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Mass-produced floating nuclear reactors use super-safe molten salt fuel
Copenhagen startup Seaborg Technologies has raised an eight-figure sum of Euros to start building a fascinating new type of cheap, portable, flexible and super-safe nuclear reactor. The size of a shipping container, these Compact Molten Salt Reactors will be rapidly mass-manufactured in their thousands, then placed on floating barges to be deployed worldwide – on timelines that will smash paradigms in the energy industry.
[...] [Perhaps] the most impactful change to the business model is Seaborg's proposal to install these reactors on barges, and float them offshore rather than buying up land to develop nuclear power plants. There are several advantages here. For starters, you can manufacture them in bulk at a single facility. Seaborg is looking at Korean shipyards, which are already closely and efficiently connected to supply chains with enormous production capacity.
"If you want us to build not one reactor to start with, but a thousand, we could start by building a thousand," Schönefeldt told Radio Spectrum. "That will take, like, three or four years on these shipyards. So it's basically unroofed in how fast you can scale it."
These barges can be moved just about anywhere on the planet, either moored offshore or on large or small rivers, depending on how big a reactor it is. There's virtually no site preparation required; it's fully self-contained and very easy to connect to a power grid. Seaborg estimates it can service 95 percent of the world's population this way, putting basically no land requirements on a baseload or load-following power station up to a healthy 600 MW, which could supply nearly 100,000 homes.
Some imagineering required.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 21 2021, @12:15PM (3 children)
It's just a splash down!
Tsunami forcing these barges onto roofs of nearby Fukushima prefecture? Nah, nothing like that ever happened in the last 10 years.
Startup, check. Nuclear plant, check. Mass produced, check. I think that's bingo for What Could Potentially Go Wrong With That?
And remediation of these reactors? Just tow them to see and bury them in the Great Pacific Plastic Patch?
They have such a rock already in Chernobyl. It says to be only mildly radioactive and that giant-ass roof on top now built by EU funds was just an exercise in bureaucracy!
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday June 21 2021, @05:19PM
Your ignorance is painful.
I would suggest that you actually learn about the MSR design and how it differs from the LWTR design in both safety and efficiency before posting on the subject again.
I'd add links but I need to go take an analgesic to mitigate the severe headache you have caused me.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 21 2021, @05:49PM (1 child)
MSR designs are usually considered better than heavy-water designs like Chernobyl and Fukushima because they can be made fail-safe. If there's a core breach, the salt just cools and seals itself inside the reactor.
They can often also use thorium fuel, and produce less waste and less dangerous waste than uranium reactors.
I really recommend learning about these designs, they're pretty cool.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday June 22 2021, @02:38AM
Yes indeed...and I would have no problem with a MSR operating just outside of town in a small underground vault (the usual design) to protect against airplane crashes, terrorist attacks, and other such willful catastrophes (The big domes around nuclear reactors are there primarily to defend against such things). Because even without a meltdown, anything that causes a reactor breach can cause severe environmental contamination. Especially if a fire is involved. And many MSR designs use salts that react violently with water.
On the ocean though? Where a severe storm can capsize it or be beach it at a bizarre angle that renders all those gravity-powered safety measures useless? No thanks. And that's before you consider that it has essentially no defense against terrorist attacks, and that large-scale environmental contamination is practically guaranteed if there's a reactor breach at sea.