CONTRIBUTOR
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted approval for the construction of a salt-cooled, high-temperature nuclear reactor in Tennessee on Tuesday, according to the Department of Energy (DOE).
Kairos Power will operate the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, facility, which is the first non-water-cooled reactor to receive regulatory approval from the NRC in more than five decades, according to the company. While Kairos will still need to apply for an operating license from the NRC, a DOE sub-agency, it expects the facility to begin operations as early as 2026, according to the DOE.
“Kairos Power is thrilled to have achieved this major regulatory milestone as we make final preparations to start construction at the Hermes site next year,” Kairos CEO and co-founder Mike Laufer said of the announcement. “We are excited for this next phase in the deployment of the Hermes reactor, and we remain committed to being a good community partner to our neighbors in Oak Ridge as we bring value to the region and build on its nuclear legacy.” (RELATED: Trump Wants To Revitalize Rural America, Could This Nuclear Power Plant Be The ‘Shot In the Arm’ It Needs?)
Today, @NRCgov convened its mandatory hearing on Kairos Power’s construction permit application for the Hermes demonstration reactor to be built in Oak Ridge – the final step in the NRC’s CPA review, which follows the safety & environmental reviews completed earlier this year. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/jprjy48ppY
— Kairos Power (@KairosPower) October 19, 2023
The reactor, known as Hermes, is notable because it uses molten salts as a coolant for nuclear energy production rather than water, which traditionally serves that function, according to the World Nuclear Association. The Hermes facility will serve as a demonstration reactor, meaning that the company will use it to prove that it can generate safe and affordable energy in the future with the technology it uses, according to Kairos.
New commercial nuclear power plants are rare in the contemporary history of the U.S., regardless of what materials are used as coolant. Key challenges to affordable nuclear development include regulatory uncertainty and high per-unit construction costs, according to the Institute for Energy Research.
The first commercial nuclear reactor built from scratch this century went online in July near Augusta, Georgia, years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
“This is a huge milestone for the nuclear energy sector,” Kathryn Huff, the assistant secretary for nuclear energy at the DOE, said of the announcement. “NRC’s approval of the first ever (construction permit application) granted to a Generation IV reactor charts a path forward for future design applications as we work toward deploying new reactor technologies. This accomplishment is a testament to the collaborative work among Kairos, the NRC, DOE and all stakeholders involved in the project.”
Oak Ridge served as the headquarters for the Manhattan Project, a covert World War II initiative to design the atomic weapons that ultimately ended the war.
Neither Kairos nor the DOE responded immediately to requests for comment.
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Weren’t the reactors at Chernobyl molten salt cooled?
No, water cooled and graphite moderated.
Worse, the Chernobyl reactor control rod tips had a positive coefficient of reactivity. Which means the fission counts accelerated as the rods were pushed in. Insane design.
It was a garbage design, inherently flawed. It was intended to be built very rapidly and to produce plutonium for the Soviet nuclear weapons program.
“…to produce plutonium for the Soviet nuclear weapons program.”
Indeed. But they weren’t the only ones who did that.
Edward Teller, the “Father of the H-Bomb” was strongly in favor of using Thorium reactors, both because of their inherent safety and proliferation concerns, but the US gummint wanted stuff that would go BOOM.
Hence, the reactor types we use today.
We have Thorium for the next 100 kY. Yes.
But.
All Thorium fission products are gamma-active with net decay time ~30 kY and they cannot be re-used as fuel.
You are going to produce huge amounts of VERY radioactive waste.
No, Alex. The decay chain endpoint for 233U, which is the actual fissile material in thorium reactors, is 208Pb, which is non-fissile. there is one very strong gamma emitter in the decay chain, 228Th, which has a half-life of 1.9 years. We’re not looking at 30K years. Thorium reactors are also very efficient burners, consuming most of the fissile material present, as opposed to uranium based which consume about 4% of the fissile material present or produced. Thorium reactors have been proposed as a way of reducing high-level radioactive waste, which is mostly the fuel in fuel rods, by putting into the reactor.
The problem at Chernobyl was dumb Russians…just like in Ukraine….dumb Russians.
as opposed to dumb commenters like antigtiffy here.
Our biggest security threat has been 3 generations of lefty-woke dumbing down of education. Russia has a lot of bad things, but definitely education isn’t one of them!
Russia has declining pop…declining life span….declining GDP….its only “friends” are China Iran N. Korea…Putey Pootin is even dumber than Joke Biden…..but Joke is gonna be gone in less than a year…..Putey appears to be Stalin II.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the USA would have a declining population if it weren’t for illegal immigration, the middle class has seen the first decline in life expectancy in history (Thanks to Barky Obama and Traitor Joe!) and our education system has been taken over by the Cultural Marxists.
Can we turn this around in time? The international elites don’t want that…
People are leaving Russia…but grab a bottle of vodka and move there Putey lovers. US appears to have 50% dumb people compared to 90% Russia.
FWIW
This seems to fit about here IMO –
Supposed;y this is science now –
Covid and Coffee mewsletter – One item from today’s edition –
” Um, no thanks! Nature ran a dreadful story this week headlined, “Self-copying RNA vaccine wins first full approval: what’s next?”
“The gist is, some mad scientists in San Diego created a whole ‘new generation’ of new and improved mRNA drugs, which were promptly approved for use in Japan this week. Good luck, Japan.
To create what might be called a “turbo-charged” version of a covid mRNA vaccine, the delirious scientists took a deadly virus — mosquito-borne Venezuelan equine encephalitis, to be specific — and cut out its heart, the biological engine responsible for rapidly replicating the highly-contagious, deadly pathogen.
The scientists — and now the Japanese Ministry of Health — say there’s nothing to worry about, it’s perfectly safe.”
More at
https://open.substack.com/pub/coffeeandcovid/p/post-acute-wednesday-december-13?r=1vxw0k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
As Tom Lehrer said about Werner Von Braun –
“When the rockets go up
Who cares where they come down
That’s not my department
Said Werner Von Braun”
Anti: I hope this is just a bad day you are having. You have to up your game.
“Putey Pootin”?? Really? Quite purile, IMO.
Why is it so many in the Western world have such low regard for Russians? They put our astronauts into orbit for a decade. They are defeating the West’s best military equipment on the Ukraine battlefields.It is not wise to under estimate nor ridicule your enemy.
BTW since the Warsaw Pact dissolved how many countries has Russia attacked or invaded compared to the US?
I am no Putin supporter nor Russian apologist. I am an open eyed realist.
“Why is it so many in the Western world have such low regard for Russians?”
I think most of the low regard is directed at Russia’s leadership, not its people.
The average Russian person is just like the average person in any other country, they just want to get on with their lives with as little outside interference as possible.
Then crazy dictators get involved and screw everything up.
Putin was “elected” and I have just as little regard for crazy Western “elected” dictators.
I’m glad you put “elected” that way. Appropiate in both cases.
Yeah, I don’t like dictators, either, no matter what country they are enslaving or where they are from.
BTW since the Warsaw Pact dissolved how many countries ..
I give in. How many countries did the Warsaw Pact dissolve?
Ah, perhaps you meant, “Since the Warsaw Pact was dissolved…”
I see you have been gorging on the MSM and official government announcements of late.
Funny how when it comes to climate, no one here listens to the MSM or our respective governments, but when it comes to a pet hate/like, suddenly the MSM and governments are telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
No, the problem with RBMKs was an inherently unsafe design with an emergency shutdown system incapable of shutting down the reactor. This was only the worst of a huge number of serious design flaws.
Uh, who designed it?….was it….Russians? Uh, why was the reactor being put in a dangerous operating condition….was it Russian operators?
Of course almost all nuclear accidents are man caused…the Japanese did dumb things too…seems to be something about nuclear reactors that people think are something to be casually treated and little risk involved.
The elephant in the room is Carter era environmental review procedures. Until those are eliminated, not just “revised”, very little will ever actually get built.
I guess they exist for a reason.
Everything exists for a reason. Whether that justifies it’s continued use is debatable – times change and a justified reason at one time may be unjustified later. If the Carter era procedures are no longer of any use then they should be removed – the reason they were put in place may not be relevant any more.
Before there was lawfare, the greens used Regulations to shut down the nuclear power industry with help from Jane Fonda’s movie and incompetence at Three Mile Island.
Yes, Username, onerous unrealistic restrictions and regulations pandering to the anti-nuclear economy destroying green gang.
Burning witches existed for a reason.
Really?
Like you, they exist because of ignorance.
And the NRC seems to think that their job is to prevent nuclear power.
They are part of the Department of Energy, where good ideas go to die.
Unlike certain bots with unimaginative, um, usernames.
They existed to suppress nuclear power.
NRC has already approved the construction which is the subject of this post. The reactor plant will still need applicable state environmental permits, just like any other development project. But states and other Federal agencies like EPA are prohibited from regulating nuclear facilities, or at least the nuclear part of nuclear facilities by Federal statute and the preemption clause of the U.S. Constitution.
It has been the NRC licensing process that has been the primary drag on nuclear power development in the U.S.
And Carter’s reprocessing ban EO 12193
Article by Jim Stone,back in 2013 – “During my journey of discovery in my investigation into the Fukushima disaster, I interviewed an 85 year old nuclear engineer who worked in the nuclear industry during America’s glory days, an engineer who earned GE over 100 patents. He was one of the engineers who designed Fukushima, so naturally when conducting an investigation into such a disaster a journalist would want that type of reference.
When I started to think I was going to walk away with nothing new, he began to talk about an entirely different subject. He began his new direction in the discussion with the phrase “My team succeeded in closing the nuclear loop, and Carter banned our miracle with an executive order.
We perfected the second reactor design which used liquid sodium as a coolant and the reactor ran much hotter – 1100 Fahrenheit as opposed to 550 in a boiling water reactor. The liquid sodium circulated inside the reactor instead of water, with the heat of the reaction being removed from the system by a heat exchanger which produced steam outside the reactor for use in producing electricity. The temperature difference and coolant characteristics in the complimentary reactor facilitated the burning of the isotopes, and you got to use both sides of the reaction – the boiling water reactor produced electricity while producing unwanted isotopes, and the sodium cooled reactor produced electricity while burning the unwanted isotopes out. This process could be repeated 20 times, and when it was finished the fuel was DEAD and no longer hazardous because all of it’s radiological potential was used up. It was a clean energy dream come true, and Carter banned it by executive order!” [Executive Order 12193- Nuclear Reprocessing]
And the frivolous lawsuits from greentards will be filed in 3,2,1,,,,,,,,,
Probably not for this test project. However, Kairos have filed a costruction permit application for a 2-unit, full size plant, Hermes II, to be built next to Hermes. That one might get the frivolous lawsuits as long as the greenies are still anti-nuke and haven’t got on board with the new nuclear programme.
Yes, the greentards will file frivolous lawsuits, THAT is their only tactic. Don’t bury your head in the sand. That is the leftists’ ONLY TACTIC. Period. Full stop.
Oh just stop it. They’ve had 3 whole years to have a go at the Hermes plant and nothing, zip, nada. So I stand by my post and ignore yours.
Obviously a press release and not all that informative. Is this just proof of concept or is it a first try at a practical reactor? How much power output? No water needed for cooling. But how do they generate electricity? Not by turbines driven directly by molten salt I’d guess. Probably steam? That’s OK, but it needs some water. Maybe a problem in arid areas or those with population centers downstream?
I did some googling. The best article I could come up with quickly is this. https://thebulletin.org/2022/06/molten-salt-reactors-were-trouble-in-the-1960s-and-they-remain-trouble-today/ The source — The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists — notwithstanding, it seems a not bad starting point as there is a lot of what looks to be fairly objective detail. Honestly, I’d expected more ideology.
If we restate the final section as something like: “Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) may turn out to be practical but they deal with corrosive solutions at very high temperatures. Reliability is likely to be an issue.”, maybe that’s a starting point for discussion.
The question has always been, why not heavy water. Works great in nearly every capacity and is cheap and plentiful. The only problem solved is high temperatures, but what does that solve? Smaller reactors? The biggest problem is regulatory. Somehow added Trump to the story, maybe he could just end the DOE regulatory part of it?
The hot output is 650C. That will produce hotter steam in the heat exchanger than in Gen 3 nuclear, and lead to a smaller, more efficient steam turbine driving the generator. Commercial goal is a modular MSR with 350MWth and 140MWe. Thermal efficiency is the same as supercritical coal at Turk in Arkansas. HERMES is a 1/10 scale engineering prototype of the MSR only.
High temperatures are good for thermodynamic efficiency but comes with a host of problems related to materials. Essentially, salt eats the h… out of everything. Commercial ships of all kinds rarely can operate for more than 30 years because salt (at ambient temperatures) eats the h… out of everything. The Navy spent a fortune keeping USS Enterprise going for 50 years because salt eats the h… out of everything but they had to do it to keep their military commitments. The Oak Ridge folks developed Hastelloy N to solve this problem for their MSR. But it failed because salt eats the h… out of everything. If Thorium utilization is important, there is a solution – the light water breeder reactor. Run at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in the 1970s, it produced about 1.3% more fuel as Th 233 than it consumed and it ran with water, the same as used in hundreds (or is it thousands) of reactors all over the world today.
I’m sort of surprised that HTGR’s aren’t being promoted. They can run on a thorium cycle, and they may produce more U233 from 232TH than the 233U consumed.
The advantage of MSR’s is that the 135Xe can be quickly removed from the core and that does nice things for conversion efficiency.
The Chinese seem to agree with you. They’re way ahead.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-HTR-PM-Demo-begins-commercial-operation
“salt eats the h… out of everything. Commercial ships of all kinds rarely can operate for more than 30 years”
When first in college, I landed a day gig at the Port of Sacramento working on a rice gang, loading bagged rice on a PanMax boat called Terafil Pilot. Speaking with the third mate, I asked when the keel was laid, thinking it must have been before the war. He said 1972. This was in 1980, there were holes through the floor in the passage ways, eaten through by the boots of the sailors walking on the rust on the salty floors. This boat was 8 years old.
The problem with salt water in a marine environment is not the same issue as with molten salt coolant, the latter not being an aqueous solution. Apples and oranges.
The higher temperature molten salt allows a higher efficiency steam cycle….this is actually not a smart idea because of the high tech materials required to build molten salt pumps and the like, not to mention that nuclear has so much power we shouldn’t need to be pushing the efficiency envelope with high temperatures. Water remains the least expensive way to go, and heavy water requires a lot lower tech reactor, but was too bulky for submarine propulsion…..
Using a higher temperature secondary cooling loop IS a smart way to produce steam used in turbines to produce electrical power. MSRs do not operate at high primary coolant system pressures, thus greatly reducing the cost of building pressurized components like piping, valves, and especially reactor vessels. High operating pressure requires the pressure vessel walls to be very thick, which then creates additional issues associated with rapid temperature changes that can induce excessive stress in a highly pressurized vessel. A related issue affecting thick walled high pressure vessels is neutron embrittlement. As reactors age their pressure vessels become embrittled by neutron bombardment, which makes the reactor vessel more at risk of brittle fracture due to excessive cooldown rates.
The engineering involved in reactor design is complex and involves many tradeoffs depending on the design decisions made.
“a 1/10 scale engineering prototype”
How does a critical amount of nuclear fuel scale?
Easily. Criticality is a function of fissile material density not absolute mass, as well as various reactor design considerations such as choice of fuel and moderator, geometry of fuel, and the degree of enrichment over natural uranium or thorium mix of radionuclides.
Nuclear reactors can be as small as 1 MWE (the smallest commercial reactor plants), while the smallest thermoelectric generators (RTGs) used in space vehicles can be as small as a few hundred watts electric. Whereas a typical commercial reactor plant is somewhere around 500+ MWE.
Your question is sensible. Heavy water allows the use of natural unenriched uranium which reduced fuel cost by avoiding enrichment. However, heavy water is relatively costly compared to light water, and adds to the capital construction cost of the reactor. (Heavy water is a capital and not an operating cost.)
Heavy water was indeed produced in very large quantities by the old Ontario Hydro in Ontario through a process of large scale ion exchange involving taking natural DHO and making it into D2O. The only waste or byproduct of such a facility was lots of H2O.
Heavy water is just liquid water, and has the same disadvantages as any other liquid cooling system used in pressurized water or boiling water reactors. Corrosion is an issue with water cooling which requires extreme attention paid to water chemistry control in the cooling system. Water also requires extreme pressure to keep it from boiling in a PWR, the most common nuclear power plant design – that extreme pressure requires that the entire plant including reactor vessel and steam generators to be built very heavy duty, and of course the extreme pressure means that the water is always trying to escape. Loss of pressure in the system can result in a catastrophic meltdown of the reactor core.
Molten salt coolant does not need to operate at high pressure so pressure loss is not an issue and the plant need not be designed to contain extreme pressures. The molten salt also does not vaporize as steam does – steam leaks represent a serious safety risk. Chemistry control is not the issue with molten salt as it is with water cooled reactors.
So the 4 reactors in Virginia licensed for 80 years, the water must be a big problem, right?
Just comparing PWR and BWR to MSR. Each type has advantages and disadvantages. Like everything else in technology, design involves choices and there are no absolutes that do not involve tradeoffs.
DOE does not regulate nuclear reactor design, licensing, construction, or operations. That is the job of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Congress reorganized and separated nuclear research, nuclear weapons, and commercial nuclear reactor regulations back in the 1970s. Prior to that the former Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) combined everything. Congress determined that the former AEC could not both promote nuclear energy and at the same time regulate itself, which is correct. The result was two agencies, DOE and NRC.
Even water cooled reactors are a closed loop in the cooling system. Ultra-hot pressurized water goes into a transfer that heats the actual working fluid.
And absolutely NOTHING from that source is reliable – dig into it, and you’ll almost certainly find that most of the “objective detail” is detailed lies.
Not true. Modern commercial nuclear power plants are highly reliable with 70+ years of operating experience. But each type of reactor design has relative pluses and minuses, like everything else in technology.
You do have a point about the chemical activity of the substances used, but material science has come a long way in the last 5 decades!
This might also be a good place to test materials for fusion reactors (there are some differences in the material requirements, but also some similarities, you end up with somewhat similar materials for some tasks – high temperatures and stability in high radiation fields) -for example they are talking about developing lithium enriched liquid lead radiation shields.
The most exciting part of this technology is, that it can be used to run on and breed thorium and thus produces a lot less trans-uranium waste plus it could be used to transmutate existing nuclear waste.. but of course no private company will touch that!
For the salt to remain molten, the fuel rod temperature also remains closer to the thermal runaway temperature. Just don’t let the salts cool and solidify
There are salts (sometimes called “ionic liquids”) which are liquid at room temperature.
Not so.
Commercial-scale MSRs will require water for cooling of their open, tertiary cooling loops. See the attached schematic for a typical MSR, and note the heat exchanger open loop flows identified as running from/to “heat sinks”.
At the highest possible efficiency of 50% conversion of MSR thermal energy to electrical energy, a relatively small 100 MW (electrical output) power plant will need to “sink” 100 MW of waste heat to an outside heat absorber . . . the only reasonable option being an available, flowing water source, such as that available from a river, lake, ocean or underground aquifer.
Some people have speculated on tractor trailer-size compact MSRs being able to be air-cooled, but this is easily seen to be impractical if the electrical power output of such is more than about 0.25 MW (optimistically based on a maximum achievable forced air-cooling heat flux of about 5 kW/m2 for forced convection and fan-driven HX area of 50 m^2 . . . see https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/heat-flux-cooling-mode-d_1211.html ).
Ooops . . . first sentence should read:
“Commercial-scale MSRs will require water for cooling of heat exchangers in their closed, tertiary cooling loops.
Actually China is already building their version of their molten salt design specifically to be used in their western regions where cooling water will be in short supply. As well they also plan to use the ‘waste’ heat for centralized community/district heating.
Hmmm . . . cooling water in short supply, yet China is going to use the waste heat from one or more MSRs for “centralized community/district heating”?
Sounds like a bunch of hot air to me.
No, there was a small Canadian reactor designed and built more than 40 years ago to do just that. The Chinese liked it and stole the design for their own replication.
Hmmm . . . got any reference that you can cite to support that statement?
A Web search does not yield any results for a Canadian MSR being designed, let alone built, let alone being air-cooled, “more than 40 years ago.”
For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor under its “History” section makes no mention of such a Canadian MSR.
Likewise for:
— https://thebulletin.org/2022/06/molten-salt-reactors-were-trouble-in-the-1960s-and-they-remain-trouble-today/ , and
— https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/research-reactors/other-reactor-facilities/index.cfm
— https://www.iaea.org/topics/molten-salt-reactors
Oak Ridge had a small MSRE (E for experiment) running from 1965 to 1969, Canada and the UK both developed designs and conducted tests to establish the validity of those designs but neither design was ever built. I think cgh may be referring to a design project rather than a built reactor.
Ahhh, yes . . . the common misperception that having designed something on paper or on computer is equivalent to having built and successfully operated that design.
Popular Mechanics magazine likely holds the world’s record for the number of times designs for “flying cars” have been featured on its cover . . .
TYSo,
I think he is probably talking about the SLOWPOKE reactors from AECL in Canada that were popular at several university research programs in the 60’s and 70’s. Several were sold around the world, and they were copied in several countries and research institutions for enriching radioactive substances. A very reliable design, several still in use, but not MSR, just a graphite pile with control rods all hanging in a swimming pool, just heating the water in the pool…
. . . and not for generating electricity, and therefore not needing much waste heat rejection.
Well if China is doing it then it must be a good idea.
It is not the reactor per se that requires water cooling. It is the Carnot cycle steam plant on the secondary loop that requires cooling, via either heat exchangers or evaporative cooling towers, to remove the residual heat of vaporization from spent steam condensing back to liquid water for recycling back through the secondary cooling loop. All thermal power plants using the Carnot cycle, regardless of heat source (nuclear reactor, or boilers fueled by gas or oil) have the same requirement of condensing the spent steam.
C’mon: it is only by “cooling” the hot nuclear core elements by a fluid (gas or liquid, including molten salts) that one is able to transfer the thermal energy over time, MWh of power, into the secondary and tertiary loops of the working steam plant.
No transfer of thermal power from the reactor core, no steam, independent of the the condensation phase of the power cycle.
The bull-etin of the atomic scientists is the last place to start – they hate anything atomic!
Corrosive issues have been dealt with – Oak Ridge’s molten salt reactor ran fine in the sixties with its limited development budget. Imagine if it had the military budget of its pressurized water reactor cousin that then enjoyed the official sanction of the government. Governments are the last entity you would want to make final decisions like that early on in the development of any kind of tech.
Better start for your studies:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx
And why do we need to discuss the molten salt reactor issues here? What’s the point? What’s going to be the end result? You make it sound that we need a plebiscite to decide whether or not to proceed with the research and development but why?? Already the misinformed and brainwashed public has held back nuclear power of all forms for decades, and now are increasingly holding back natural gas and coal without any rational reason, only because of their ‘feelings’ that those power sources have the ‘cooties’.
Not to worry: Cori and Perlmutter Support New Understanding of Reaction Behind Salt …
Nov 30, 2023
Using computing resources at NERSC, researchers at the University of Iowa and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have shown how electrons interact with ions of molten salts
Good call. The Crescent Dunes solar plant was shut down because they couldn’t contain the molten salt.
There’s a lot going on with the Beryllium Fluoride salts, I didn’t read much on them, but they stay liquid and don’t increase pressure 500 to 1,400C.
You’d much rather stay away from beryllium if you can. Nasty stuff.
Materials science and engineering technology is much advanced today compared to state of the art in the 1960s, like everything else that involves technology.
Bidenism leads to Bidenflation and Bidenasiter….just do the opposite of what Joke Biden does.
China has built or is building an MSR …..just search YouTube for Kirk Sorensen and the last year….there are multiple videos on the subject.
BiDEMenomics, BiDEMONomics
Bribem-nomics.
Their website
https://kairospower.com/technology/
Key point: the Kairos Power Hermes facility will serve as a demonstration reactor.
That’s something that’s long been needed.
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Disadvantages ) lists nine disadvantages associated with MSRs that will need to be overcome or reduced to technically-, financially- and politically-acceptable levels.
Also, this same source cites a MSR demonstration reactor construction already underway in China (PRC).
No telling how many years in the future will be needed to prove the scalability of MSR technology from demonstration plant size to commercial plant size.
I thought someone built some (at least one) MSRs back in the ’50s. Is this “demonstration” repeating that exercise? What new ground does it break?
Wikipedia can be your friend when you have questions.
Just remember to check everything with other sources just in case…
Yes, but I can’t remember. We studied it in the 70s in my Nuclear class.
Hint – Oak Ridge MSRE 1965-69. Small experimental molten salt reactor.
I can’t believe that Red94 would think MSRs were completely explored 50 years ago and that nothing could be added or improved given half a century of progress in material science, computers and engineering in general.
If SpaceX can make a rocket out of stainless steel, that would have been ridiculous 50 years ago, imagine how far reactors of all flavours could improve and even leap frog 🐸!
Material science for the win!
Additive Manufacturing for the win!
Computational fluid dynamics for the win!
2026
Sure
Believable if Regulatory Nightmares don’t get in the way.
If they do it on the federal reservation, they avoid all the local BS.
That is why NuScale was intending to build at the Idaho National Nuclear site.
I’ll admit I was (pleasantly) surprised by the date of 2026. Even for a demonstration reactor.
I think it must be getting close to two decades now since the UK government gave the go ahead for a new commercial reactor in the UK.
Unsurprisingly, we are still waiting for one, when we probably need ten of twenty such.
Went and looked it up at NRC. HERMES test reactor is 35MWth. No electricity will be produced. Lightly enriched (19%) Uranium TRISO fuel pebbles ( like Canadian CANDU), FLiBE molten salt. If successful, next step is a commercial modular MSR with 350MWth and 140MWe.
Kairos has already gone through four engineering iterations without live fuel, to test all aspects of the reactor system. About 150 employees, 95% engineers. Not surprised they got the go ahead for this next development step, a working reactor prototype.
And this is why EVERY nuclear reactor in this country has come in (way) over budget. GET THE G** D*** REGULATORS THE H*** OUT OF THE F***ING WAY!!! Put it on the testing company, you remain responsible for cleaning up any mess you make, but you are under contract to produce power. That is all. In fact, over-regulation (IMHO) produces a certain negligence (at least in the responsibility attitude) on the part of the operators, because all they have to do is say, “We complied with all regulatory requirements” and they have a get-out-of-jail-free card, no matter what happens.
All you are showing RV is that you have utterly no idea of how nuclear safety procedures actually works in a working nuclear power reactor. There’s no such thing as a free pass anywhere in nuclear safety.
Regulation per se is not the problem. I’m glad my contractor would have to abide by the International Residential Code when constructing my house. It’s the regulatory dance where some bright-eyed snot-nosed wunder-kind decides to overhaul the regulations in the middle of design, or worse, construction that is the killer. Or slow walking the regulatory process, without penalties for the parties responsible.
The Kairos Power video at the bottom of the above article is terrible . . . repeated verbal references to “Flibe”, without any mention of what the heck it actually is.
Like Rud, I had to do a Web search to discover that (a) the Kairos Power website doesn’t provide an explanation of what it is, but (b) it is defined in this openly-available NRC document:
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1833/ML18337A040.pdf
Here is the definition of “Flibe”, in context (but you have to get to page 13 of the referenced NRC document to find it):
“The fuel in the KP-FHR is the TRISO-coated particle fuel developed for high temperature gas-cooled reactors, which can withstand fuel particle temperatures up to 1600°C. The reactor coolant is the chemically stable, low-pressure molten fluoride salt mixture, 2LiF:BeF2 (Flibe), with a boiling point of 1430°C, notably lower than 1600°C and yet functionally very high.”
Hmmmm . . . lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride*, mixed together and molten . . . sounds like a real witches brew to me.
*NB: MSDS for BeF2 cites it as being a poison (“toxic if inhaled”) and probable human carcinogen
Candu doesn’t use TRISO, and doesn’t use enriched fuel at all.
The Chinese are working on twin high temperature 250MWth reactors that will drive a single 210MWe turbine (almost 50% conversion efficiency!) that use TRISO fuel.
Given the amount they are investing and the projects that they are willing to take risks on, the Chinese will have a similar reputation as the Germans and Japanese have for engineering prowess, in a generation or 2. It seems the west is buried in redtape and is afraid of its own shadow – well, most of “the west”, except a small spot named Boca Chica.
Let’s just hope that the failure rate from the Kairos Power Hermes facility at the Oak Ridge DOE site is significantly lower than that coming out of the “small spot named Boca Chica”.
CANDU? They called the reactor design CANDU? It sounds like a small trucking or removal firm! Ok, for name alone Kairos/Hermes get’s my vote! 🤣
CANDU (CANada Deuterium Uranium) was a Canadian pressurized heavy-water reactor design first developed in the late 1950s. It’s name was somewhat clever, but came well before today’s MSM emphasis on advertising “cute-ness”.
TerraPower, a company that Bill Gates founded in 2008, also has designed a 345MW molten salt cooled reactor which they call a “Natrium” reactor. and they are building a demonstration plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming. They’ve gotten several grants from DOE over the last 10 years to prove out various aspects of their design.
https://www.terrapower.com/about/
I started with disbelief because building anything in the USA takes longer than 2 years. Plans for a new FBI building have been on-going for a decade with a location recently decided, and already being dissed.
Then, Rud (@8:01 explains this is a 1/10 scale engineering prototype to achieve a thermal power level of 35 megawatts.
I have a vision of the latest Soap Box Derby winner* beside a big pickup work truck from one of the major manufacturers. Example: 2024 Super Duty® F-450® Limited
*
2023 All-American Soap Box Derby racers – Soap Box Derby – Wikipedia
This is tech that has been on ice for half a century – it makes sense to carry on the development on a small manageable scale.
Not sure what you were expecting.
I was expecting a “huge milestone”, not this:
“The company is targeting commercial deployments in the early 2030s.”
NRC approves Hermes construction permit : New Nuclear – World Nuclear News (world-nuclear-news.org)
I likely won’t live long enough to know when and if electrons begin to flow.
I thought the new FBI building was intended to be the Federal Detention Centre? 😁
Interesting that they don’t mention that the best salt for the reactor is lithium fluoride (the Li6 isotope which makes up 4% of the element). Greens love lithium so it’s a good selling point! If they could make them small enough, maybe in a 100yrs they could power a semitrailer. Certainly a railway locomotive would be a more likely scale.
It might make sense for long-haul trains or ships, can’t think of too many alternative applications where the cost/benefits are in favour of it though.
“Kairos” means “right time” or “opportune moment” in Greek.
FLiBe can be used as a molten salt in molten salt nuclear reactors. There are two main problems however: Beryllium is know to be extremely toxic. Another point is coming from the fact that in contrast to 7LiFluoride, FLiBe is a moderator which slows down the neutron flux. This is of course a desirable property, but in order to eliminate neutron capturing impurites (actinides) one has to have a region within the reactor with fast neutrons. This probably means here, that there is a need for continuous processing of the liquid salt to remove the actinides. Transatomic had conceived a reactor based on 7LiF and solid Zirconiumhydride moderator rods allowing for a reactor having moderated and non-moderated zones. This allows the in-situ fission of the actinides whose accumulation can slow down the reactor or stop it completely.
That’s one of the best reasons to pursue advanced nuclear reactors – develop ways to ‘burn’ the “waste” so there is very little to bury and we actually get some useful energy out of it.
But even with just a normal, thermal thorium reactor (not a fast breeder, just a slow one like a CANDU) the fuel cycle produces “waste” that only has to be stored hundred or so years, not thousands like with uranium.
India has lots of thorium (which is just a byproduct, waste of rare earths production anyway), and they are heavily investing in thorium reactors. Essentially, a thorium reactor burns “garbage” – the waste of other styles of reactors and the waste of the electronics industry.
I read the original MSR TransAtomic proposal paper—about forty pages. Have it archived on my hard drive for essay ‘Going nuclear’ in ebook Blowing Smoke. IIRC, they were going to periodically remove some of the molten salt (adding pure replacement, and then chemically scrub the actinides out. Then Small volume nuclear waste disposal via glassification like done now in Japan with MOX nuclear fuel reprocessing. Just how much and how often was some of the process engineering that still needed to be done.
If nuclear power is going to be the new trend, perhaps they should take a page out
of the naval propulsion program and get a smaller type and make every one built
a standardized same design. There would be a number of advantages to doing that instead of the
current nuclear power program where it seems that each new build is trying to
outdo all the others in size and scope. If some issue arises then they could go
about each other unit and make the changes. But then again why did the
navy stop making nuclear powered cruisers and frigates and go to a gas fired
turbine for those types of units?
“If nuclear power is going to be the new trend”
It wasn’t fifteen years ago, and it won’t be now – their PR always had good funding though.
Really? Explain why UAE and Saudi Arabia are all getting into new nuclear power. Explain why Nigeria and Kenya want new nuclear power. Explain why Egypt wants new nuclear power. And Turkey. Also explain why Poland is joining the club. Explain why all existing operators of nuclear power plants are extending their operating lives for up to a century.
In the last 15 years, have you learned anything whatsoever?
Yeah, I learned it’s all plans and talk but it ain’t going nowhere
The nuclear renaissance isn’t happening, and you could have written the same paragraph 15 years ago. You’ll probably find articles from that time writing the same.
“Explain why all existing operators of nuclear power plants are extending their operating lives for up to a century.”
Because nobody is builing new ones to replace them.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-nuclear?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL
The Navy reactors cannot be used commercially because of proliferation concerns. They use highly enriched uranium
Interesting I didn’t know that. I understand that they are also of a design that
is made for a rapid load change, eg cruising then to wide open high speed
then back to low power vs a power plant stays on load.
We were with the USS Bainbridge DGN-25 in the IO
back in ’73. I witnessed an event from the bridge close up where she pulled her control rods and went full power. The rooster tail was hundreds of feet long and higher than the
bridge. Just a puff of steam from the stack and she was gone…
The only other ship I’d seen that ran like that was a PG (patrol gunboat) that switched
from the diesel’s to the “bird”. but not even close in terms of power.
My point was that all the propulsion reactors are of
the same design which when some flaw/issue arises it allows all of the units
to get fixed at the same time. And also the same design might have some
economic benefits.
Military ships are by definition potential targets.
True but you don’t have to make them easy targets.
Nuclear propulsion for surface ships was largely discontinued because it made little tactical sense. With large crews, surface ships need resupply frequently. The advantage provided by nuclear power of avoiding oil or diesel refueling was limited at best.
The U.S. Navy has a variety of designs, that have improved with each iteration. The subs use different sizes for different sized boats, and big ones for aircraft carriers. It’s not a single standardized design.
Yeah, now we are only 10 years behind China, India, and Russia, and 30 years behind where we would be if President Carter (D) hadn’t done everything he could to kill it, but it took President Clinton (D) to end all development until this new initiative; better late than never.
We should thank our luck stars that Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Trump upended that regulatory environment. My expectation is that the next Republican president will be exactly as effective as the last three at reducing the regulatory burden on nuclear power.
Good Grief! How can I, a nuclear industry professional (NIP), finish my long-in-the-pipeline essay concerning the loss of the wild ranier beerological species from its native habitat in the US Northwest if WUWT keeps publishing these timely articles focusing on nuclear topics?
I remember the wild Rainier’s… Magnificent creature they were
“Key challenges to affordable nuclear development include regulatory uncertainty and high per-unit construction costs, according to the Institute for Energy Research.”
Yep. Regulatory uncertainty. That’s what the NRC has specialized in, lo these many years.
And the “high per-unit construction costs”? If you leave out all the legal hassles that dramatically increase those costs AND mass produce the new “modular reactor” designs, this will become quite cheap. Not to the famously inaccurate quote of “too cheap to meter”, but still FAR cheaper than any “renewable”.
The Kairos MSR business proposal is quite impressive.
First, the commercial product will be small modular—140MWe.
Second, their present projections and goals are to be cost competitive with CCGT. That is a given if they want to sell in volume. That means an LCOE target of about $58/MWh. By comparison, Voglte 3 (finally now in operation) is about $170/MWh!
I see Vogtle unit 4 is undergoing fueling so may also be up and running soon. Given that Vogtle units 1 and 2 had 20-year extensions, would this change the LCOE for units 3 and 4 if you assume they might have the same?
I’ve looked at the Kairos business proposal and will remark that Kairos is in the same boat as all the other SMR vendors and also the large 1100 MWe reactor vendors in that worldwide competition for access to the industrial resources needed to quickly expand the world’s nuclear construction industrial base is becoming acute, as is the cost of money.
Much of that competition for industrial resources is coming from wind and solar projects, a situation made more serious as a consedquence of wind & solar’s heavy duty consumption of industrial raw materials, finished materials, and industrial component resources relative to the volumes of electricty actually delivered.
And so, in my humble opinion, the Kairos LCOE target of about $58/MWh is next to impossible to achieve. If and when Kairos obtains its first customer committment to deliver a working commerical reactor facility, I’ll predict that it’s estimate LCOE will be in the neighborhood of $110-$120 per MWh — assuming everything goes perfectly.
Kairos have filed a construction allplication to build Hermes II, a 2-unit full size plant next to Hermes. Hermes will not be producing commercial energy so we’ll have to see what the figures are when it’s operational but Hermes II is intended as a commercial reactor so the figures for Hermes will impact Hermes II. For my money this is a very long term project and we won’t really see its worth until Hermes II is operational.
I’m really hoping this effort goes off without a hitch.
We all are. Well, maybe 1 or 2 exceptions who appear to dislike the idea of affordable energy.
Stealth Daily Caller disinformation:
Headline:
“…Technology Not Used In Decades”
article body text:
” ..first non-water-cooled reactor to receive regulatory approval from the NRC in more than five decades”
Linked Kairos Press Release:
“Hermes is the first non-water-cooled reactor to be approved for construction in the U.S. in over 50 years. ”
They loosely describe Kairos’ effort to obtain the first license for
” Kairos Power’s fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR) technology. ”
The subtext message slant from Daily Caller’s manipulation of the information is that the build permit
is for antiquated and potentially dangerous technology, when in fact this facility may be the first of th fourth generation nuclear designs implemented in the U.S. The 50 year old build license was for a non-water cooled not for the Kairos pebble flouride-salt FHR.
Another minor slant technique is to stretch out the “over 50 years” phrasing into “five decades.” It means the same thing, but it hints at obsolescence.
While the point may be minor, in public opinion the slant served up for expoitation by any opposition is “the best the NUCLEAR INDUSTRY can do, in league with THE GOVERNMENT is to build dangerous old nuclear power plants.” No doubt, this pilot/demonstration will be put up by opponents against the cost per nameplate MW capacity of fake renewables, IMO likliest will be wind turbines.
Meanwhile, pay-to-play New Atlas technology news web site on 13 Dec gives us
“China brings world’s first Generation IV nuclear reactor online”
“China claims to have brought the world’s first Generation IV commercial nuclear reactor online.
The Shidao Bay Nuclear Power Plant HTR-PM high-temperature gas-cooled (HTGR) pebble-bed reactor in Shidao Bay, Shandong Province, reportedly went into service this month.”
https://newatlas.com/energy/china-brings-worlds-first-generation-iv-nuclear-reactor-online/
The source CCP news release:
“Chinese HTR-PM Demo begins commercial operation”
https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1245/12576.htm
The overall message being that
1. China is ahead of the U.S. in new nuclear energy deployment.
2. They’re allowed, because they’re China, but
3. The US public-private partnership is acting dangerously by building old, obsolete designs..
It’s the same old shell game, isn’t it?
Media portion in this case. It is only time-honored, journalistic “slant” based on a commercially oriented, editorial, political positions.
The last lines of this one are part of the same deal:
“Oak Ridge served as the headquarters for the Manhattan Project, a covert World War II initiative to design the atomic weapons that ultimately ended the war.
Neither Kairos nor the DOE responded immediately to requests for comment.”
Neither statement is pertinent to the article, both quite true, and both slant to the false impressions of obsolesence, corruption, and incompetence, while hinting that nuclear electrical generation is equivalent to nuclear weapons.
Also careful not to mention that Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been in continuous use since 1943 and was only really used for weapons research between 43-45, being concerned with energy research after that.
The problem with these reactors is that unlike regular pressure vessel reactors where you build them once… you have to replace this whole goddamned reactor piecemeal based on hours of operation and wear. Molten salt is a double-shitton more corrosive, infestive and abrasive than water and barely more functional than a molten sodium reactor.
And they aren’t “thorium fueled” they run on an under-controlled conversion of thorium into three isotopes under the HOPE that the isotopes will all break down into the right Uranium. that’s right
its a goddamned URANIUM BREEDER REACTOR