The Gayle & Max Dillard Science & Engineering Research Centre (SERC) at the US Abilene Christian University (ACU) in Texas will research and develop molten salt nuclear reactors.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently reviewing ACU’s August 2022 application to construct a 1 MWt low-power molten salt research reactor – MSRR – at the NEXT Lab. A detailed design engineering contract has been awarded to Zachry Nuclear Engineering, part of Zachry Group. Natura Resources aims to deploy its first molten salt reactor system in the new facility by 2026, followed by larger factory-built modular reactors for commercial operations in the early 2030s.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
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Reading all these comments is just depressing.
It’s like watching every “expert” saying that Electric cars, reusable rockets and underground electric car mass transit will not ever work ten years ago.
Do we need to clone Elon and Stever Jobs to push anything forward?
I think you all should go back and watch Jim Careys “Yes Man” movie….
You simply lack the frame of reference of this studied professional with multi-decade experience and solidly-autistic focus on function over novelty. If the goal is to replace combustion power generation, nuclear power is the way to go, as it sits on the shelf. You may be among the many netizens that believe the sexy concept fuel cycles offered by the rehashed Gen4 concepts make convincing improvements in areas like fuel economy, safety and waste production.
The reality is:
1) uranium is not scarce and we can continue to utilize the 0.5% without running out in the foreseeable future.
2) LWR waste is very compact, so we’re not making mountains of trash with the status quo
3) There is no justification to increase worker dose rates above what we see today in operations and maintenance of LWR.
4) a thousand specific details
If your design requires workers eat A LOT more dose (MSR), it is not a good design. If you are focused on fuel cycle efficiency or waste production, those noble pursuits are a distant second priority to basic economics. Still, if your design uses more fuel (nuscale) or creates more voluminous waste than the current LWR fleet (TRISO designs), then it is not a good design.
It is simple really:
IF NOT IMPROVEMENT
THEN NO GO
You’re only depressed because you’ve wasted some time in daydreaming about MSRs that will never replace LWRs. It’s ok to be wrong.
Pretty sure reusable rocket motors and ships have been a thing for 40 years now. Landing them ass-first is a new thing made possible by modern stabilizing circuitry used for drones, and optics, etc.
You declaw your argument by placing Steve Jobbs at the top intellectual tier.
It would be wise to study Fermi I and why it was shut down. Sodium in liquid phase is highly reactive with water including water vapor. I don’t know if they area actually talking of molten NaCl or just liquid sodium. I believe that a design will have it’s challengers for entropy always wins including seal designs.
When Clinton killed advanced nuclear reactor research in his SOTU address in the early 90s, and the Integral Fast Reactor was mischaracterized as a breeder, not a burner which it actually was, the dopes at Princeton thought they won. But the country lost. We gave the tech to the South Koreans. Now 30 years later, Alvin Weinberg must be rolling in his grave.
Actually, consensus was that sodium fast reactor, whether configured to breed or burn, wasn’t going to enable some leap in the economics of nuclear power. That and pyroprocessing metallic plutonium behind 15″ thick leaded glass view ports using remote tools on levers in the IFR refueling building wasn’t going to enable some leap in the economics of nuclear power, or provide any tangible societal benefit. Still, it would have been a good jobs program so it is too bad that John Kerry and the ilk had it killed.
If you’ve been paying attention; Russia is running the BN800 with oxide fuel and helping build a few SFR elsewhere in China (fuel shipped this year) and India. Russia admits the SFR doesn’t make power more cheaply than the VVER fleet. The BN800 has allowed the RF to uphold their end of the plutonium disposal treaty that USA has bobbled being unable to complete the Savanna River MOX plant and considering dilute/dispose options.
UK has considered building the IFR also known as EBR3 also known as PRISM now known as TerraPower/GE Nutria (&trade) to try to reduce plutonium inventory built up by the MAGNOX reactors, but alas no dice.
This is factually incorrect. Every purchase of Uranium fuel includes an escrow fund for decommissioning. It’s literally planned from before being built, and continues to be planned for for the entire duration of operation. There is even an entire company whose business model is to decommission under budget and make money off of what’s left.
Why does it take decades?
Is all the activity around small modular reactors simply a jobs program for engineers?
One funded by government grants and billionaires?
With little hope of producing a financially viable product?
It takes decades because the regulators are playing the investors for fools. Their actual job is winding down the nuclear industry, but they can’t come out and say so, so they pretend they’re eventually going to approve building hardware.
Then people see the promise of nuclear power if the regulators were serious, and throw money at it, hoping to be the ones who finally don’t get shut down in the end.
And, maybe somebody eventually won’t be shut down, you can’t say it’s impossible that an administration will come along and replace the regulators with people who aren’t trying to kill the industry they regulate. But it hasn’t happened yet.
It takes decades because MSR is being slow walked to death.
There is no hope of producing a financially viable [MSR] product. While some will argue that the MSR does wonders in fuel cycle space (isobreeds, ‘consumes’ waste, etc.) they don’t improve any figure of merit that matter, because uranium is not scarce. The “simplicity” inherent in the MSR is actually “lack of protection”. The “low pressure” is meaningless when the system is circulating 650 deg-C the welding flux (removes protective oxide) with 500 rem/hr dose fields at 5m.
The military uses miniature nuclear reactors for warships and satellite laser weapons. Many research universities have a miniature nuclear reactor.
A seldom foreseen cost is decommissioning an old reactor. Electric power companies that have faced that cost do not want another nuclear reactor. This article does not address how to recycle an old molten salt reactor.
This really isn’t a problem like pressure water reactors or Soviet type graphite modulator reactors once the molten salt cools it becomes inert and there are other uses for the byproducts.
Illuminate us with your best guess about “miniature nuclear reactors for satellite laser weapons” considering the paucity of progress we’ve seen in the space/micro reactor development with kilopower, project pele, and the historical record. It is a tough problem; must radiate-away 80% of the power in the case of something like a mercury turbine or sterling and 95% of the power in the case of thermoelectrics. None of that is going to change with any of the ‘advanced’ concepts usually postulated around a fluid fueled design. My best guess, based on continual rehash of old designs across the discipline, sometimes mis-mash (FHR), is that there are no fission reactors in service in space, nor are particularly strong human and financial resources being put on the problem, compared to say the B21 or even military lasers.
Explain what power generation scheme, would be reliable enough to put into orbit for the postulated “lasers”.
That would be fusion, bucky.
Oh, you mean solar panels. Yeah, that would be the most practical way to power a space laser. Agreed.
It takes decades in the US because 1) cowardice at the NRC and in the media, 2) leftist marching orders to the greens to sabotage the US nuclear power, and 3) the fact that the US produces boutique nuclear reactors. In other words, every US nuclear reactor is from the ground up a custom facility. France has been successful because they perfected a design and turn out bug-free cookie-cutter facilities. They just work. The US could turn out factory produced cookie cutter reactors ranging in size between semitrailer mounted micros capable of supplying a few thousand homes, to huge permeant locations – all at a fraction of the cost and timescale of the way that the US has been doing it. But there is insufficient opportunity for theft, graft, and regulatory empire building for that to be allowed to happen.
France runs way over budget in builds this century too. The problem has to do with litigious western society. ’80s builds are less boutique. The Palo Verde (system 80) and new Ap1000 builds are standardized.
Not sure the NRC is a cowardly organization. More like Missouri style “show me.”
Not only gravity and speed of light are dependend on basic laws of nature. This is also the case with corrosion. The effects of corrosion are determined by the forces in the core and the electron sphere of the elements.
And believe it or not – hot salt melts of halogenides are surprisingly aggressive to hightech alloys and ceramics. To get around the problems with corrosion might be the tricky part of those MSR.
Thank you.
And you are so gracious about it, using phrases like, “might be the tricky part”, when you likely know better than us how retarded it is to imagine decade-long service lives of whatever alloy in service wetted with 600C halide.
I’m seeing the same story with different characters.
Shoot, if I believed in this technology, I’d try to organize a consortium and bring every FLiBe and ThorCon into the fold.
We need more hygge little shops like Copenhagen and this bible school in Texas charging like Polish cavaliers into the mechanized infantry of Germany.
Better yet, just watch what SoCo and TP got going on at INL. They’re not even going to build a heat exchanger for the MCRE; it will use convective losses to the HVAC for cooling – that is how much trust they have in the metallurgy of tube heat exchangers vs. radioactive molten salt.
UB6 steel does not corrode in high salt. I had it tested using chemical analytical methods.
We were just waiting for that uniquely talented person with the unique perspective needed to perform that chemical analytical methods we needed for the miracle material alloy UB6. I hope nobody makes an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator with it!!!
It’s a standard grade of stainless steel, nitwit. Are you under the impression that nobody ever has to build systems that deal with molten salts?
Nitwit. Nice. So lets go get Kirks FLiBe working with UB6. Oh wait… there’s a difference between ‘works on a blog’ and ‘works IRL.’
We’ll get right on it Brett.
To claim that whatever alloy ‘doesn’t corrode’ in 600C salt is ridiculous considering how hard it is to manage corrosion in LWRs at 600F.
And the water in BWR is deionized (insulator) and kept slightly basic using LiOH in PWR. Somehow hypostoichiometric halide will be less corrosive? Who is the nitwit?
I hang around here to poke holes in bad science and bad politics. I appear to be whitelisted. Does brian pay you for your generally optimistic comments, or are you providing some kind of service as pop scientist, cheif googler, resident grey beard?