This letter to the Boulder Daily Camera was published on February 26, 2017. In it we are arguing that Boulder Colorado should include the option of converting the existing power plant that serves the City from a coal/gas plant to advanced nuclear, using molten salt reactor technology.
Dear Mr. DeOreo,
I enjoyed your recent guest column in the Daily Camera. While I share your enthusiasm for the molten salt thorium reactor concept, I just wanted to make sure you were also aware of another class of MSR which has, so far, received rather less attention than the thorium versions.
Cheers,
Nick
Molten Salt Fast Reactors:
–All the standard features of thermal spectrum molten salt reactors, plus:
–Offers way to clean up existing spent fuel and depleted uranium stockpiles.
The U.S. has roughly 800,000 metric tons of spent fuel and DU. In a fast reactor, the energy potential of this reserve is roughly 2000 terawatt-years of heat energy. To put this in context, the total heat energy humans have derived from the burning of all fossil fuels combined over the last 5,000 years is less than 700 terawatt-years of heat energy. MSFR’s would need little to no fuel mining for the first one or two centuries, and legacy waste would become a fuel resource with a source of funding to look after it until it is ready to be consumed.
–Most versatile fuel types.
Can consume nearly any isotopic combination of uranium, neptunium, and plutonium, as well as the heavy actinides from spent fuel.
–Greater neutron production.
Can tolerate greater losses, and more infrequent removal of neutron poisons, and can attain higher breed ratios. Could help with breeding starter loads for thorium/u-233 reactors.
–Simpler breeding.
Does not have the protactinium neutron absorption problem.
Notable examples:
Elysium Industries (U.S. and Canada) Loop-type reactor. Has a development team with an extensive background in reactor design, building, and testing with the Navy. Design potentially adaptable to marine applications.
Moltex Energy (U.K. and Canada) Pool-type reactor. Possibly one of the simplest and cheapest designs. (Land-based applications only) Also has plans for a grid-reserve option, where heat energy can be stored in bulk molten salts just as it is done at concentrated solar facilities. Allows the plant to have very flexible output while retaining a high capacity factor for the reactor. Moltex recently got the green light to build a full-scale demonstration reactor in New Brunswick.
Dear Nick,
Sorry for not responding sooner. I hear Ed Pheil talk at the Thorium conference in St Louis last year. I agree that his seems like the simplest and most elegant solution to the moderator problem. It used to be that fast reactors were thought to require too much fuel to get them started, but now we are flooded with fuel, and once they are operating I don’t think they use any more fuel than a thermal reactor. if I could pick one design to make into a prototype this would be it.