Copenhagen Atomics Progress to Mass Manufacturing Thorium Reactors and First Reactor in 2028

The wonderful news is that someone is actually commercialing the molten thorium salt reactor and packing it all into a container sized unit.  I am sure that we  are talking about a pure heat engine.  Send it whereever you need live steam.

Understand that the only reason we ever used uranium ever, was because we needed bomb making materials.  It was always dangerous, top to bottom.  wheras the thorium cycle is far safer and can be used to actually degrade radioactive matetrial as well.  thousands of these reactors can be used to consume addin charges of nasties thus eliminating our real nuclear waste problem.

A thorium heat engine as configured can be hooked up to any steam system, including our present day nuclear reactors as well.  Oh the irony as all nuclear energy problems slowly go away.

They are already noting that the breactor consumes nuclear waste.  This is where all our bomb material will end up.

Copenhagen Atomics Progress to Mass Manufacturing Thorium Reactors and First Reactor in 2028

September 8, 2023 by Brian Wang

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/09/copenhagen-atomics-progress-to-mass-manufacturing-thorium-reactors-and-first-reactor-in-2028.htm

Copenhagen Atomics has raised over 25 million euros and has developed full scale reactor hardware for molten salt thorium nuclear reactors. Almost a decade ago Copenhagen Atomics was founded based on a dream dream of a world powered by scaleable and green energy more affordable than coal; a thorium molten salt breeder reactor. They are now building full-scale prototype reactor test platforms, producing ton-scale highly purified salt and much more.

Copenhagen Atomics is developing a thorium based molten salt reactor with the same footprint as a 40 foot shipping container, which delivers 100 MW thermal energy per unit and is expected to reach an electricity price (LCoE) below $20/MWh in a mass manufacturing scenario.

The Waste Burner is expected to be online in 2028, and will run on a combination of thorium and used nuclear fuel reducing the storage period of the existing nuclear waste from 100,000 to 300 years. The 100 MWth thorium based MSR Waste Burner will deliver abundant energy in a cheaper, safer and cleaner manner.

They are in the process of building a non-fission prototype for the 1 MWth demo reactor, which will validate the reactor design using a non-nuclear fuel salt. They expect to have an operational 1 MWth demo reactor ready by 2025.

After 2028, they will have an assembly line mass construction of shipping container sized waste burner molten salt reactors.

The US made and operated the first molten salt thermal reactor (about 2Wth) back in the 1960s at Oak Ridge. China recently built a small demo molten salt reactor as well. Molten Salt nuclear technology has been built. Molten Salt nuclear fission needs to be made and operated at scale with good economics. It should have good economics.

Today, electricity only accounts for approx. 20% of the world’s combined energy consumption, whereas energy for industrial use, fuel for cars, ships, planes and heating your home make up for the remaining 80%.

That is a lot of energy that needs to be transitioned to green energy, which in many cases cannot be done by renewable energy.

In the few places where diesel is being phased out, ammonia will become an ever-increasing part of fuel consumption as this can be used for the mining, transportation, and shipping industries, to name a few.

Green ammonia can therefore be used for some of the hard-to-abate industries.

This project combines the knowledge of the old industry-leading companies Topsoe, Alfa Laval, Aalborg CSP, Pupuk Kaltim and Pertamina New & Renewable Energy and our molten salt reactor technology.