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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 turgid on Monday June 21 2021, @06:46PM (2 children)
A long time ago I worked at a nuclear power station. It was about 25% thermally efficient (25% of the heat generated went out as electricity). It was on a river estuary. It raised the temperature of the water by 9C. It was very popular with fish and shellfish.
The station could generate an extra 2MW electrical in winter when the sea water was colder. Cooling water temperature makes a big difference. In summer, electrical output was down since the cooling water was much warmer.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Funny) by PiMuNu on Monday June 21 2021, @06:54PM
The sealife follows the warm water. The fishermen follow the sealife. Plays havoc with your safety case...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday June 21 2021, @07:48PM
Try "it was popular with SOME fish and shellfish". Warmer waters hold less oxygen, and some species don't like that at all. Others don't have much problem until it gets considerably warmer...how much warmer depends on the species.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.