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posted by hubie on Tuesday February 04, @07:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the better-living-thru-nuclear-chemistry dept.

US to deploy molten salt reactors to turn wastewater into freshwater:

A novel nuclear reactor currently under construction at the Abilene Christian University (ACU) in Texas will help generate carbon-free energy while also desalinating water, solving two problems at once, a press release said. The nuclear reactor is being built by Natura Resources, a company specializing in developing small modular reactors.

[...] Each module of an SMR can produce up to 300 MWe (megawatt equivalent) of energy and has advanced safety features.

Founded in 2020, Abilene, Texas-based Natura Resources has quickly become a governmentally recognized advanced nuclear reactor developer. In 2023, the company built the Science and Engineering Research Center (SERC) at ACU, the first advanced reactor research facility outside a national lab in the US.

The company uses liquid-fueled molten salt reactor (LF-MSR) technology, allowing molten salts to act as fuel and a coolant. According to its website, a mixture of lithium fluoride (LiF) and beryllium fluoride (BeF2) salts or thorium fluoride (ThF4) salts can be used, which allows the reactor to operate at temperatures higher than solid-fuel reactors.

Since the fuel also works as a coolant, it is removed continuously from the reactor for fissile material to be replaced. This process also makes MSR reactors meltdown safe.

A primary heat removal system in the reactor design also ensures that heat generated during the fission process is removed through a cooling loop. Here, it can be repurposed for other applications. In the case of Natura's upcoming reactor in Texas, it will be used to desalinate water.

[...] Natura Resources conducted a feasibility study at the Texas Produced Water Consortium, based at Texas Tech University. With the MSR operating at 1112 Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius), up to 250 megawatts (MW) of clean energy is generated, which can be used for desalination.

[...] The reactor is currently under construction and is expected to be online by 2026/27. Once the demonstrator is completed, the team will begin work on integrating systems to start desalinating water.

A novel nuclear reactor currently under construction at the Abilene Christian University (ACU) in Texas will help generate carbon-free energy while also desalinating water, solving two problems at once, a press release said. The nuclear reactor is being built by Natura Resources, a company specializing in developing small modular reactors.

Video version of the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KUuUh8uaLo&t=4s

See also:
    • Molten-salt reactor - Wikipedia
    • Molten Salt Reactor Fundamentals
    • Why China Is Building a Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor
    • And a counterpoint: Molten salt reactors were trouble in the 1960s—and they remain trouble today


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  • (Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday February 04, @12:54PM (2 children)

    by donkeyhotay (2540) on Tuesday February 04, @12:54PM (#1391518)

    The headline reads, "wastewater", but the article says, "desalination". Which is it?

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 04, @02:37PM (1 child)

      by VLM (445) on Tuesday February 04, @02:37PM (#1391529)

      Deep in the apparently AI generated article they discuss using this thing to desalinate the brine that comes out of oil wells. Drinking it seems ambitious.

      Usually you take the outputs of the well pump separator, pump each into tanks, and reinject the brine back underground to pump more oil+brine out of the ground in a mostly closed loop. Water is expensive and operators don't want to waste it and have to purchase more. A semi trailer of water delivered to a well in the back end of nowhere in some pasture on a dirt road might cost $2000 due to labor and huge mileage fees. Its not like getting a trailer of pool water delivered to a suburb on a paved road right past the interstate exit thats only a couple hundred bucks. Not sure why you'd want to use a nuke to desalinate waste brine when you'd probably want to pump it right back underground into the salt formation to get more oil. Maybe eroding the salt formation by pumping fresh water into it would produce more oil. Thats an interesting idea but using nuclear desalinated water to do it sounds very expensive. If anyone ever did something like that, I'd expect them to try solar-thermal rather than a nuke because wells are stereotypically in wastelands with plenty of space.

      • (Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday February 04, @11:05PM

        by donkeyhotay (2540) on Tuesday February 04, @11:05PM (#1391603)

        Thanks. I probably should have guessed that, being from Oklahoma. Yes, it does not sound very practical.

  • (Score: 2) by Rich on Tuesday February 04, @12:58PM (16 children)

    by Rich (945) on Tuesday February 04, @12:58PM (#1391519) Journal

    "This process also makes MSR reactors meltdown safe.". I'd phrase that as "the coolant IS the meltdown, you'd better keep it safe". Cooling with meltdown will certainly be less economical than a well tried and tested simple PWR water kettle (.. economical .. V.C.Summer, Westinghouse ... Flamanville, EDF, ..cough, cough..).

    Once the "thorium fluoride (ThF4) salts" come into play, they will get some really nasty gamma radiation from the U232 decay chain. That won't improve the desalination economics either, but maybe it could be used to crack up the PFAS molecules which recently led to a suggestion not to touch foam at the beach anymore, because it's contaminated. If they feed seawater they could just irradiate the foam, too. The question arises for me how many molecules of PFAS one gamma emission can crack. Is it anywhere in the ballpark, or magnitudes apart to be effective?

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by ssvt on Tuesday February 04, @01:12PM (1 child)

      by ssvt (14071) on Tuesday February 04, @01:12PM (#1391520)

      Yeah, there's nothing "clean" about this energy source - it is an alternative source.

      See if you can scare up a hard-to-find copy of a book called "We Almost Lost Detroit" about a sodium meltdown in Monroe, Michigan in the 1960s...

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday February 04, @02:27PM

        by VLM (445) on Tuesday February 04, @02:27PM (#1391527)

        Ah well Fermi 1 was a different class of problems.

        If you run a reactor with fast neutrons instead of slow thermal neutrons you can turn some of the non-fuel U238 into delicious burnable Pu239 fuel while still producing net power out which is super cool, but its extremely rough on the metalurgy and there's some interesting stability problems and its ... quite a hassle.

        Fermi 1 used liq sodium as a coolant (instead of water) because it won't thermalize the neutrons (not too fast anyway) so when there was some kind of "coolant disruption" the core was in some danger of melting.

        Its an appealing idea to turn non-fuel U into fuel in the same machine that makes electrical power. However, its such an ungodly PITA that its simpler cheaper and safer to make one plant that makes fuel and one plant that makes electric power and don't mix the two. There's also an interesting proliferation problem where anyone who can build a working breeder reactor can use cheap chemical separation to isolate pure plutonium and make bombs out of it. So generally speaking nobody likes breeder reactors and the general dislike spreads to non-water coolant reactors.

        With the design in the article the fuel is already melted and if there's a coolant disruption, you just let it pour out into a storage tank, no problem.

        The only thing Fermi 1 and the article reactor have in common is their coolant is not water.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 05, @10:05AM (13 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 05, @10:05AM (#1391707) Journal
      Sorry, that's nonsense. Meltdown is that the structural components of your reactor get hot enough that they melt. Really bad cases (which haven't happened yet BTW) would have the reactor core not just melting, but melting through the containment vessel into ground water. That would create a significant radiation plume ("China syndrome") that would dwarf Chernobyl.

      Once the "thorium fluoride (ThF4) salts" come into play, they will get some really nasty gamma radiation from the U232 decay chain.

      If it's nasty, then keep it in the reactor.

      but maybe it could be used to crack up the PFAS molecules which recently led to a suggestion not to touch foam at the beach anymore, because it's contaminated.

      We could also just ignore hysterical advice. Would be cheaper in the long run.

      The question arises for me how many molecules of PFAS one gamma emission can crack.

      More than there are.

      • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday February 05, @10:32AM (2 children)

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 05, @10:32AM (#1391708) Journal

        A nuclear meltdown (core meltdown, core melt accident, meltdown or partial core melt[2]) is a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating. [wikipedia.org]

        Probably be best if you let the rest of the world know that you have changed the definition then....

        --
        I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 05, @07:04PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 05, @07:04PM (#1391778) Journal
          Doesn't sound like I'm off. Especially terms like "partial core melt" make no sense in the absence of melting.
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 06, @06:57AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 06, @06:57AM (#1391830) Journal
          More on this. Even if we choose to use Wikipedia as definition, we have this:

          A nuclear meltdown (core meltdown, core melt accident, meltdown or partial core melt[2]) is a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating. The term nuclear meltdown is not officially defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency[3] or by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.[4] It has been defined to mean the accidental melting of the core of a nuclear reactor,[5] however, and is in common usage a reference to the core's either complete or partial collapse.

          So your source backs me up!

      • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday February 05, @11:00AM (9 children)

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 05, @11:00AM (#1391713) Journal

        https://www.fairewinds.org/what-is-a-meltdown [fairewinds.org]

        "The top three most disastrous meltdowns include Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011."

        Really bad cases (which haven't happened yet BTW) ....

        I think you should consider retracting what you have written.

        --
        I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
        • (Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday February 05, @03:03PM

          by Rich (945) on Wednesday February 05, @03:03PM (#1391738) Journal

          I think what he wanted to say is a case where an ongoing chain reaction of the melt causes a continuous plume of contaminated steam to be dispersed. Frankly, with TMI 2 the reactor vessel itself was hardly compromised, with Chernobyl a good part of the core inventory went through the roof and there was relatively little left to melt, and only Fukushima counts as "proper". We might count in the accident that wrecked Gundremmingen A together with TMI in environmental consequences and somewhat deduce that moderated reactors with low enrichment fuel will likely not cause a full "China Syndrome". It might be different with fast reactors (loss of moderator doesn't matter) or naval reactors (running with high enrichment for long endurance).

          However, if you look at the Japan Radiation Map (https://jciv.iidj.net/map/ [iidj.net]), there's a corridor northeast of the Togichi & Ibaraki prefectures and southeast of the Miyagi prefecture that's quite lit up, with some sample points >100nSv/h even halfway across the country from the accident to Niigata. I haven't scientifically checked the historical development of the measurements, but from occasional visits over the years, I have a loose impression that ongoing reactions might slowly contaminate the area, similar to what khallow described as "worst case that didn't happen yet". One would have to study the isotopic distributions.

          As for calling molten salt inventory a "meltdown", I was implying that it has roughly the same properties as a core melt (aggressive non-watery liquid at heat, solid at ambient, and nastily radioactive) and can not be used economically if all gains to be sold are kWh from its reaction. Certainly not if they fail to do that with the big water kettles they have 50 years of experience with.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 05, @07:06PM (7 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 05, @07:06PM (#1391780) Journal
          I think you should reconsider what I wrote instead. Your two posts support mine! None of the three cases you mention are what I would consider really bad ("melting through the containment vessel into ground water")
          • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday February 05, @07:18PM (6 children)

            by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 05, @07:18PM (#1391781) Journal

            It doesn't matter "what you consider". That is about as meaningful as "your take". Your definition of meltdown is wrong.

            --
            I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 06, @06:58AM (5 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 06, @06:58AM (#1391832) Journal

              It doesn't matter "what you consider".

              Since the discussion here is whether or not I'm right in my definition (your source indicates I'm right BTW), then yes, it absolutely does matter what I consider because that's what we're talking about!

              • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday February 06, @09:25AM (4 children)

                by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 06, @09:25AM (#1391836) Journal

                Meltdown is that the structural components of your reactor get hot enough that they melt.

                The definition does NOT require the structural components to melt - if the fuel rods (which are NOT structural) overheat and melt then that is a meltdown. There is a big clue in the words that I have quoted. Since you started that paragraph with "Absolute nonsense" you appear not to accept that definition.

                Really bad cases (which haven't happened yet BTW)

                I am so pleased to learn that Chernobyl and Fukushima were not 'bad cases'. The country in which I was born, the country in which I now live, and many other countries in between them and Chernobyl must have been mistaken in the levels of fallout that reached our countries and resulted in the need to slaughter livestock. People were advised to remain indoors, not to hunt, nor to collect things such as mushrooms and fungi. It is true that things could have been worse still, but there are large areas around Pripyat and Fukushima which are still at significant levels of radiation, yet you appear to suggest that they are unimportant.

                You 'consider', or perhaps your 'take' on 'really bad cases' just means that they didn't affect you. Well, lets not consider anyone else in the world who has had completely different life experiences from yourself.

                Claiming that the references support your claims is another example of you distorting the truth. They clearly state that all three cases were 'meltdowns' and that 2 of them had, and still have, serious implications for health in a much wider area than just inside the containment vessel. In those 2 cases radioactive material DID escape the containment vessel. In what way is that not a really bad case?

                7 years later [1993], areas of the UK remain contaminated with radioactive fall-out from Chernobyl, to the extent that the movement and slaughter of almost 500, 000 sheep on more than 600 farms are still subject to restrictions.

                The estimation of the cancer burden from Chernobyl must rely on risk prediction models developed from studies of other populations exposed to radiation in other settings.

                By 2065, these models predict that about 16,000ƒ cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident and that about 16,000 deaths from these cancers may occur. About two-thirds of the thyroid cancer cases and at least one half of the other cancers are expected to occur in Belarus, Ukraine and the most contaminated territories of the Russian Federation.

                Note that the other resulting cancers and deaths will occur OUTSIDE those named countries, particularly in Poland and Scandinavia.

                So what 'you consider' or is 'your take' is totally irrelevant to any intelligent discussion. You merely redefine things to your own liking, move the goalposts, or refuse to consider that you have made a mistake. Many people have pointed out such things to you over a decade or more.

                I repeat what I have said before, you argue in bad faith and you believe that what you dream up is the absolute undeniable truth. I am sure that you will not change - you will probably make up some more definitions and continue to argue against what are accepted facts to rest of the world. Some might consider it 'misinformation'.

                You will also continue to be frequently wrong.

                --
                I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 07, @08:27AM (3 children)

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 07, @08:27AM (#1391984) Journal
                  Hmm, so in the case of Chernobyl, we had a graphite fire that burned for roughly two weeks? Would that release a similar amount of radiation to a meltdown that might be vigorously boiling ground water years later?

                  I am so pleased to learn that Chernobyl and Fukushima were not 'bad cases'.

                  Always good to learn something new, right? The point I want to embed in your head is that you haven't seen bad cases. What you've seen is cases where a reasonably competent and mobilized nation was able to halt the meltdown and mitigate the release of radiation before it became a genuine bad case. I personally favor the deployment of nuclear power, but even so, it's wise to remember that the long tail of nuclear disasters can get spectacularly bad by Chernobyl/Fukushima standards.

                  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday February 07, @10:24AM (2 children)

                    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 07, @10:24AM (#1391992) Journal

                    It is true that things could have been worse still,

                    I had already acknowledged that fact. Once again, you insist on reinterpreting what was written to suit your argument.

                    You haven't taught me anything new. I used to fly on nuclear bombers - I know very well the effects of nuclear accidents and weapons. I don't have to experience one to know when one is bad though, nor do I think that the ones we have seen are trivial.

                    But they didn't affect you - so we can just ignore them, right? You personally don't know those who died or who will suffer from the effects of them - obviously not important then. They were meltdowns whether you accept it or not. Your definition is still wrong. It doesn't have to affect the 'structure' although Chernobyl certainly did.

                    --
                    I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 09, @05:54PM (1 child)

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 09, @05:54PM (#1392304) Journal

                      But they didn't affect you - so we can just ignore them, right? You personally don't know those who died or who will suffer from the effects of them - obviously not important then. They were meltdowns whether you accept it or not. Your definition is still wrong. It doesn't have to affect the 'structure' although Chernobyl certainly did.

                      So did Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and a few of the other meltdowns. I acknowledge that my definition was wrong (there's even an example of an accident (from the above Wikipedia link "Westinghouse TR-2 suffered partial core damage in 1960") that melted part of a single flawed fuel rod while doing no structural damage at all). But it beats classifying a normally operating cooling fluid as a meltdown which is what I was attempting to correct. And I have yet to hear about the "core damage from overheating" accident that didn't melt something and thus enter the broad zone of partial meltdown.

                      Consider also your earlier reply where you quoted:

                      "The top three most disastrous meltdowns include Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011."

                      Notice that one of the "disastrous" meltdowns involved no casualties at all! Basically, you have Chernobyl, a lesser disaster in Fukushima, and then a serious but ultimately successfully managed accident in TMI. And Chernobyl is as bad as it is due to the callous actions of the Soviet government which refused to warn people or evacuate them for a day and a half. Then there's the study you quoted:

                      The estimation of the cancer burden from Chernobyl must rely on risk prediction models developed from studies of other populations exposed to radiation in other settings.

                      By 2065, these models predict that about 16,000ƒ cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident and that about 16,000 deaths from these cancers may occur. About two-thirds of the thyroid cancer cases and at least one half of the other cancers are expected to occur in Belarus, Ukraine and the most contaminated territories of the Russian Federation.

                      In other words, a significant local problem in Ukraine and neighboring areas, and statistical noise everywhere else (Europe's total population was around 700 million at the time). These cases would have been greatly lower, if timely warnings and evacuations (combined with iodine pills, increased protection of children, etc) had occurred to lower radiation exposure.

                      And when we look at actual data, we see that in the children cohort in Ukraine, the population most affected, that the incident of thyroid cancer [nature.com] is about five times base rate (and substantially higher than higher age cohorts to the point that the majority of diagnosed thyroid cancers are in the cohort of children at or under the age of 14. So what's going to be the hypothetical rate for everywhere else? I figure the rest of Europe is at least 10 times more populous than the most effected region. And half the thyroid cancer rate. So instead of 5 times higher, we might hypothetically see a rate 10% higher than normal thyroid cancer rate.

                      With the increased focus on thyroid cancer and other cancers, it may be that Chernobyl has actually saved lives outside of the worst affected areas by helping encourage Europe to more aggressive diagnose and treat cancer in general. At a glance, the EU did reduce cancer deaths by at least 10% over a recent 12 year span:

                      While the number of cancer diagnoses increased between 2010 and 2022 in 14 of the 24 countries with available data, cancer deaths in the EU27 declined by 10% over this period, with declines seen for most cancer types. However, cancer mortality remains high (22.5% of all deaths) and is up to 1.6 times higher in some EU+2 countries than in others. For many cancers, higher mortality rates are found in Central and Eastern European countries (Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia and Slovenia), while Western and Northern European countries (Finland, Luxembourg, Spain and Sweden) have the lowest mortality rates. The Netherlands is in the middle range.

                      That's a lot of deaths prevented. It wouldn't

                      To summarize, my definition of meltdown wasn't far off and I had a very good reason for using the term "very bad" as I did.

                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 09, @05:56PM

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 09, @05:56PM (#1392305) Journal
                        On the second to last paragraph:

                        That's a lot of deaths prevented. It wouldn't take much of a kick for Chernobyl to prevent more deaths than it caused outside of the most affected areas.

  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Frosty Piss on Tuesday February 04, @04:51PM (3 children)

    by Frosty Piss (4971) on Tuesday February 04, @04:51PM (#1391555)

    This "article" reads very much like it was AI generated.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday February 05, @10:35AM (2 children)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 05, @10:35AM (#1391709) Journal

      Your comment reads like it was AI generated. And repetitive too.

      How about instead of complaining you either help by contributing some submissions, or you accept what other people are doing to keep you 'entertained'.

      --
      I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05, @04:40PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05, @04:40PM (#1391759)

        Interestingly, I do submit stories and have a better than 90% acceptance rate over the log run. The story was AI generated. Admit it.

        • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday February 05, @05:46PM

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 05, @05:46PM (#1391763) Journal

          I do not think it is AI. What makes you so sure?

          There is nothing in the database to suggest that you are a regular submitter of stories.

          --
          I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
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