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Transatomic Power

218 点作者 markmassie将近 10 年前

23 条评论

Animats将近 10 年前
Here&#x27;s a good overview of the state of thorium reactors today.[1] The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics has been talking about building a demo unit in Singapore to be operational in 2015, but that seems to have slipped to 2017.[2]<p>The article glosses over a big issue - this type of reactor has to be hooked to a chemical plant which continually reprocesses the radioactive molten salt. Chemical plants for radioactive materials are historically a huge headache to operate. Many such plants are now toxic waste sites.<p>With BWR and PWR reactors, the radioactive portion of the system is simple, with few moving parts, and the working fluid is water. More complex large reactor designs have a poor track record. Sodium reactors have sodium fires (Monju, in Japan, was shut down after one in 1995), helium-cooled reactors leak helium (Ft. St. Vrain was a real disappointment), and pebble bed reactors have pebble jams (there&#x27;s one in Germany so jammed it can&#x27;t be dismantled.)<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.world-nuclear.org&#x2F;info&#x2F;current-and-future-generation&#x2F;thorium&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.world-nuclear.org&#x2F;info&#x2F;current-and-future-generat...</a> [2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ornl.gov&#x2F;ornl&#x2F;news&#x2F;news-releases&#x2F;2015&#x2F;ornl-and-shanghai-institute-of-applied-physics-cooperate-on-development-of-salt-cooled-reactors" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ornl.gov&#x2F;ornl&#x2F;news&#x2F;news-releases&#x2F;2015&#x2F;ornl-and-sh...</a>
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apendleton将近 10 年前
I wish they would be more up-front about the specifics of their technical proposal and how it compares to other proposals, since it was not at all obvious to me at first glance.<p>What I think they&#x27;re actually proposing (correct me if I&#x27;m wrong): a uranium molten salt fast breeder reactor that drives a steam turbine. So, much more ambitious than what&#x27;s currently on the market, with better fuel utilization. As compared to, say, the Flibe Energy&#x2F;Kirk Sorensen&#x2F;LFTR crowd, it&#x27;s mixed: it sounds like these folks have some new innovations around moderators and salts, and the stuff about consuming existing waste is compelling, but they&#x27;re sticking with a uranium fuel cycle rather than thorium (though it sounds like they&#x27;re getting proliferation resistance in other ways), and they&#x27;re sticking with a steam turbine vs. proposed gas turbines that could yield some more efficiency and compactness in proposed thorium MSR designs.<p>EDIT: looks like I might have been wrong about the neutron temperature; their white paper says thermal, not fast.<p>EDIT 2: the white paper actually has all kinds of great stuff in it, now that I&#x27;ve read the rest: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.transatomicpower.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;transatomic-white-paper.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.transatomicpower.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;t...</a> ... In particular, it sounds like this is the first planned design, but they offer some potential future variations. They say this design could be adapted to Thorium fairly straightforwardly, but advocate uranium at least initially because of advantages in the existence of a supply chain around it and the availability of uranium spent nuclear fuel. They also mention Brayton cycle gas turbines as a possible future improvement, among others.
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aout将近 10 年前
So ok, the website is cool and the technology is said to be something like 99.9999% better. This might be a stupid question but I&#x27;m no nuclear engineer not a specialist about chemistry or physics but I wonder why a such &quot;beautiful&quot; idea would not be already used.<p>I&#x27;ve read the related wikipedia article about Molten Salt Reactors and I understand there are several problems about the technology: mostly corrosion and embrittlement.<p>So now I find myself asking this: did they fix those problems? The website copy suggests so. Can somebody explain how? I couldn&#x27;t figure it out.<p>edit: clearly the team and company have quite legit credentials, MIT nuclear department etc... they must know what they&#x27;re talking about. I just want to know if they&#x27;ve given details about the solution.
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yc1010将近 10 年前
I wish Transatomic all the best but they have an uphill battle :( to convince a populace for whom unfortunately &quot;nuclear power&quot; brings up an image Homer Simpson.<p>aside: I think Greenpeace also has a lot to answer for with their campaign against nuclear power. Thanks to them my children can look forward to a world where a coal plant is build every week and fossil fuel fueled climate change is a certainty.
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alexggordon将近 10 年前
It&#x27;s always interesting to see how these companies can progress in a year[0]. Regardless though, for those curious, there&#x27;s a great presentation by the CEO, Dr. Leslie Dewan on what TPT does differently[1]. The big selling point for their Molten Salt Reactor (compared to others) is that they designed it to be able to use low-enriched Uranium (fresh fuel, as opposed to spent fuel) and nuclear waste. The downside of this is that it can&#x27;t produce the same volume of electricity that a normal nuclear plant can, but it&#x27;s significantly safer, and can&#x27;t be used to produce weapons grade uranium.<p>For those interested in MSR&#x27;s this serves as a good starting point too[2].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7922216" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7922216</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4UXXwWOImm8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4UXXwWOImm8</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whatisnuclear.com&#x2F;reactors&#x2F;msr.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whatisnuclear.com&#x2F;reactors&#x2F;msr.html</a>
Maxels将近 10 年前
So this is a company with a pretty ui that is advocating the same thing Kirk Sorensen has been advocating for a few years now.<p>I know every time this molten salt vs light water reactor debate comes up, people much smarter than I talk about how the salt is corrosive and there are currently no viable solutions to deal with this. Is there anyone out there smarter than I that can explain whether this company is doing anything different, or if it is just sexy and VC backed?
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auberonx将近 10 年前
In the absense of renewables, the promise of more efficient nuclear electricity production sounds great. It&#x27;s just that this promise has been around since the 50s and instead we now have huge amounts of highly toxic nuclear waste. The potential of wind, especially in the States, is so significant and threatening to anyone stupid enough to invest their time in developing nuclear power plants at a time when the price for renewables has undercut nuclear and coal.
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ThomPete将近 10 年前
<i>&quot;Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we&#x27;ve been ignorant of their value.&quot;</i><p>R. Buckminster Fuller
outworlder将近 10 年前
I am not a nuclear physicist, but isn&#x27;t this concept proven and well-understood already?<p>Now, a sales pitch is indeed a missing piece. Given the regulations, the nuclear industry is stuck with power plants whose designs date from decades back.<p>I didn&#x27;t see anything about handling the waste heat though. Dumping it into rivers would be atrocious. Ingesting large amounts of water to use evaporation towers is also environmentally terrible. I hope they thought of that.<p>I am all for the responsible use of nuclear power. Greenpeace and the like made so much noise that the public is afraid of anything called &quot;nuclear&quot;. The media doesn&#x27;t help, either.<p>The result is far more deaths every year due to coal and other fossil burning. Let&#x27;s do more solar and wind, sure, microgrids and other cool stuff. Nuclear can provide the baseline power and power for power-hungry industries, such as aluminium refineries.
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Twirrim将近 10 年前
While it&#x27;s neat to see more companies jumping on board, what they&#x27;re looking at isn&#x27;t really revolutionary, despite the polished PR on the website. There are <i>lots</i> of companies, research organisations etc working on molten salt reactors. Lots of them, including Oak Ridge National Lab (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;jamesconca&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;07&#x2F;nuclear-power-turns-to-salt&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;jamesconca&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;07&#x2F;nuclear-po...</a>).<p>On the surface, this seems kind of like launching an IaaS cloud service and claiming you&#x27;re introducing something new and innovative.
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dtap将近 10 年前
The bigger problem than the corrosion is the inability to inspect the system in an efficient way. In a regulated nuclear industry, not knowing the status of the system means it will not be allowed.
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JoachimS将近 10 年前
What about Spallators? Are they being worked on seriously by anybody nowadays? I liked the idea of subcriticality and the low radioactive lifespans in the waste. But how efficient could the be?<p>And related, is transmutation of waste being worked on?<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Energy_amplifier" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Energy_amplifier</a>
nosuchthing将近 10 年前
I&#x27;m optimistic with what &quot;modern technology and materials&quot; can improve upon previous attempts [1]. Yet I hope they drastically over engineer their safety standards given historical failures.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sodium_Reactor_Experiment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sodium_Reactor_Experiment</a><p>[2] Fukashima, ect
ptha将近 10 年前
Perhaps something the countries signing on to the Global Apollo Programme[1] should be investing in. It&#x27;s priorities are Renewable&#x2F;Storage&#x2F;Smart Grids, but I don&#x27;t think we should be ruling anything out, if 2C is the target.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;globalapolloprogramme.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;globalapolloprogramme.org&#x2F;</a>
joss82将近 10 年前
We had a fast breeder reactor here in France before, creating energy from nuclear waste.<p>Oil&#x2F;&quot;green&quot; lobbies made it to close: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Superph%C3%A9nix" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Superph%C3%A9nix</a><p>EDIT: And also terrorists and molten sodium.
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Fiahil将近 10 年前
I remember a TED talk close to this subject by Taylor Wilson in 2013.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;taylor_wilson_my_radical_plan_for_small_nuclear_fission_reactors" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;taylor_wilson_my_radical_plan_for_s...</a>
madaxe_again将近 10 年前
Thorium msrs could be a panacea for humanity - but they won&#x27;t get adopted, because nuclear weapons aren&#x27;t a byproduct, and that&#x27;s a drawback in the eyes of our bellicose political classes.<p>Edit: you&#x27;re welcome to downvote the truth, but it won&#x27;t change it.
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Gravityloss将近 10 年前
This is the technical summary: &quot;A lithium fluoride – uranium fluoride fuel salt, moderated with zirconium hydride, would allow our reactor to remain critical with a loading of used nuclear fuel.&quot;
cmpb将近 10 年前
Slightly off-topic, but you&#x27;ve got a double &quot;and&quot; in the &quot;Lets be safe&quot; section.
joegaudet将近 10 年前
Is it just me, or does the flashy website somehow make them seem less credible?
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pheo将近 10 年前
&quot;Fast,&quot; &quot;Breeder,&quot; or &quot;Salt&quot; reactors breed weapons grade fissionable material (Ie. Plutonium 239) from relatively un-enriched materials (Ie. Uranium 238 and Thorium).<p>Fast reactors make nuclear weapons as byproduct. Thats why we don&#x27;t use them.
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trhway将近 10 年前
they don&#x27;t need to prove that it would work - that is pretty well known. What they would need to prove for the idea to make any progress toward real-world implementation is that their good economy of neutrons isn&#x27;t that good as to allow say to dissolve additional amount of U-238 (widely available to almost anybody anywhere) and get Pu-239 on the other end or any similar reaction :) Their ability to consume very low-enriched U-235 isn&#x27;t an advantage here as the typical reactors necessity for the high-enrichment is what blocks and allow to identify weapons programs around the world.
beyti将近 10 年前
Peter Thiel in the investment, not suprised.