somewhere, like Weinberg’s work did for decades.

  74. Too bad the business failed but I’m glad the design work they did won’t sit on a shelf somewhere like Weinberg’s work did for decades.

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