[HN Gopher] 1MW Molten-Salt Test Reactor by Copenhagen Atomic fo...
___________________________________________________________________
1MW Molten-Salt Test Reactor by Copenhagen Atomic for EUR88k
[video]
Author : jbverschoor
Score : 179 points
Date : 2020-12-11 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Love this, but why are the timescales so long?
| bra-ket wrote:
| regulation
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Uber, Airbnb etc. circumvent regulation ;)
| wmf wrote:
| Please do not invent Uber for nuclear.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Move fast and irradiate things.
| maeln wrote:
| To be fair, it was basically the history of early
| military nuclear technology. US, France and USSR
| irradiated many of their own people to develop their
| first nuclear bombs. Civil nuclear heavily benefited from
| those advances. Still, I rather not be irradiated to make
| science go faster.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Mushroom Cloud.
|
| IaaS for all thing nuclear.
| Havoc wrote:
| I hope this makes more waves.
|
| Anything atomic for <100k deserve attention.
|
| ...but molten salt for <100k.
|
| WOW
| ortusdux wrote:
| To the best of my understanding, one of the main reason that MSRs
| have not gone to market is that the salts are so corrosive that
| containment over the long term is not currently possible. Note
| the questions about materials, alloys, and flow sensors in the
| video.
|
| ORNL had fully functional reactors in the 60's, but those
| reactors were only safe to operate for a few years, and they were
| at lower temperatures than what we are targeting today. Liquid
| fluoride thorium salts at 700+ C will readily dissolve chromium,
| which makes working with stainless very difficult. Other common
| alloying agents are susceptible to radiation (Co & Ni transmute
| when irradiated) which further shortens the lifespan. There is
| also the issue of tritium, which can permeate stainless steels,
| cause embrittlement, and escape into the environment.
|
| ORNL developed Hastelloy N to help address these issues, and
| there is an effort to certify other structural steels to for use
| in reactors (316H, 800H, inco 617). None of the studies that I
| have seen indicate that any of these metals will survive for more
| that 5 years or so.
| yholio wrote:
| A similar issue exists with metal coolant reactors, which
| conceptually would be very simple, and would use proven
| technology, fuel rods and cladding and have similar or better
| operating characteristics to molten salt: low internal
| pressure, high temperature, inherent safety (fuel is physically
| separated from colant and never touches internal piping, pumps
| etc.)
|
| It's very hard to formulate a metal coolant that has low
| melting point (pure lead is already too high), does not react
| with air or water (Sodium cooled reactors are notorious), has
| low cross-section (Hg fails), does not activate under the
| neutron flux to long lived chains (Bismuth and potassium in
| eutectic alloys) and does not dissolve the steel structure of
| the reactor (Tin).
|
| If this problem could be fixed and have a safe, inert metal
| coolant with good thermal characteristics, fast breeders would
| become common place.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Aren't they already used in Russian submarines?
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| They are, but this is because the Soviet designers thought
| that the improvement in power density were worth the
| serious disadvantage of having coolant that freezes well
| above room temperature.
| p_l wrote:
| They were used and the design was modified into small
| portable nuclear reactor, the SVBR-100, a 100MW(e) reactor
| that can be sold containerised and delivered on a rail
| flatcar.
|
| The problem is that a) the project owners have issues
| getting money to finish certification b) we don't mine
| enough bismuth.
|
| The second problem is pretty major issue, because as far as
| I know, we don't actually mine bismuth - all the bismuth
| available worldwide is from processing of tailings in other
| mines, and isn't under any kind of high production rate.
|
| Making just a dozen or so reactors for submarines was easy.
| Making mass-production line would actually mean a
| noticeable drain on world-wide supply of bismuth!
|
| Then there are political problems involving buying russian
| tech.. :(
| tomp wrote:
| Why use stainless steel? I thought "stainless" is mainly useful
| because it doesn't rust (is there water & oxygen in a MSR?).
| Also, couldn't the steel have another layer inside (e.g. just
| iron or something else non-reactive) so that it never comes
| into contact with the salts?
| Sharlin wrote:
| Iron is vastly more reactive than stainless steel, that's
| exactly why we have stainless steel.
| flyingfences wrote:
| "Rust" is just oxidation and there are a lot of substances
| that will cause oxidation.
| [deleted]
| mywittyname wrote:
| To add to this, temperature plays a really critical role in
| oxidation/corrosion of stainless steel (and other metals).
| The scale that forms at high temperatures has a different
| composition than what develops at lower temperatures. In
| certain environment, the scale remains on the surface,
| inhibiting further oxidation, but in other environments,
| the scale is continuously removed, eventually destroying
| it.
| ortusdux wrote:
| For many of the same reasons that Spacex is using it for
| their starship. It's cheap and readily available, relatively
| easy to work with, and very well studied. There also really
| are not that many materials that have passed certification
| for use in reactors. I believe that "BPVC Section III-Rules
| for Construction of Nuclear Facility Components-Division
| 5-High Temperature Reactors" only covers half a dozen
| stainless steels.
|
| As for cladding, the DOE's 2021 budget includes money for
| testing novel claddings. They are also looking for robust
| redox reference electrodes and additive manufacturing
| methods.
| carapace wrote:
| To contain molten salt use solid salt.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Why not use a stone type of material. Like a furnace?
| ortusdux wrote:
| There are a few reasons, but the biggest one is that ceramics
| and composites also react with the molten salts. One study
| from 2015 (1) showed that even testing the corrosion
| resistance of metals was difficult because the type of
| crucible used had a large effect on the results.
|
| These systems need pumps at a minimum. Sensors (temp, ph,
| flow rate, chemical composition, etc.) are also very
| important for prolonged, low maintenance use. These cannot be
| made of ceramics (that I know of)
|
| The container will also need to safely hold a dense pool of
| molten salt. The linked $88k test reactor has a capacity of
| 350 liters, which at 1.94 g/cc is ~680kg/1500lbs of Li2BeF4.
|
| Another important reason is that heat transfer is the whole
| point of the reactor, and most metal alternatives have poor
| thermal properties.
|
| 1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282433901_Impact_
| of...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I know on boats they use a piece of sacrificial metal
| (Anodes) that corrodes more readily than what the boat is
| made of. This prolongs the life of the boat. Maybe they can
| use something like that in this situation too.
| corty wrote:
| no, because you would have to let the molten salt react
| with the sacrificial metal, introducing a lot of
| complicated impurities into your salt bath that may
| influence your reactor in numerous ways.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Furnaces use stone because it is not very sensitive to heat.
| Stone generally remains sensitive to acid.
| echelon wrote:
| Plastics would be great to withstand the acid, but they're
| sensitive to heat.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Ultra-high-temperature polymers might get there. There
| are polymers used in specialized industrial applications
| that can handle ~500deg C.
| HexagonalKitten wrote:
| Granite, for instance, has a 1200c melting point which sounds
| good. Its large grainy structure might cause porosity issues.
| And it's main constituents are silicon and aluminum, both of
| which do transmute under neutron bombardment. (An expert
| could say if they transmute to anything you really don't want
| around, and how long it'll be there.)
|
| I think ceramics are an answer to the porosity and similar
| issues. Consistent structure, no inclusions or other
| weaknesses. But they would face the same transmutation and
| induced radioactivity problems as stone of the same material.
| christkv wrote:
| Would diamond do better?
| hajile wrote:
| Diamond will burn like super-expensive coal. Probably not
| ideal for those temperatures.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
|
| Making a _working_ reactor is as easy as disoling a critical
| mass of uranyl nitrate in a bucket of vodka.
|
| Making a _lasting_ reactor that will work non-stop for years is
| not so at all.
|
| This is why I am sceptical about this. Solid fuel is by far
| more troble free, even if it doesn't last that long.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Makes me think of Oklo:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto.
| ..
| hajile wrote:
| > To the best of my understanding, one of the main reason that
| MSRs have not gone to market is that the salts are so corrosive
| that containment over the long term is not currently possible.
|
| I've wondered why "long-term" is such a huge criteria. One of
| the biggest nuclear issues today is using them way past their
| lifespan because they are so expensive to build.
|
| Let's assume molten-salt is cheaper to build and less dangerous
| (from a radioactivity point of view). Why not make expendable
| designs? Make them smaller so the building requirements are
| easier. Make them easy to remove and replace. Ease up on the
| restrictions a bit so they can be replaced every 5-10 years
| instead of decades.
|
| Long-term mass production has tons of advantages. Costs per
| unit decrease. Defects per unit decrease (this is part of cost
| per unit usually, but not if a defect gets through inspection).
| Recycling used units should radically decrease material costs
| when getting close to peak reactor count (chain of custody
| paperwork from mine to installation in the nuclear plant is why
| an otherwise $0.15 screw winds up costing $50-100). Constant
| employment will build experience over many years and further
| decrease errors. Once the site design is finalized and
| enforced, the reactor design can be gradually improved and
| given the short lifespan, efficiency will increase a minimum of
| every decade. Likewise, design mistakes (once caught) will only
| be around a decade at most instead of a half-century like we
| see today.
| [deleted]
| escape_goat wrote:
| Kibitzing outside of any expertise that I have, here, but
| thorium reactors are generally regarded as a significant
| nuclear weapons proliferation risk. This has been an
| inhibiting factor with regards to investment in research.
|
| This design -- cheap and transportable in a standard shipping
| container -- significantly ups the ante on that risk, to put
| it mildly.
|
| Deployed singly, small, low-power, short-lifespan reactors
| would increase the burden of maintaining regulatory control
| over those reactors -- destined, by design, for catastrophic
| failure unless they are retired within a safety period --
| which in turn would the risk of a nuclear contamination
| incident. This could be mitigated by operating the reactors
| in banks at a containment/maintenance site.
|
| I'm not sure what parts of the reactor could be usefully
| recycled. All the metals would be embrittled by neutron
| bombardment.
| baybal2 wrote:
| A recommended video to watch explaining corrosion protection:
|
| https://youtu.be/jO37sMRqv8o
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > One of the biggest nuclear issues today is using them way
| past their lifespan because they are so expensive to build.
|
| Or they're trying to avoid the staggering and bankrupting
| cost of decommissioning them.
| [deleted]
| sergio102305 wrote:
| I think you have to have oxigen present for it to be corrosive.
| Can't they vacuum it?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| From an engineering standpoint any chemical reaction that
| changes the properties of a metal in an unwanted way will be
| called corrosion. It is something to prevent and/or monitor
| that will inevitably shorten the lifespan of the metal part.
| (Non-metals like fiberglass can also "corrode".)
| ta988 wrote:
| You need an oxydizer whatever it is. Oxygen is only one
| oxidizer. Chlorine, fluorine and the other halogens are
| oxidizers too.
| ortusdux wrote:
| "Corrosion is a natural process that converts a refined metal
| into a more chemically stable form".
|
| Oxidation is the most well known form of corrosion, but there
| are many other corrosive reactions out there.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfide#Corrosion_induced_by_s.
| ..
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| Are any other Molten Salt Reactor builders doing anything
| similar?
|
| If SpaceX had taught me anything then it is that rapid iterations
| on prototypes is the way to go.
| nickik wrote:
| Unfortunately there are only two ways get a nuclear reactor
| working, one is for research, the other full on production. In
| the US regulatory system there is no in-between.
|
| That is why all the reactor companies go for a fully functional
| production design with the first try. Without such a plan and
| reactor built, you do not get access to fissile material. Since
| you have to build many of them to ever have a hope of making
| money fast iteration is gone be difficult.
|
| In general they all want to use the same basic design with
| different fuel and different operations to create a different
| type of reactor. Uranium fast burners are the easiest, thorium
| breeders are much further away.
|
| For Molten Salt Reactors, the most advanced in development is
| probably IMSR by Terrestrial Energy, after that SSR by Moltex
| Energy are both currently in Canadian regulatory process.
|
| Flibe energy is trying in the US but that is longer term, there
| is not even a regulatory process in the US yet. Flibe is by
| Kirk Sorensen the guy who basically restarted Thorium hype.
| njarboe wrote:
| If the US government was serious about wanting to let nuclear
| power development happen in the US, they should set up a
| location where companies could work with live nuclear
| material while developing reactors. Workers could be required
| to have some type of security clearance and each company
| could have its own building(s) to avoid "mistakes" at one
| company from effecting other companies people and worksites.
| OSHA rules could be relaxed to allow quicker development, as
| everyone working there will be well informed of the radiation
| risks. The former nuclear test site in Nevada would seem to
| be a great location for this.
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| If you can fund them.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| There are many!
| TKnab wrote:
| A prototyping failure on a fission reactor is a little
| different than a rocket exploding on the launchpad...
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| These prototypes don't contain radioactive material though.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| SpaceX blowing up a Crew Dragon capsule wouldn't be good
| either, but can you do the fast development testing and
| expect some failures, and don't go near nuclear material
| until much later in the process.
| Someone wrote:
| Even ignoring the radiation, how do you test that it keeps
| working with a 100 MW heat source inside it without putting
| nuclear material in?
|
| Edit: where did I get the idea it's 100MW from? Title talks
| of 1MW. That makes it a lot easier.
| [deleted]
| bob1029 wrote:
| If 1MW is the actual design limit, it should be possible
| to test the loop with a mock heat source. At this scale,
| you could pay for grid power ($40-60/hr).
|
| 100MW would be a lot trickier to test due to
| infrastructure limitations, but you could probably figure
| something out with natural gas or propane burners.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| By putting enough resistors inside, and pumping 100 MW of
| electricity in? If you're a utility trying this out, you
| can probably handle that (for some hours, maybe not for
| weeks).
| juancampa wrote:
| To clarify, this reactor doesn't have any thorium or any other
| radioactive elements in its core. It's for testing before they
| get to "the nuclear part".
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Don't forget to sign the petition at
| https://start.thorium.today
| deeviant wrote:
| Pass on that. Solar and wind are already clapping nuclear in
| LCOE, and before you can rip out the nuclear battlecry, "But
| BASELOAD", storage costs are in freefall too.
| manfredo wrote:
| Storage costs, despite being in freefall still are still in
| the hundreds of dollars per kilowatt hour range. And it's
| kind of moot since the total amount of storage produced
| globally is still a fraction of what is necessary to make
| renewables feasible as a primary source of power. To put
| this in perspective, the US alone consumes about 500 GWh of
| electricity every hour. The entire _world_ produces about
| 300 GWh of lithium ion batteries every year. It 's dubious
| whether electrochemical storage will ever be able to match
| the requires scale, hence why a lot of renewable proponents
| turn to experimental solutions like the Sabatier process,
| hydrogen storage, or things like cranes lifting weights.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-
| reach-... ("The US can reach 90 percent clean electricity
| by 2035, dependably and without increasing consumer
| bills")
|
| https://www.2035report.com/
|
| https://www.2035report.com/data-explorer/
|
| "The target year of 2035 allows sufficient time for most
| coal and gas plants to recover their fixed costs, thereby
| avoiding risk of stranded costs for consumers and
| investors, if the right policies are in place. Wind,
| solar, and battery storage can provide the bulk of the 90
| percent clean electricity. The report finds that new
| fossil fuel generators are not needed. Existing gas
| plants, used infrequently and combined with storage,
| hydropower, and nuclear power [my note: existing, not
| new, nuclear], are sufficient to meet demand during
| periods of extraordinarily low renewable energy
| generation or exceptionally high electricity demand.
| Power generation from natural gas plants would drop by 70
| percent in 2035 compared to 2019."
|
| That's US centric; Australia is targeting 100 renewables
| by 2032, using only hydro, renewables, and storage. Let's
| not say it can't be done while it's being done.
|
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-could-
| be-100-renewable...
| sien wrote:
| Australia is not targeting 100% renewables by 2032. Your
| own link says 'could be'.
|
| Australia is currently at ~24% renewables. Note this is
| also because Australia has substantial amounts of hydro
| power that can be used in conjunction with solar.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Mountains_Scheme
| manfredo wrote:
| Academic papers claiming feasibility decades from now is
| a vastly different thing than something actually being
| feasible. If it were, then we'd have all been using
| fusion power since the 1980s.
|
| If you prefer a global approach as opposed to a US-
| centric approach, then consider the fact that the world
| consumes 60 TWh of electricity per day, or 2.4 TWh per
| hour. By comparison the entire world only produces 300
| GWh, or 0.3 TWh of lithium ion batteries. And only a
| small fraction of that is used for grid storage [1].
| These plans for intermittent sources as a primary source
| of energy are contingent on vast - 3 or 4 orders of
| magnitude at least - increases in the production of
| storage capacity. This isn't something that can be relied
| upon. This is like pointing to Moore's law and developing
| an application assuming a 4 THz CPU is going to be around
| 10 years from now.
|
| Lastly, I can't help but appreciate the irony of
| complaining about a US-centric approach and cherry-
| picking Australia - a country with lots of undeveloped
| land and huge solar power potential - as an example. Like
| I said in my previous comment, the bulk of global energy
| consumption occurs in North America, Europe, and Northern
| Asia (China, Japan, Korea). These places have much lower
| solar potential between greater inclinations of the Earth
| and less amenable weather. And even with it's natural
| advantages, Australia still only generates 7% of its
| electricity from wind and solar each.
|
| By comparison, the US already generates 20% of its
| electricity from nuclear and several countries like
| France, Ukraine, and Belgium are majority nuclear
| generation. Nuclear is by far the best proven way of
| delivering carbon free energy, save for hydroelectric
| power but the latter is geographically dependent. It's
| more expensive than fossil fuels, nobody denies that, but
| it's actually doable with current technology. Its
| feasibility is not contingent on orders-of-magnitude
| improvements in key technologies. Using nuclear for the
| bulk of energy generation _has_ been done by multiple
| countries, we merely need to walk in their footsteps.
|
| 1. https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-
| production#:~:t....
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Academic papers claiming feasibility decades from now
| is a vastly different thing than something actually being
| feasible. If it were, then we'd have all been using
| fusion power since the 1980s.
|
| Of course the same holds true for MSRs. Regulatory
| hurdles mean any widespread deployment of nuclear is
| minimum 10 years away as well (the video shows the
| timeline for this reactor as 100MW in 2028, but I think
| that's optimistic, and it's just for the very first
| reactor.
|
| I think we should pursue many avenues of reducing fossil-
| fuel reliance, primarily because I think its premature to
| say what solution(s) will win out.
| manfredo wrote:
| Correct, we shouldn't use modular small reactors (or
| molten salt reactors for that matter). We should use the
| pressurized water reactors we actually know how to build.
| France generates over 70% of its electricity from them,
| and the US already generates 20% from PWRs. For every
| existing PWR we need to build 4, and that's enough to
| fulfill 100% of our electricity demand. Larger reactors
| are actually more efficient, too. The price per watt is
| 2-2.5x that of fossil fuels but they remain the only way
| to produce carbon-free energy around the clock besides
| geographically dependent solutions like geothermal and
| hydroelectric power.
|
| MSRs may be useful eventually for remote power
| generation, but as far as bulk power generation the
| decades of experience building and operating PWRs is too
| compelling an advantage.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You are of course free to your opinion, but the economics
| and cost decline curves of renewables and storage are
| clear [1].
|
| The entire world is transitioning to electrified
| transportation, and is going to scale up energy storage
| (battery manufacturing) accordingly [2], faster than any
| commercial nuclear operation will be built. Can you build
| a nuclear reactor in less than a decade cheaper then
| storage and renewables? The evidence indicates no. But if
| you can, _the world would love that, just demonstrate it
| 's possible._ Until then, it's hydro, batteries,
| renewables, and demand response full speed ahead.
|
| [1] https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-
| levelized-cost-o... (Lazard LCOE 2020, pages 3 and 11 are
| most relevant to our subthread discussion)
|
| [2] https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-
| production ("As of Dec 2019, the number of lithium ion
| battery megafactories in the pipeline has reached 115
| plants. The world's leading EV and battery manufacturer
| added a huge 564GWh of pipeline capacity in 2019 to a
| global total of 2068.3GWh or the equivalent of 40 million
| EVs by 2028.")
| HexagonalKitten wrote:
| > Can you build a nuclear reactor in less than a decade
| cheaper then storage and renewables? The evidence
| indicates no. But if you can, the world would love that,
| just demonstrate it's possible.
|
| Sure, the USA got to the moon in less time, in the 60s.
| As a technical problem it's _easily_ doable. Even in
| quantity it could probably be done. (There are some
| questions of making many of the larger parts at once,
| such as the containment vessel, and if enough factories
| remain which are capable of it - in the USA. If it was
| worldwide, that 's not an issue because China now has
| that capability.)
|
| On the political side, it's either impossible or pretty
| easy, depending on the motivation. It's currently
| impossible because of the nuclear boogeyman and all of
| the obstacles that opponents can throw out. (It is
| implied that these obstacles have no ultimate merit.)
|
| However, if we had a focus on pollution-related deaths,
| which are like a never-ending global pandemic - 10k
| deaths per week from coal pollution alone - then we'd
| probably find the will to fix it.
|
| Considering that (estimated lifetime) deaths by all
| Nuclear (including Chernobyl and Fukushima, but excluding
| bombs) are less than one week of pollution deaths, it'd
| be an easy sell if we actually looked at numbers.
|
| In the Lazard study, do you see what they budgeted for
| non-panel costs in utility-grade solar? In residential
| the cost of the panels is often quite a lot less than the
| total system cost.
|
| > Until then, it's hydro, batteries, renewables, and
| demand response full speed ahead.
|
| Hydro is almost tapped out, and not carbon neutral. But I
| agree we should build it everywhere possible because it
| is dependable, and comparatively cheap.
|
| Batteries are not gonna happen for grid-scale power. A
| few terawatt hours (a minimal estimate for the USA's
| storage needs) would be every battery produced in ten
| years, even with a ramp-up, and the pollution from the
| mining and manufacture would be huge. They're a great
| solution for certain storage solutions though because
| they're solid state unlike flywheels and pumped hydro
| storage. Places where convenience weighs heavily will
| adopt batteries.
|
| Renewables are absolutely the answer - as much as they
| are. Any generation that can be peaky, should be solar
| and wind if possible. Like if we built desalination
| plants they'd be a great use of intermittent power. Or if
| they're just charging the storage layer. Neither is free
| of pollution though, like batteries they merely front-
| load it and appear green when operating.
|
| You're 100% right though about full speed ahead. I'd
| rather start on solar today, which I don't fully believe
| in, than spend years arguing and be stuck where we are
| today.
| deeviant wrote:
| > Considering that (estimated lifetime) deaths by all
| Nuclear (including Chernobyl and Fukushima, but excluding
| bombs) are less than one week of pollution deaths, it'd
| be an easy sell if we actually looked at numbers.
|
| Than again, if Chernobyl or fukushima had experienced
| their worse-case scenarios, it's possible that nuclear
| would have caught up with pollution-related deaths
| instantaneously. Which illuminates the poor risk-
| assessment ability of the average person in regards to
| black swan events.
| HexagonalKitten wrote:
| Worst operating failure, or worst engineerable outcome?
|
| I mean if you took the nuclear fuel and fed it to people
| one lethal does at a time - yes. You could kill tens of
| millions.
|
| But both reactors experienced almost the worst possible
| operating failure and this is how low the casualties
| were. Fukushima is leaking into the ocean and still not
| expected to cause a single radiation-based death.
|
| Vastly more people have been (/will be) killed by runoff
| ponds of coal ash slurry rupturing and running into
| rivers than from radiation from power plants or spent
| fuel.
|
| At 10k pollution deaths per week, for even just ten
| years, no. A nuclear reactor couldn't meet that (5M
| deaths) even if you left the switch in 'boom' mode and
| went home for the night.
| deeviant wrote:
| You just took what you originally said, and said it
| again. Did you expect a different result?
|
| If the worse-case engineering disaster happened in either
| case, millions would have died. If you want to dig into
| this point, great, happy to. If you want to repeat your
| original point ad-infinitum, pass.
| HexagonalKitten wrote:
| > You just took what you originally said, and said it
| again
|
| Only half of the last sentence, the conclusion, was
| repeated. But with space not being at a premium, I would
| happily restate something from up-thread because it can
| make it easier to read and reply to.
|
| > If the worse-case engineering disaster ... millions
| would have died.
|
| No, I don't think so. I think you'd need an engineered,
| as in intentional, disaster for that. Like terrorists.
|
| And engineering disaster (improper planning) is what
| Fukushima had. That's very unlikely to be improper enough
| to kill an entire city because engineering mistakes tend
| to be planned for to some degree and mitigated by
| building redundant systems.
|
| Very unlikely to cause a disaster, as in almost
| impossible even if you tried to form the same materials
| into a bomb.
| manfredo wrote:
| Levelized cost of energy in your link excludes the cost
| of storage. For the third time, nobody is arguing that
| raw renewable generation isn't cheap. The issue is that
| translating raw renewable generation into usable,
| dispatchable power is very, very expensive.
|
| Yes, we absolutely can build nuclear in much much shorter
| time than renewables plus storage. I don't think you
| fully comprehend the staggering mismatch between the
| scale of storage required and storage produced.
|
| We cited the same source on battery production. Take a
| closer look at the graph:
| https://www.nextbigfuture.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/02/blo... The small magenta segment
| that says "stationary storage" is the portion of battery
| production actually going to renewable storage. Even by
| 2030, it's still being added at a rate of less than 200
| GWh per year. The world uses 2,400 GWh of electricity per
| _hour_. That 's more than the entire height of this
| graph. It'll take well beyond 2035 to even provide _just
| one hour of grid storage_ with batteries.
|
| By comparison, France increased it's share of nuclear
| generation from under 15% to over 80% in 15 years: https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Lazard has levelized cost of storage analysis too:
| https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-
| energy-...
| melbourne_mat wrote:
| I see discussions about storage re renewables but I never
| see anyone mention the obvious solution. If you need
| power at night, just use led lights to power your solar
| cells.
|
| /s
| deeviant wrote:
| > Storage costs, despite being in freefall still are
| still in the hundreds of dollars per kilowatt hour range.
| And it's kind of moot since the total amount of storage
| produced globally is still a fraction of what is
| necessary to make renewables feasible as a primary source
| of power.
|
| Funny that you also fail to mention that although storage
| levels are very low, we are still very far from reaching
| the market penetration of requiring storage.
| Transitioning a world's electric grid takes take,
| decades, plenty of time for storage to drop.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Storage costs are in freefall because the bulk of the car
| market about to transition to electric and it's creating
| economies of scale and spurring a ton of R&D which is
| picking all the low-hanging fruit in battery cost
| improvements.
|
| It's difficult to predict how long that will continue
| before the easy gains run out. Maybe the existing curve
| will continue for another 30 years. Maybe it will continue
| for another 30 days.
|
| If it continues for 30 years, we're fine. If it peters out
| before solar+batteries are cheap enough, we still need
| nuclear and we're that far behind where we would be if we
| started building it now.
|
| Worst case if we build it now is that we have some nuclear
| plants that cost somewhat more to generate power than
| future technologies will (but still in line with existing
| prices). Worst case if we don't is we get more climate
| change. Which one is more expensive?
| deeviant wrote:
| > Storage costs are in freefall because the bulk of the
| car market about to transition to electric and it's
| creating economies of scale and spurring a ton of R&D
| which is picking all the low-hanging fruit in battery
| cost improvements.
|
| That's not true. Utility scale storage is a huge area of
| interest, has had many advancements in recent past and
| many of technology paths have absolutely no relation to
| electric tech or economies of scale.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It is true. Making batteries for electric cars is a large
| fraction of the storage R&D, and the existence of non-
| vehicle storage technology development doesn't really
| change the equation anyway.
|
| The question is whether storage gets cheap enough before
| the cost stops falling, and the answer is we don't know
| and we need to be prepared in case it doesn't.
| deeviant wrote:
| Sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, "Ah ha!",
| does not an argument make.
|
| I spent 6 years in the solar industry, working at both a
| start up and a fully vertically integrated behemoth that
| manufactured panels and built plants and while I'm no
| longer in the industry today, I'm confident I am up-to-
| date on utility-scale storage progress and it is not
| summed up by, "electric car batteries!"
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're arguing with a straw man. I never claimed storage
| technologies other than lithium batteries didn't exist.
| Electric cars continue to be a central example of the
| relatively recent increase in research into storage
| technologies.
|
| And you still can't extrapolate indefinitely from an
| exponential curve. We don't know where the floor will be,
| or whether it will be low enough.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And we're still doing storage wrong. My A/C could have a
| reservoir of refrigerant that is compressed overnight. Same
| for my fridge/freezer. Or my fridge could make ice that's
| held until peak hours. My deep-freezer could have an ultra-
| chill zone that runs at night. My dryer could run in slow-
| mode if I turn it on at a dumb time. My water heater (even
| a gas one has a 250w powered vent) could ultra-heat during
| off-peak. My dishwasher could auto-delay until 3am......
|
| We don't even need "smart" 2-way comm appliances. Just a
| weather forecast should work well enough to predict.
| bigbubba wrote:
| Fridge/freezer combos are already a compromise design
| that sacrifice efficiency for floor space. Chest freezers
| that open from the top are far more efficient (the cold
| air doesn't all pour out when the door is opened.)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| FWIW, my gas water heater has a chimney, not a powered
| vent.
| MertsA wrote:
| >My A/C could have a reservoir of refrigerant that is
| compressed overnight.
|
| Not unless you want to just vent all of the refrigerant
| during operation. You need to keep the suction side under
| low pressure otherwise it'd just stop boiling the
| refrigerant.
|
| >My deep-freezer could have an ultra-chill zone that runs
| at night.
|
| That'd be making it much less efficient so even if you
| can get away with some load shifting here you'd be
| increasing the load substantially in order to do so. Also
| this would cause large repeated temperature swings for
| everything inside, might not be too big of an issue once
| it's already frozen but still, undesireable.
|
| >My dryer could run in slow-mode if I turn it on at a
| dumb time.
|
| Your dryer could be replaced by a much more efficient
| design such as a heat pump dryer or a mechanical steam
| compression dryer.
|
| >My water heater (even a gas one has a 250w powered vent)
| could ultra-heat during off-peak.
|
| Safety devices make this a complete non-starter. A mixing
| device to lower the output water temperature can fail and
| probably eventually would fail stuck all the way hot
| making this a substantial burn hazard. Even ignoring
| this, all water heaters have a temperature and pressure
| relief valve and increasing the water temperature to e.g.
| 200 degrees instead of 140 substantially reduces the
| safety margin you have between normal operating
| conditions and catastrophic failure of the tank (a
| sizeable explosion). Also you're not really gaining a lot
| here, you could just use a standard water heater timer to
| turn it off during peak hours and rely on storage
| capacity. Increasing the setpoint from 140 to 210
| assuming ambient cold water temperature of 70 degrees
| only doubles your hot water equivalent capacity. I
| suspect it would be cheaper to increase the tank size and
| not have to deal with the more challenging operating
| conditions. Also, again, a much better solution is just
| widespread adoption of heat pump water heaters. For most
| homes you don't need the higher output of a resistive
| water heater and even if you did every heat pump water
| heater I've seen still comes with resistive heating as
| well if it can't keep up with demand. The decrease in
| energy bills pays for itself over the lifespan of the
| appliance.
|
| Personally I've always wanted to see a practical combined
| heating and refrigeration system for a home that could
| tie in a fridge, HVAC, hot water heater, etc via CO2
| refrigerant.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| > I've always wanted to see a practical combined heating
| and refrigeration system for a home that could tie in a
| fridge, HVAC, hot water heater, etc via CO2 refrigerant.
|
| This has been done commercially for decades, but my guess
| is that the potential savings at home residential scale
| are not enough to offset the cost and additional
| complexity.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| My water heater, dishwasher, washer and dryer are already
| timed to work during off-peak - what are you waiting for
| ? (I'll have to check about fridge ice, good idea!)
| the8472 wrote:
| > storage cost is in freefall too
|
| That's short-term storage. No seasonal storage technology
| is at a point where we could just point at a learning curve
| chart, draw a circle around some future intersection point
| and say "problem solved here".
| deeviant wrote:
| Seasonal storage?
|
| That's not a thing. You just scale your solar/wind
| installations to the part of the season with the least
| resource (solar and wind do not often have the same low
| point, either), which is economically feasible because it
| is cheaper than nuclear (and coal).
| the8472 wrote:
| That dramatically changes cost calculation. Currently
| "cheaper than X" models don't account for such
| overcapacity factors. If there's no wind in summer and no
| insolation during winter you'll have to overbuild _each_
| by a factor of 5 or so and then build short-term storage
| on top of that. Conversely that means the bar to meet now
| is _(renewables + storage) < fuel-based / 5_.
|
| That's a rather fat margin. And things would be a lot
| cheaper overall if we could shave that off with some
| long-term storage.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Running the numbers usually gives you numbers like 50%
| overbuild, but even if you're right, a 5x overbuild still
| is significantly cheaper than nuclear.
|
| A 5x overbuild would give you massive amounts of "free"
| electricity. I'm sure the world would find something
| economically useful to do with it. Maybe you could use it
| to generate green hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2,
| killing several birds with one stone.
| the8472 wrote:
| > Maybe you could use it to generate green hydrocarbons
| from atmospheric CO2
|
| Which would start to look a lot like long-term storage.
| But subsidized by negative energy prices during excess
| production. So rather than bleeding money while someone
| else makes profits any power company will prefer to build
| less overcapacity (which also avoids risking devalued
| assets) and run their own peak-shaving if they can. Which
| means this problem still has to be solved one way or
| another. Whether you call it long-term storage or excess
| energy use.
| HexagonalKitten wrote:
| It isn't quite that easy though because it's night for
| all 5x at once, for instance. So you need to have
| transmission capacity for the 4x you don't use locally,
| to send it elsewhere when it is sunny, and to import 1x
| at night from your sunlit neighbors.
|
| > generate green hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2,
| killing several birds with one stone.
|
| This is great because it means we can use guilt-free
| hydrocarbons where they're important. Like rocketry and
| airplanes, making lubricants, plastic bags, etc.
|
| > overbuild would give you massive amounts of "free"
| electricity. I'm sure the world would find something
| economically useful to do with it.
|
| Generating proofs of work for a blockchain collectible
| card game? :D
| deeviant wrote:
| > If there's no wind in summer and no insolation during
| winter you'll have to overbuild each by a factor of 5...
|
| If nuclear power physics stopped working October to
| March, that would drastically effect nuclear power
| economic competitiveness...
|
| Wait, what's this people are telling me, I can't just
| make stuff up?
|
| You make up a completely BS example but then actually go
| through and try to come out with actual numbers. Right.
| [deleted]
| manfredo wrote:
| Windless days and cloud cover are phenomena that actually
| exist and are observed. The behavior of beta particles
| suddenly changing is not.
|
| Yes, 5x variability in wind production has actually been
| observed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Erie_Shores_
| Wind_Farm_out... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windp
| owerprediction.png
| deeviant wrote:
| The statement was no X in Summer, no Y in winter. It was
| not talking about a daily or even weekly phenomena but
| seasonal one.
|
| There is no summer which have had _no_ winds, no winters
| that have had _no_ insolation or vice versa. Instead of
| making up numbers, you can use a site like this:
| https://www.solar-electric.com/learning-center/solar-
| insolat....
|
| You'll find that by comparing seasonal best case to
| seasonal worst case it is something like, on average, 50%
| difference. It gets worse the closer you to get to the
| pole obviously.
|
| Furthermore, surplus production does not go into
| dev/null. Excess resources create markets, and there will
| be consumers that take advantage of cheaper surplus power
| (smelting, heavy industrial, desalination, hydrogen
| production, and whatever else anybody cooks up).
| the8472 wrote:
| > There is no summer which have had no winds, no winters
| that have had no insolation or vice versa.
|
| The part of "no production" were not meant to be taken
| literally. If you want a more precise statement then let
| me put it this way:
|
| For PV in central europe even an overcapacity factor of 5
| would be insufficient to cover the difference between
| summer and winter. Germany's PV plants produced 7.3TWh
| during June 2019 and 0.58TWh during december 2018.
|
| Wind does look a bit better as far as seasonal
| differences go (about 4-5x) but it suffers from more
| short-term variability, so you might need less seasonal
| storage for it but it would require more medium-term
| (multi-day or -week) storage compared to solar which is a
| bit less variable during its peak months compared to
| wind's peak months.
| sp332 wrote:
| It may be dramatic, but so far it's still a lot less
| money than building several months worth of batteries.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Chemical storage (as methane or whatever) would work fine
| and the operational side would be more or less carbon
| neutral. The cost is high compared to burning fossil
| fuels, but we could do it as a society (have an excess of
| solar to meet household winter electrical needs and
| synthesize methane in the summer to use as household heat
| fuel in the winter).
|
| Just pulling numbers out of the darkness, the upfront
| cost here in a cold region would be ~1/4 to 1/2 the cost
| of a house. High, but also clearly workable.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Iron-based storage seems promising...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24996153
| qwertox wrote:
| There is this concept of "Gravity Storage" [1] which
| could be promising, if some testing were to be done on
| it.
|
| Basically you cut a large cylinder out of the earth and
| lift it by pumping water below it. When you then need the
| energy, you release the water with the help of the weight
| of the cylinder and use it to generate electricity.
|
| It sounds a bit crazy, but it could be worth testing that
| approach, since it can also be used in a flat area like a
| desert.
|
| In any case, the company filed for insolvency this year
| [2].
|
| There is a podcast episode [3] from "omega tau podcast"
| dedicated to it, which is worth listening to.
|
| [1]: https://heindl-energy.com/
|
| [2]: https://heindl-energy.com/about-us/
|
| [3]: https://omegataupodcast.net/299-gravity-storage/
| dTal wrote:
| The energy density of gravity storage is abysmal. How
| abysmal? A mobile phone battery can lift a 1-ton weight
| 10 meters.
| the8472 wrote:
| That is missing the point of my comment. I didn't say
| that no experimental technology exists. I said that no
| technology exists _where we can point to a chart_ from
| which we can conclude that the technology will be ready
| and economical in a certain number of years if trends
| continue.
| bjornsing wrote:
| Why would anybody pay for that?
| neltnerb wrote:
| It is better to make sure that the reactor won't corrode
| through just from the molten salts prior to testing it with
| radioactive molten salt. This is currently not clear.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Because it's a pretty good idea to know if the stuff that's
| responsible for containing the radioactive parts can do the
| job?
| jupp0r wrote:
| They are selling these to customers. GPs question is what
| customers would do with them.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Low corrosion materials and parts designs might still be
| worth it in other non-nuclear industrial processes?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I presume customers are manufacturers of potential
| reactor parts that want to see that they can handle the
| salt, temperatures etc.
|
| edit: from the datasheet[1]:
|
| _The portable loop are sutable rapid prototype
| validation, long term testing of mean time between
| failure, salt compatibility testing, and many types of
| experiments that require flowing molten salts._
|
| _Components such as gaskets, flanges, filters, valves,
| pumps, pressure sensors, flow meters, and heat
| exchangers, etc. can be tested inside the furnace with
| flowing molten salt._
|
| [1]: https://www.copenhagenatomics.com/products.php
| api wrote:
| ... which is a very good idea for both cost and safety reasons.
|
| It's sort of like how SpaceX is blowing up a lot of flying beer
| cans before packing one with people and expensive equipment.
| usrusr wrote:
| Apparently unrelated to Copenhagen Suborbitals. As much as I love
| Copenhagen Suborbitals, I'd rather not want to see them growing
| an atomics subdivision..
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| That is the future merged company :-)
| koeng wrote:
| I'm wondering what kind of safety these would have. A 100 MW
| reactor in a single shipping container is crazy efficient - just
| curious what infrastructure around that would have to be built
| yvdriess wrote:
| The shipping container only has the reactor, it does not
| produce the actual power. You would still need turbines etc for
| that externally.
| hairytrog wrote:
| You mean crazy dangerous. At that power density, everything has
| to work for this thing to not meltdown.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| So actually that's the whole design of these things. You have
| to work to keep them running. In case of a meltdown, the fuel
| is passively drained by a plug.
| quasse wrote:
| In case anyone else was wondering how having the molten
| fuel pour out of the reactor is safe - it is designed to
| pour into a container with criticality safe geometry to
| stop fission:
|
| "in an emergency situation [the fuel] can be quickly
| drained out of the reactor into a passively cooled dump
| tank. MSRs designs have a freeze plug at the bottom of the
| core--a plug of salt, cooled by a fan to keep it at a
| temperature below the freezing point of the salt. If
| temperature rises beyond a critical point, the plug melts,
| and the liquid fuel in the core is immediately evacuated,
| pouring into a sub-critical geometry in a catch basin. This
| formidable safety tactic is only possible if the fuel is a
| liquid." [1]
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1687
| 85071...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| So instead of melting down by accident it melts down
| deliberately, controlled by a fan?
|
| Somehow I'm not as reassured as I might be.
| mohaine wrote:
| This would not be melting down. Melting down is melting
| out of the containment device, which this is not doing.
| True it is melting INTO a secondary containment device
| but unless it continues to melt through that it would not
| be a 'melt down'
| rland wrote:
| Well, no. A meltdown is when the stuff escapes
| containment and then continues undergoing fission,
| heating up and melting out of containment and into
| groundwater/the environment.
|
| The drain tanks are shaped specifically so if the
| (liquid) fuel flows in, it will stop reacting. And
| presumably the whole apparatus (drain tanks included) is
| inside of a biological shield.
|
| So a "meltdown" here just means a big hunk of solid
| nuclear salt inside the bio-shield. I think the idea
| being that you could just bury the whole thing in case of
| failure.
| jabl wrote:
| IIRC draining the fuel salt into the drain tanks was
| standard operating procedure for one of the early MSR
| experimental reactors.
|
| Next morning when they came in to continue experiments,
| started the (electrical?) heaters to liquify the salt and
| pump it back into the reactor core.
|
| Wouldn't surprise me if the modern designs are similar.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Also, there is no pressure build up, which is what caused
| the big explosion in Fukushima. All the coolant starts
| boiling, turning into gas, and well the rest was in the
| news
| bbojan wrote:
| Just for clarification, the big explosion at Fukushima
| was a hydrogen explosion. At high temperatures, fuel
| cladding breaks water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen
| collected at the highest point in the structure and later
| exploded.
| joncrane wrote:
| I would love to see what a sub-critical geometry looks
| like. I also wonder what kind of math and engineering
| they did to come up with the shape they ended up with.
| NortySpock wrote:
| http://thorconpower.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/03/ColdWallL...
|
| This one is just a bunch of separate tanks spaced as far
| away from each other as possible.
|
| I've also seen a "Bed of nails" design where the liquid
| salt would flow over a bunch of moderating spikes, seep
| down between them and freeze.
| julienfr112 wrote:
| a pancake ?
| mhh__ wrote:
| > I also wonder what kind of math and engineering they
| did to come up with the shape they ended up with.
|
| I assume this is why some Finite Element Analysis
| packages come with warnings along the lines of "You must
| not use this to help Kim Jong-Un do you know what"
|
| Feynman wrote of this when he was working at Los Alamos,
| i.e. the labourers weren't informed as to what they were
| really working with, so they could come very close to
| criticality accidents.
| donor20 wrote:
| A pyramid may work with a wide flat basin at edge,
| especially if core material is moderating itself (vs just
| separating).
| bigbubba wrote:
| In some contexts, a subcritical geometry is simply a
| plastic jug that's too small to hold a critical mass.
| Obviously they're not using plastic jugs for this, but
| the principle of the thing is pretty straight forward.
| They could create a wide 'dish' under the reactor which,
| if the liquid fuel were drained into, would spread the
| fuel out into a shallow puddle using the self-leveling
| property of fluids.
| bigbubba wrote:
| > _This formidable safety tactic is only possible if the
| fuel is a liquid. " [1]_
|
| Isn't something similar possible with pebble reactors, at
| least in principle?
| morning_gelato wrote:
| My understanding is that these reactors are designed to have
| a lot of passive safety features (e.g. if all operators walk
| away the reactor will cool itself and go sub-critical), so
| quite the opposite of what you are claiming.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| Those safety systems don't exist in a shipping container
| sized nuclear reactor. One method that I think you're
| talking about is when the temperature of the molten salts
| goes beyond a certain safety threshold then a heat
| sensitive plug is disintegrated and the Milton salts are
| drained into a safe underground reservoir for them to cool.
| (This is my recollection from that why thorium is the
| future video that went viral years ago) Can't do that in a
| shipping container.
| morning_gelato wrote:
| I was thinking of Copenhagen Atomics' Waste Burner design
| where they describe their passive walk-away safety
| features as "Prime minister safety" [1].
|
| > _The CA Waste Burner has a set of systems governed by
| the laws of physics that cannot be overruled by humans,
| and which will cause the reactor to shut down safely if
| something goes wrong...This means that operators are not
| required to watch for alarms and act in accordance. The
| CA Waste Burner must be able to automatically shut down
| before any human can react to an alarm and choose what to
| do. If human action were ever required for operation,
| other than during startup procedures, then we would
| consider it a design failure..._
|
| [1] https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101126-3.00023-3
| lostlogin wrote:
| > The CA Waste Burner has a set of systems governed by
| the laws of physics that cannot be overruled by humans,
| and which will cause the reactor to shut down safely if
| something goes wrong.
|
| This is really good, but humans have an amazing knack for
| messing stuff up and I really hope corners aren't cut
| building and maintaining it.
|
| What comes to mind is the situation in Japan where
| workers inadvertently had some material go critical, and
| while this was being investigated it was found that they
| were carrying waste uranium and nitric acid around by
| hand in buckets.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20263-japans-
| record-o...
| joncrane wrote:
| Reactor shipped with "some assembly required."
| dave333 wrote:
| Nuclear is obsolete now that there are working prototypes
| producing 250KW for 100 hours+ from the reaction of hydrogen to
| hydrino (dark matter):
|
| https://brilliantlightpower.com/the-suncell-at-the-100-hour-...
| tln wrote:
| I didn't see EUR88k in the video... but I did find it on Amazon!
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Molten-Salt-Loop-40-Liter/dp/B077782Y...
|
| $88,000 + $4.49 shipping.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| At 80 seconds in the video he states they sell it for 88k
| tln wrote:
| Thanks
|
| https://youtu.be/A9zfYTWjZqk?t=80
|
| "That's a bargain" :)
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Tbh. That looks badass to have in your garage
| discreditable wrote:
| > Cloud Data Acquisition
|
| Is this the most expensive IoT?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I like that Amazon says, "People also buy 'Diamond Crystal
| Kosher Salt' when buying this product." AI recommendation fail.
| symplee wrote:
| Gotta love the "Customers also viewed these products" section
| on that page, for example:
|
| "Salt Block Grilling: 70 Recipes for Outdoor Cooking with
| Himalayan Salt Blocks"
| mywittyname wrote:
| I've heard that molten salt sous vide cooking is starting to
| really take off.
| genericacct wrote:
| If you look at the brochure pictures you'll see that that they
| wrote "two layers of contaminant" instead of "two layers of
| containment", which is unsettling to me.
| stevespang wrote:
| The Guy says $88K at 1:21 minutes in the video - - but he does
| not state 1 MW for $88K, probably a LOT smaller. Molten salt
| reactors STILL require a source of uranium isotope as a neutron
| source to get the thorium hopping.
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