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A Nuclear Startup Will Fold After Failing To Deliver Reactors That Run on Spent Fuel (technologyreview.com)
Transatomic Power, an MIT spinout that drew wide attention and millions in funding, is shutting down almost two years after the firm backtracked on bold claims for its design of a molten-salt reactor. From a report: The company, founded in 2011, plans to announce later today that it's winding down. Transatomic had claimed its technology could generate electricity 75 times more efficiently than conventional light-water reactors, and run on their spent nuclear fuel. But in a white paper published in late 2016, it backed off the latter claim entirely and revised the 75 times figure to "more than twice," a development first reported by MIT Technology Review. Those downgrades forced the company to redesign its system. That delayed plans to develop a demonstration reactor, pushing the company behind rival upstarts like TerraPower and Terrestrial Energy, says Leslie Dewan, the company's cofounder and chief executive. The longer timeline and reduced performance advantage made it harder to raise the necessary additional funding, which was around $15 million. "We weren't able to scale up the company rapidly enough to build a reactor in a reasonable time frame," Dewan says.
Why is anyone wasting their time on this when there's thorium?
And millenials with Kickstarter projects are subject to it
There are around 50 nuclear startups designing 4th generation reactors. Some were always going to fail. In fact most will probably fail. Some will succeed though.
NuScale is the closest to market. Their design has already passed NRC phase 1 review, and it has been certified as meltdown proof. They will be constructing their first 12 reactors in Idaho for Utah municipalities. Hopefully in a decade they will be mass producing them like airplanes.
Anyone that think they can do anything cheaply with anything nuclear is in for a world of hurt. It is a money pit no matter how you spin it.
I just love smart hot women.
The momentum of the regulatory structure is impressive.
First we had Rocket Jesus, a.k.a Elon Musk, and now we have Nuclear Jesus, a.k.a Leslie Dewan. Although, molten salt does remain (eventually) a viable idea.
I would argue that anyone selling 100% renewable is a snake oil salesman.
These reactors are basically submarine reactors that are will be mass produced in a factory. It is a viable plan.
And fuck you for calling me a paid shill you coward.
when the wiki page says gas plants cost $1900/kilowatt vs $5000/kilowatt.... That's the only part I don't get. Is this just building in alternative sources for better grid reliability?
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in a paper on its site dated November 2016, the company downgraded “75 times” to “more than twice.” In addition, it now specifies that the design “does not reduce existing stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel” or use them as its fuel source.
So, something like "I have a cure for the worst disease ever [...] I meant a cure for a disease [...] Actually, it is just a placebo".
I don't know what I find more unbelievably ridiculous: people getting tons of money from simple words with no kind of validation (not even making too much sense) and losing all of it; or their apparent lack of awareness of what written whatever implies, mainly nowadays and with internet! How can anyone say so big lies in a so public fashion without expecting any kind of consequence! IMHO, lying at all is a bad policy but, under these circumstances, it is almost a crime!! Even by assuming that they could get away with it, what about their self-respect? Thinking about others' reaction when realising about the truth? I cannot imagine how could I ever trust even a tiny bit what a person able to do such a thing says. I cannot even picture myself having the before and after conversation with someone like that. "I see that all what you said were lies and you undeservedly got lots of money which you lose. OK. Let's have a cup of coffee and not talk about all this anymore!".
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There are around 50 nuclear startups designing 4th generation reactors. Some were always going to fail. In fact most will probably fail.
No there are lots of them CLAIMING to be developing new reactor designs. Some of them might actually be working on the problem even. Curiously we've seen zero of these actually make it to market.
Some will succeed though.
There is no guarantee of that.
NuScale is the closest to market.
Maybe. Best info I can find says they hope to have an operational reactor in 2024 and that was their projection in 2013. That means optimistically they might have something to show 6+ years from now. Not exactly cause for excitement.
Their design has already passed NRC phase 1 review, and it has been certified as meltdown proof.
NRC phase 1 review is a "Preliminary Safety Evaluation Report (SER) and Requests for Additional Information". It does not mean it has been certified as anything.
They will be constructing their first 12 reactors in Idaho for Utah municipalities.
If that were true you would think they would post it somewhere on their website. Perhaps you are talking about this project?
Hopefully in a decade they will be mass producing them like airplanes.
While I wish them well I think this is a good approximation of impossible.
There is no need to burn anything. There is more energy in a day's sunlight than the world uses in a year. All we need is capacitance to store it for a few days. Your atomic-everything paradigm is retarded, go outside kid. Sun is shining.
Renewables are going to be the future because wasting abundant energy is as retarded as your irradiated fantasies and unproven business models.
Basic research with investor funding! Something must be done!
The DUPIC fuel cycle allows for the direct reuse of PWR fuel in CANDU heavy water reactors. The only thing required is mechanical modification of the PWR fuel bundles so that they fit into the CANDU fuel channels.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
You haven't proven that any will succeed any more than you've defined success.
You could say that about any innovation. Internal combustion--you're going to deliberately set off thousands of explosions inside a sealed, iron box? Steam power? Microprocessors? Fire itself?
Imagine the first person who proposed "we're going to build a boat out of steel and it's not going to sink!" It's ludicrous! Steel is expensive. And everyone knows metal sinks and wood floats. Why on God's green Earth would you make a boat out of steel instead of good old fashioned wood?!? I'm not going to listen until you prove you have a working business model.
We won't know if any of these companies will succeed until one does. I can't predict which one it will be so I'm not willing to invest. Others have greater risk tolerance than I do, yay for them. In the mean time, I wish them all the best because the promise is amazing.
Processing spent fuel as you suggest is extremely dirty and generates about 10x the amount of original waste, most of it highly radioactive.
People forget the US tried to reprocess fuel for a while, the location is a radioactive superfund site.
See, I knew you didn't have any actual scientific chops, you breathless shilling whore lol. You can't even admit that nuclear waste is dangerous, how can anyone expect honesty from a faggot like you lol? Nobody does.
Go outside child, you accomplish nothing here. At least outside you might get hurt!
Your atomic-everything paradigm is retarded, go outside kid. Sun is shining.
The sun is atomic. That shine, the light, is just the byproduct of the nuclear reaction. Solar is just happenstance collection of a distant atomic source. Some people are advocating for a more local 24/7/365 atomic source.
When asked who was responsibility for the discrepancy between 75x and 2x, the lead scientist Michael Bolton confessed, "Oh shit, I always do that! I always mess sup some mundane detail." :P
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
CANDU plants use Heavy Water, which means they do not require enriched fuel. Natural 0.7% U 235 works just fine. The US supply of Spent Reactor Fuel is well above 0.7% U 235 - and is presently carried as a liability with storage costs.
If a US utility with a large fleet built a CANDU plant built for use of Spent US Fuel - existing technology could be used to extract more of the energy currently considered waste. This turns a liability into an asset - guaranteed to please bean counters and regulators.
No new inventions are required, the DUPIC Test years ago proved the viability.
All it takes is a decision.
why do you hate renewable energy, unless youâ(TM)re just a shill for big oil?
because renewable energy is a backdoor pitch for big oil (big natural gas really), as it's the only shit that can back up for renewables when they don't perform.... which is 3/4ths of the time.
Designed decades ago using lots of manpower and ingenuity, these are already efficient enough to run off the waste of existing reactors (about 4 reactors to one CANDU). I think Korea was looking into this, and may already be doing so. CANDU HWR waste is a lot less of a problem than LWR, but it is harder to get nuclear weapons grade plutonium from (uses un-enriched uranium, and is much harder to extract anything from waste). There are even reports of the design working with Thorium with minor adjustments (already works with MOX, mixed oxide, fuels containing thorium).
Moreover, since it doesn't load follow in any way usable, it has an economic efficiency of much less than 60%. IOW you will find yourself having to dump energy below cost.
USA proclaims nuke capacity based on expected output, not including downtimes prearranged.
DaMattster is your real name?!
And no email publicly visible.
At least I don't hide behind a monicker.[sic]
Yes, you do - dumbass.
So many of dumb fuck Slashdotters say that shit while THEY hide behind some pseudonym.
Douches.
BILL CAUGHT LYING YESTERDAY : Topic - sparrows Get rid of this lying faggot Bill
Fission reactors are little more than putting hot rocks in a jar and running water over it, and using that to power a steam turbine.
It's mostly Victorian era tech, with a smattering of 1940s and 50s war tech bolted on, and not worth wasting research efforts on. It's been 60 years, you geezers, give it up already, you failed.
Let the 21st century researchers at least do fusion, or better yet something actually advanced.
Yet we have had provable meltdown proof reactors since the 1980's. See Experimental Breeder Reactor II
You should read your link. They did tests to see if the reactor would not melt down under specific circumstances. This is a far different thing than proving it is "meltdown proof" under all circumstances. Passive fail-safe cooling systems are a good thing but they only solve some of the dangers presented by fission power plants. Furthermore just because they are in place does not mean they still cannot fail due to flaws in engineering, construction, maintenance, natural disasters, or physical damage.
You seem obsessed with meltdowns. That is just one failure mode among thousands for a nuclear power plant and not the most likely even for reactor designs without fail-safe designs. Even with a reactor that theoretically or provably cannot melt down, there remain plenty of ways for them to contaminate the surrounding areas. Nuclear power is a useful thing but pretending it doesn't carry some substantial risks is irresponsible.
If you listen to the scientists at that lab they said the EBRII could not meltdown under any circumstances.
Find me a quote of any scientist claiming that meltdowns were impossible under "any circumstances". That's just obviously bullshit unless you are talking about specific conditions. It assumes no engineering flaws, no manufacturing flaws, proper maintenance, no external disasters or attacks, etc. They did some tests which the reactor passed but that isn't remotely the same thing as being safe in all conditions. Furthermore a meltdown is NOT the only failure mode of concern. There are a lot of still very serious but much more likely failure modes to worry about. Even if you eliminate meltdowns as a failure mode entirely that doesn't mean nuclear is 100% safe.
They intentionally tried to cause a meltdown and failed.
No they did not do that. They did some tests under conditions they were fairly confident the reactor would perform safely. There isn't a way in hell they would have gotten approval to actually try to create a meltdown if there was a reasonable chance of them actually achieving a meltdown.
You are overstating the risks of nuclear energy
Doesn't matter if I am or not. The insurance companies are all the evidence you need as they are the ones who have to put real money on the line. The fact that nuclear plants basically cannot get built without government guarantees and heavy safety regulation should tell you everything you need to know about how risky they are. When the people whose job it is to evaluate risk and profit from it aren't enthusiastic without government backing then that's a pretty reliable sign of something with serious safety concerns. That's not to say nuclear power isn't worth the risk but pretending there aren't very serious and real risks to it is dumb.
It cannot meltdown. They proved it. The reactor was designed to have a negative thermal coefficient of reactivity making meltdowns impossible.
No they did not prove it for all conceivable circumstances. They proved it for SOME conditions and methods with a specific reactor design. Your argument assumes that there is no chance of that reactor design being incorrectly engineered, no chance of improper construction or maintenance, no chance of external damage (natural disasters, war, etc), and that in all other ways the reactor cannot be compromised to induce that failure mode. And even if a meltdown were indeed impossible that's not the only possible failure of concern.
They did two tests with EBRII which tested the passive fail safe systems. They tested shutting off the primary cooling pumps and then they tested shutting down the secondary cooling systems. They did not test failure modes like the sodium pool being compromised for example. They did not test under conditions where there might be a flaw in construction. They did not test for conditions where maintenance was neglected.
Comparing Chernobyl to the EBRII or any western reactor is disingenuous.
No it is not. Chernobyl happened fundamentally because of human error (bad engineering + bad operation) which is a problem for EVERY nuclear plant design we have - even the theoretical ones. While the exact circumstance that resulted in that particular catastrophe are unlikely to be replicated closely, human stupidity and human failures have not been eliminated as risks. Claiming that EBRII was perfectly safe under all conditions is just an absurd claim without supporting evidence. Yes it appears to have been a solid design in many ways that mitigated serious failure modes under important conditions. There has been follow on designs based on what was learned from that reactor. That's a good thing and I'm glad such work is being done. But please stop it with the claims that people couldn't find a way (intentionally or unintentionally) to induce a serious catastrophic failure.