Sunday, July 14, 2024

Ball Gates's Natrium Reactor

 A nice summary from Sabine Hossenfelder of the new sodium-cooled reactor, plus also a detour to explain why you can ramp conventional nuclear up and down (slowly), but it's not very efficient to do so.  

Sodium-cooled reactors are simpler and safer than conventional reactors.  According to TerraPower's website, its reactor will be 3 times as efficient as light-water reactors, and produce 40% less waste.  It operates at atmospheric pressure instead of being highly pressurised, so should be much safer.    They're also promising much faster construction – 36 months from nuclear concrete pour to fuel load.  Compare that with the 15–20 years large conventional reactors take.  It will also use 50% less safety-related concrete, steel and labour.  In other words, it's likely to be much cheaper than conventional reactors.

Concentrated solar power (CSP) came unstuck because the tanks cracked because of the expansion and contraction as molten salt was fed in and then withdrawn.  So this new reactor will face the same problem.   Vast Solar (now Vast Energy), an Ozzie start-up, claims it has solved this problem (see my piece:  Concentrated solar power revived?)  Perhaps they're talking to each other?


 



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