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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.
Being able to reprocess spent nuclear fuel means that there's less of a storage issue for nuclear waste.
I think this is less that science is hard, and more that claims two orders of magnitude improvements in anything are probably bullshit unless there's a working demonstration. I'm also not sure that millennials are any worse at falling for that kind of bullshit than previous generations were either and sites like Kickstarter just mean that the public can get in on funding the kinds of scams that venture capitalists have been shown for decades.
I'd rather that money be spent/wasted on failed attempts at getting us off of fossil fuels when the math indicates that the idea might work, than to continue to burn hydrocarbon fuel for stationary power plants.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
claims two orders of magnitude improvements in anything are probably bullshit
Normally I'd agree, but in this case the 10^2 improvement is largely based on the horrific inefficiency of our current fleet of solid-fuel, water moderated nukes, which is something like 0.7%. The vast majority of this efficiency gain is due to the liquid-fuel design (in this case, molten salt), which allows fuel to be reprocessed on the fly, whereas "traditional" nukes use solid fuel rods which degrade over time, and become unusable long before their energy content is anywhere near used up.
Other molten salt designs are under development, such as LFTR, which have similar claims on improved efficiency. The main difference is that this one (WAMSR) was supposed to be able to burn up existing stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel. Apparently that particular trick turned out to be more difficult than they anticipated.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Take a look at the CEO and you will see why the editors are interested in this.
Isn't it great that women are learning how to overpromise and underdeliver? That used to be the exclusive domain of tall men with chiseled jaws named Chad. Equality. Isn't it grand?
At least this one didn't resort to fraudulent activity. She's a role model!