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.

Comments

So What?

[atomicalgebra]

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.

Re:turns out science is hard

[taiwanjohn]

molten salt reactors are a interesting idea but are untested

Molten salt reactors are proven technology. They ran one at Oak Ridge for thousands of hours back in the 1960s. There's a ton of info about this online, such as this lecture from a few years ago about LFTR. The Chinese currently have the most active (and best funded) program in this area. With any luck we might see a commercial product from them in the next few years, which could be a real game changer.