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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: 4, Informative) by Tork on Monday June 21 2021, @05:14PM
For the record: I'm one of the people included in this (but not afraid of the vaccines...) and it's not so much that I fear the nukes themselves, I fear the dumbshits with a profit-motive running those nukes and cutting corners to save a buck. Look up the methane leak Porter Ranch some time. I was close enough to the area at the time to get the local news alerts about it and even after it was clear the company involved was completely at fault (negligent with maintenance if I recall) they STILL fought over things like paying the hotel costs for the people couldn't actually live in their homes because the methane concentration was enough to cause things like bloody noses.
I have difficulty picturing that situation being any better if that methane were replaced with radiation.
Oh and a little bit of disclosure: I know nothing about molten-salt reactors and don't mean to imply they're unsafe. If there's something about their design that makes them moronic-management proof I'd love to hear about it. Again my distrust is solely with the meatbags running it not the technology.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩